“When I left, I needed a fresh start. I needed to distance myself from everything and everyone. I picked a name I liked and didn’t tell people my surname unless it was necessary. When I turned eighteen, for all intents and purposes, I had already been Larken for almost two years. I took an old friend’s last name, someone who’d helped me get settled when I first arrived in the Quarter, and made it official.”
I nodded, not saying more, just giving her the space to say or do whatever she needed. She was opening up a little, and I didn’t want that to stop.
She sighed. “I . . .” She looked down at the table for a minute, seeming to gather her thoughts. “I don’t know what to do here, Kholt. There’s a lot you don’t know. More I’m not sure I ever want to talk about. And running into you here, like this, could have just put everything I love and value in danger.”
I frowned. “How so?” I couldn’t help it. The fixer in me wanted to help her, but my heart needed to know how me being here could be a bad thing. We had been nearly inseparable for twelve years, until she took off—without a word.
She rubbed the back of her neck under the gorgeous fall of her copper hair. “As I said, there’s a lot you don’t know. Let me start by asking you this. . . . Why are you here? You were clearly as surprised to see me as I was to see you, but why are you here?”
“I started a company out of college. Sunshine and Shadow Construction.” I didn’t miss the twitch of her eye and filed that away for later. I would have figured she’d like that I named it after the community in a way. Our life having been all about the balance of light and dark.
“I travel around the state a lot for work. Some out-of-state gigs. We’re requested a lot. We often get the best bids, and my teams take as many contracts as we can. But you know how I am. Or you did.” I shrugged. “I’m a hands-on type of guy. I work a lot of the jobs, too. So, when I do, I live locally until we’re done. We just finished up a project north of here, and Turner mentioned that he wasn’t working for a bit. We’ve been friends for years. I figured I’d come and spend some time with him.”
She nodded brusquely, sucking on her teeth a bit before taking another drink from her martini glass. “And?”
“And . . . that’s the gist of it.” I didn’t want to tell her that Dev had given me a job, too. I wasn’t sure if she could take that much all at once tonight. I’d tell her before we actually had to work together, just not now. From what I gathered, at least for the first bit, I would be doing things at the location while the team was still on hiatus or taking care of other, pre-production things.
“Okay, Kholt. Here’s the deal. I’m a little upset right now.” I went to interject, but she held up her hand, stopping me. She was holding it together well, but I didn’t miss the slight tremble in her fingers, or the hitch in her voice. “Not at you,” she finished. “From what I can tell, this is nobody’s fault. It’s just a weird and kind of lousy coincidence. And that pisses me the hell off. I like my life and I don’t want it upended. But as I said, there is a lot—awholelot—about my life in Balance of Light that you do not know. There were some very good reasons that I ran away with only the clothes I had on and never looked back. Before we even continue this meal, before I decide what to do about the fact that I may have just blown up my world unintentionally, I need to know one thing.”
I took in her body language, seeing the tension in her shoulders, and the tight set to her jaw. I saw how she twisted the napkin, her knuckles turning white from the force of it. But above all of that, I saw the vulnerability in her eyes. It nearly took me out at the knees.
“Anything,” I said, meaning it.
“When was the last time you talked to anyone from the ranch?”
Thinking that she obviously didn’t mean Turner since she knew I had been talking to him, I replied honestly. “It’s been at least five years. I haven’t really been back in nearly a decade. I drove through before a job a little over five years ago but was only there for maybe three hours. I stopped in and saw the Fontenots. Outside of that, nobody. I just wanted to say hi.”
She nodded again, but I could see the wheels turning in her head. She rubbed a hand over her forehead as if smoothing away a tension headache. “Okay. We can have dinner. Catch up a little.” She flashed me a small—very small—smile, and I felt as if I’d won the lottery. “But I have a hard rule.”
“And that is?”
“I don’t want to talk about them. Any of them. I don’t want to talk about the me I was with them. Hell, I don’t really want to talk about the you of then, either. If things go well and we slip into mutual shared stories, I’ll let that go, but if you meander into things about your home life or mine or anything else having to do with the community,”—her face tightened—“I will walk out that door. Got it?”
“Got it. Can I get a damn drink now?”
She laughed, and it felt like a punch to the stomach. The knot that had tightened in my guts just moments before loosened a fraction.
“Yeah, get a drink. I certainly need another.” She waved the waiter over, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
I couldn’t believe that I was sitting across the table from the lost love of my life. And I couldn’t wait to find out who she was now. I knew we were both different people—too much time had passed, and too much had happened in our individual lives for it to be any different. But I couldn’t help but wonder if I could love her as much as I used to . . . maybe even more.
Chapter6
~Larken~
After an invigorating 5k run and a ton of crunches and Russian twists, I was just finishing my medicine-ball squats and lunges when my cell rang. Before it went to voicemail, I set the ball down and rushed to where I had it plugged in on the table, currently under Phantom’s furry butt.
“Move, you oaf,” I panted, extricating the phone and earning a yawning glare from my cat. I swiped the screen to answer. “Hello.” I cringed. I was so out of breath, and I hadn’t even stopped to see who was calling before answering—sans accent and pitch alteration.
“Mornin’,cher. You all right?” Paxton asked, a chuckle in his tone.
I laughed but shook my head, berating myself for not looking at the caller ID. Hopefully, he hadn’t noticed that my voice had sounded different. I fixed that quick before saying, “Oh, hey, Padre. Yeah, you just caught me at the tail-end of my workout.” I took another deep breath, trying to slow my heart rate. “What’s up?”
“Dev asked me to head over to the steamboat houses this morning to meet with someone he hired to help with the properties. The problem is, I need to get into the soup kitchen. There’s a bit of a crisis. Everyone else in the core group is busy with other things. Is there any way you can go over?”
I glanced at the clock and saw that it was only eight a.m. “What time?” I asked.
“He told me the contractor should be there around ten. Will that work for you?”