I don’t know what’s going on, but I know I’m not going to make it another minute like this. I reach for the door handle and pull, swinging my feet onto the ground as I wrench the blindfold from my eyes.
“Three hours,” a soft voice says, making me flinch with surprise.
I blink, waiting for my eyes to adjust. When they do, I see Lark sitting in a lawn chair a few feet away, holding a book with a reading light clipped to the top of it in her lap.
“What the hell is going on?” I demand, standing on stiff legs as I throw the blindfold to the dirt at my feet.
We’re parked on a blanket of pine needles about fifty feet from a campsite where a fire burns. Looking around, I expect to see other campers, but we’re alone. Wherever she’s taken me, it isn’t a public campground.
“You made it three hours,” she repeats in a calm voice. “I made it thirty thousand.”
I shake my head, unable to hide my frustration. “What?”
“Four years. That’s over a thousand days, and over thirty thousand hours.” She closes her book but keeps the light on. It illuminates just enough of her face for me to see the tightness in her jaw and the emotion in her eyes.
It isn’t one I can easily place. It lives somewhere between anger and hope, in the no man’s land of emotion where people so often find themselves when relationships go wrong. It’s a hard feeling to name, but not a hard one to empathize with.
It’s the same way I felt sitting in that car—miserable and abandoned, but with a tiny voice beneath it all praying for a miracle, for Lark to come back and take the pain away.
My bunched shoulders drop away from my ears. My hands unclench at my sides. I understand now.
I should have understood all along.
“You wanted me to know how you felt.” I stare at the ground near her feet, not ready to look her in the eye.
“No, there’s no way you could know how I felt,” she says. “Three hours can’t teach you everything there is to know about thirty thousand, but I hoped it might at least give you a taste.”
I nod. “It did.”
“You were angry.”
“I was,” I whisper.
“And sad.”
“And pretty sure I’d been throw away,” I finish, a fresh wave of shame washing over me. I think of the misery I felt and multiply it times ten thousand.
That is what I did to her. I knew I’d hurt her, but it isn’t until this moment that I understand it in a visceral way.
“You can’t forgive me,” I force out.
That has to be the reason for this. Lark is trying to pierce my stubborn resolve and make me see why she can’t give me a second chance, no matter what.
And I do understand, and I can’t blame her, not even a little bit. But the loss of her, of even the hope of her, is still crushing.
“No,” she whispers, making my next breath freeze in my lungs. “I think I can. I think maybe I already have.”
Chapter 12
Mason
My head jerks up in surprise.
This time, when I meet Lark’s gaze it’s gentle, hopeful.
“You have?” I ask, my voice cracking.
“I didn’t think you’d last an hour,” she says. “But you did. And the longer I sat here watching you wait for me, the more I realized I don’t want to stay angry. Holding onto a grudge never made anyone happy, and I don’t want to be one of those bitter people who looks back on their lives and wishes I’d been brave enough to forgive the people who really mattered to me.” She presses her lips together for a moment before she continues, “You matter to me, Mason, and…I want to give this a chance.”
“You do?” My relief is so profound my hands shake with it.
“I do,” she says with a shy grin. “Still up for four more dates after a night like this?”
“I’m up for as many dates as you’ll give me,” I say, the center of my bones still unsteady. I feel like I’ve been rescued from a burning building seconds before it collapsed.
And Lark is the one who pulled me from the fire.
“Then let’s start now.” She crosses to me, slipping her hand into mine and giving it a squeeze. “I have stew and rolls warming by the fire. And there’s sweet tea and beer in the cooler if you want it.”
“I could use a beer,” I say with a laugh as she leads me toward the circle of stones and the light flickering beneath the trees. “Or three.”
“Have four,” she says, squeezing my hand again. “I’m driving. I think you’ve earned a little buzz.”
I stop at the edge of the flames, and draw her into my arms. She comes without hesitation, letting me enfold her and hold her close for a long, quiet moment. I drop my lips to the top of her head, drawing a relieved breath as I press a kiss to her hair.