Nolan arrives halfway through the official conversation, and the room changes just slightly when he walks in. Not because anyone still thinks he did it. Not after Hadley inserted herself into that narrative yesterday with the force of a freight train and made it very clear she’d personally set the town on fire before she let them pin this on the wrong person.
But there is tension there. A different kind now.
He steps through the doorway with his usual control mostly intact, though I catch the way his gaze finds Hadley first. She’s standing by the sink with her arms folded, expressionguarded in the same way his is, and something passes between them that has absolutely nothing to do with Kenzie or the fire.
I don’t have the energy to care beyond that one observation, but I file it away anyway.
The rest of the morning is spent on logistics. Insurance. Temporary fencing. Fire cleanup. Structural assessments. Marshal reports. I should feel more present for it than I do. Instead, my body starts cashing in on the exhaustion I’ve been outrunning since the flames first caught. By the time the last official car leaves, my shoulder is throbbing hard enough to blur the edges of everything else.
Lark notices before I say anything. She waits until the kitchen empties enough for privacy, then stands in front of me in the hall and says, “You need to sit down before you fall over.”
I look at her. At the firm line of her mouth, the worry she’s not even attempting to hide now.
“You trying to order me around?”
“Yes.”
That answer falls exactly where she intended it to. A laugh catches in my chest and comes out lower than I expect. “That’s new.”
Lark takes my uninjured arm and steers me toward the couch with quiet confidence. I let her do it.
The house is still by afternoon. Hadley and Bailey head back into town. Lila leaves with Dean after making us both promise to answer our phones. Mom and Dad stay long enough to put together enough leftovers to feed us through the next two days, then finally hug me a second time and kiss Lark’s cheek like there is nothing uncertain left between any of us. I stopped pretending she didn’t the second she left a second toothbrush in my bathroom without asking. But what gets me is the way Larkleans into the affection just enough to show it no longer startles her.
When the house finally empties, my entire body exhales. Lark disappears into the kitchen and comes back with the first aid kit before I can lie to her about needing it. The afternoon light has shifted to a softer angle by then, a golden glow through the windows, catching in the room in a way that makes everything feel slower and more intimate than the day deserves.
She kneels beside the couch while I sit, and for a second, I am struck by how quickly this has become something we do. Not the injuries. Not the aftermath. Just this kind of care, given and taken without performance.
Her fingers are careful when she peels back the bandage. The burn isn’t terrible, but the bruising around it has deepened into an ugly color, and I know by the look on her face that it’s worse than I let on.
“You should’ve gone to urgent care.”
“I’m fine.”
She gives me a look, and I have just enough decency to look guilty.
“Didn’t have time,” I say.
“You had time to nearly get yourself crushed by a burning beam.”
“That feels judgmental.”
“It is judgmental.”
Her mouth doesn’t move, but there’s a current under the words that feels familiar now.
I let my head tip back against the couch and watch her while she works. The concentration in her face. The little line between her brows when she’s trying to be gentle and irritatedat the same time. The fact that she stays quiet for long stretches because she understands, maybe better than anyone, that not every silence needs to be filled to be shared.
“I meant what I said,” she murmurs after a while.
Her hands pause on the edge of the fresh bandage. She looks up at me then, and whatever I was expecting, it wasn’t the steadiness there.
“I know,” I say, though the truth is I am still learning what to do with the fact that she means it.
Her hand rests lightly against my shoulder, careful of the injury. “I don’t want this to turn into me disappearing into your life just because everything got hard.”
“It won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
