Page 33 of Until We Come Home

“Yeah,” he says, drawing the word out. “Dark River is great, but the crew’s an older crowd and the pace is pretty... slow. A lot of this job is maintenance and... waiting around.”

Jack snorts. “Which means nothing ever happens, so you’re stuck doing station chores all day, which you notoriously hate.”

“Exactly,” Mateo chuckles. “I’ve swept that bay floor more times than I’ve rolled on actual calls.”

Lark laughs. “To be fair, things were a lot more chaotic when Jack and Alex were teenagers running around town. It's a bit boring nowadays.”

“Hey, I never set anything big on fire. Except for that one dumpster behind the middle school,” Jack protests with an easy grin. “And we stayed right there and put it out ourselves.”

Mateo and I lose it. The stories about Alex and Jack raising hell as the menace duo during their Dark River youth are lore at this point.

Lark rolls her eyes playfully, then turns back to Mateo. “That makes sense about Dark River being pretty quiet. What about back in Boston, though?”

“Boston’s a solid workload,” he says, “but the culture at my station there is very old-school. Real aggressive. Guys skipping seatbelts, refusing masks on car fires, and this hazing mentality where if your senior crew treated you like shit as a probie, you’re obligated to pass it down.”

Lark makes a sympathetic noise. “Right, I remember you mentioning some of that to Brooke over the holidays. Sounds exhausting.”

“Yeah. I love the job itself, but that isn’t my favorite station,” Mateo says, taking another drink of his beer. “Seattle’s just a great group of people and enough action to keep your edge.”

“Well, it’s nice having you on this side of the country for once,” Jack says, tapping his bottle against Mateo’s with a quiet clink. “I feel bad that I’m constantly jetting off for races, but it’s great getting to catch up more whenever I’m actually in town.”

“Same here, man,” Mateo says. “You going to be around for the shoot later this month? I’m driving up to Dark River for a bit myself.”

“Wait, you’re coming out for the shoot?” Lark sets her wine glass down on the counter. “That’s going to be so much fun!”

I smile at that. I asked Mateo to try and make it up for the filming we’re doing in Dark River for Lark’s visual album, and thankfully he managed to get the days off. I told him I just wanted another familiar face on set, but deep down, having him around just makes everything feel a little grounded, so I was more relieved than I let on when he said yes.

It’s the piece I’ve been obsessing over ever since Lark first played the raw demo for me months ago. A ballad—stripped back, deeply emotional—and the choreography physically mirrors that vulnerability. Out of everyone I know, he’s the one I want standing there when I do it.

The rest of dinner stretches into an evening of good wine, endless stories, and catching up on everything we’ve missed. We clear the takeout boxes and end up clustered around the coffee table for a loud, chaotic game of cards. Jack is fiercely, comically competitive, which I suppose is an essential personality trait if you’re driving Formula One cars for a living.

In the end, Lark soundly beats us all, gloating with a playful little victory lap around the rug. Around nine, the two of them pack up to leave, exchanging warm hugs and lingering goodbyes. Jack’s flying out to Europe for his next grand prix tomorrow morning, and Lark’s joining him for the flight before heading back up north for the shoot, squeezing every spare hour together they can manage.

We walk them to the threshold, Jack and Mateo exchanging a back-thumping hug while Jack mutters a warning for Mateo to stay safe out on the line. And then the door clicks shut, leaving just Mateo and me in the quiet apartment, surrounded by the stagnant heat.

“I would literally give my soul for a breeze in here,” I groan, resting my forehead against the cool granite counter from my stool.

I hadn’t noticed it as much while the four of us were talking, but the apartment is a furnace. It’s been pushing ninety degrees all afternoon, a summer anomaly that I was assured never happened in Seattle, and that grand living room window has been acting like a massive greenhouse since noon. Worse still, the stubborn wooden window frame refused to budge when I wrestled with it earlier.

“Thought you were a California girl,” Mateo teases, leaning back against the counter beside me.

“I am, which is exactly the problem,” I say, hopping off the stool and striding over to the glass for another desperate attempt at the latch. “It almost hit ninety today. I thought I left that kind of thing in LA. I was promised misty, moody Pacific Northwest weather. That was the whole selling point.”

“You get that ten months of the year,” he says, watching me struggle. “But there’s always at least one heat wave every summer that’s really bad. Why do you think Barnes needs me out here? It’s not for the rain.”

“Right. Fire season.” I fight with the brass latch until it finally flips open, then shove upward with all my weight. The frame doesn’t move a millimeter. “Okay, this thing is stuck shut with old paint. I’m not even exaggerating. Are you going to help me or just stand there?”

He laughs and crosses the room, flattening one hand against the frame while he braces the heel of the other under the sash. His T-shirt stretches tight across his back as he puts his full weight into it. With a sharp crack of old paint, the window shudders upward six inches, and he shoves it the rest of the way open. The night air drifting in is barely cooler than the room, but the movement alone feels like heaven.

“Oh, thank sweet merciful heavens,” I breathe, stepping into the draft.

“Anytime,” he says, wandering back to the sofa and letting out a breath as he sinks into the cushions.

I settle onto the couch beside him, tapping his leg with my toe.

“So,” I say, leaning in. “Are we still hitting the trail early? Six a.m.?”

He gives me a long, unconvinced look. “Since when are you up at six a.m.?”