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Chapter One
I didn’t intendto fuck Lark Conroy—it kind of just happened. I would have blamed alcohol except I’d been completely sober.
After a disastrous meeting with a potential hookup that turned out to be a married couple looking for a third, I’d decided to go on a sexual hiatus for a little while. Having fun with hookups had been my thing for years, and I decided I needed a break.
It had nothing to do with the fact that my two best friends had fallen in love. I was just going on hiatus for a little while.
Focus on myself. Meditate and shit. Whatever.
It wasn’t like I wasn’t getting off. I was just not getting off with other people to help. My hand and my favorite vibrator were my partners.
Everything was going fine, or at least sort of fine. I was grouchy and having issues sleeping and blowing my cool at work, but I was adjusting. Joy, my best friend, would usually distract me and hug me and bake me something to make me feel better, but she was completely in love with Ezra, the woman she paid to be her wedding date to her sister’s wedding. Weird, but who was I to judge?
Left to my own devices, I didn’t make the best decisions.
Decisions that led me to end up at a random bar in a random town on a random Friday night. Joy was off with Ezra, and I wouldn’t even see her until Monday since they were headed to her sister’s wedding.
I’d just needed to get out of Arrowbridge for a bit. Growing up there and then living as an adult in the same town gave me sympathy for goldfish in clear bowls, with everyone watching them and knowing their business.
The bar was dim and a little grungy, which was how bars should be, in my opinion. There was also a grizzled dude wearing flannel sitting at the end of the bar nursing a beer, which a good bar should also have.
The bartender was one of those women who could be thirty or seventy and you couldn’t really tell in the low light.
Since I was driving myself, I figured it was best to say sober. One drink would lead to two and that would lead to me potentially being a dumbass.
“Just a Coke with lime, please,” I said, and the bartender gave me a disapproving look, but she made the drink and shoved it at me.
“Hi, can I get a rum runner?” a voice said next to me. I thought it sounded familiar, so I turned and found Lark Conroy leaning against the bar next to me.
“Hey,” I said, and it took her a second to place me.
“Oh, hey. Sydney, right?”
She and I had met a few times, since she was the sister of Layne’s girlfriend, Honor, but I’d never really talked to her. That hadn’t stopped me from noticing that she was sexy, though.
“Yeah,” I said as the bartender handed Lark her drink with a little more courtesy than she’d shown to mine.
“Do you mind?” Lark asked, pointing to the empty stool next to me. My intention had been to wallow in my misery in this bar alone, but something about the way the light hit her blonde hair and the way her blue eyes looked in the dark made me say, “Not at all.”
It was no secret that Lark was gorgeous. Not in that polished and perfect way her sister Honor was. Whereas Honor was designer perfume and stilettos, Lark was messy waves and ripped jeans. Lark was pretty in the way that you imagined what she’d look like in your bed.
I closed my eyes for a second to try and stop that runaway-train of thoughts. It didn’t lead anywhere good.
“What brings you here?” she asked, and I decided that a little small talk wouldn’t hurt anyone.
“Just out wandering. I got sick of Arrowbridge,” I said, sipping my drink and wishing it had alcohol in it.
“You grew up there, right?” she asked, and I was surprised she remembered.
“Yup,” I said with a sigh.
“Sounds rough,” she said, tilting her body toward me.
“It can be. What are you doing all the way out here?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Had to get away.”
“Too many chickens?” I asked and she smiled, making my body zing with awareness of just how pretty she was.
