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“No. No hospital.” She mouths the words more than she says them. “Home. Grandma.”
Shit.
“Where is home, Miss Lark?” I try.
She doesn’t answer.
She only lets out a soft, pained sigh past her pink lips.
I notice she has a small mouth, a little bud of a thing with a plump upper lip tapering sharply down to peaked corners.
I wait for those lips to move again.
They don’t, not even as I hear the echo of her name over the PA system from inside the terminal.
“Problem,” I mutter, shaking my head. “You are a problem.”
“Bite me,” she mumbles back, and I blink.
Is she actually awake now?
“Miss Lark.” No response. I suppose this is revenge for ignoring her on the plane. “Miss Lark.”
Nope.
She’s truly out—either asleep or unconscious or in some haze of pain in between.
It makes me wonder what her life must be like if that’s her reflexive response.
I feel a touch of déjà vu as I reach in to shake her shoulder lightly, though no hand rises to stop me. “Miss Lark, wake up. Just enough to tell me your destination so we can be free of each other. Take my hand.”
I grab her fingers and fold them around mine. She grips them weakly.
“Nnh?”
I sigh.
She’s like a helpless little bird.
This is so not my wheelhouse.
I have zero talent for managing small, fragile things. I’d prefer to put this delicate young woman in the hands of someone more gentle before I accidentally rupture something. Either in her fragile body, or in my exasperated brain.
“Home. Where? Talk to me.” Maybe if I keep it simple, the question will penetrate her fog. I just need to leave her wherever she’s meant to be.
With a strangled sound, she turns her head and falls to rest against my hand on her shoulder, using it as a pillow. Her skin is soft and feathery warm against the backs of my knuckles. Her slow breaths stir the hairs on the back of my palm.
“. . . wanna go home.”
“Then tell me where home is,” I grit through my teeth.
“Huh?”
“Where.”
Her lashes flutter. They’re several shades darker than her hair, with a deeper red tinge, almost russet, making the glinting hazel underneath look closer to the rusty golden orange of a wildcat’s fur by contrast.
Then she mumbles an address—I think.
