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It felt as though someone punched me in the gut as the air left my lungs. I knew those brown eyes. The last time I’d seen them, they were laced with utter terror as she was curled up in the corner of my baby sister’s room, covered in blood.
Lark Meadows.
My heart sped up from the raw, jagged memory she stirred up. A dusting of pink blossomed on the tops of her cheeks as we stared at each other, and I focused on that blush on her smooth skin. Anything to distract me from the pain bubbling up from the pit of grief that never seemed to fully fade, no matter how many years passed.
“Hey,” she said softly, voice small and so unlike the one I remembered. The voice that had always been full of life.
Lark had been Thea’s best friend since they were in kindergarten.
When I still didn’t answer, she looked away and shifted on her feet. I was making her uncomfortable. I sucked in a deep breath, letting it fill my lungs until it hurt. This wasn’t the first time I’d seen Lark since my sister’s death, but she had left town shortly after that fateful Halloween night.
And now she was back.
I shook my head to clear it, pulling myself out of my stunned state and back to the present. To this moment. To the now, and not the then.
“Hey,” I finally answered. My voice sounded as off-kilter as hers had.
I looked her over again with a fresh set of eyes…eyes that saw the now Lark.
Starting from the top of her head, I scanned her body. The now Lark was very much the same, but somehow also drastically different. Her hair was longer, falling to her waist in a straight curtain. Her face had lost some of its roundness, but her jaw and cheekbones still held a delicate softness to them. She was small, as she’d always been, but as I glimpsed beneath the oversized cardigan, she had curves she hadn’t before.
The now Lark wasn’t a child anymore. The person standing in front of me was all woman, and heat stirred in my stomach, a heat I’d never felt when I’d looked at her before.
I blinked slowly, feeling like I was stuck inside some kind of dream. Standing here covered in coffee looking at Lark Meadows, of all people, didn’t seem real.
“Oh my God!” We both jumped as Ruby Rivera came running up to me, her eyes wide. “What the hell happened?”
Ruby and I weren’t close anymore but had dated for a while in college. The way she stared at the coffee dripping down my face, though, you would’ve thought someone had personally offended her.
I realized for the first time that a crowd had gathered around us. We’d gained the attention of almost everyone in the cafe.
I stared down at the puddle of coffee pooled at my feet, grimacing at my drenched leather shoes that had been brand new.
“I’m sorry about the mess, Ruby.” I looked back up at her. “I can clean it up.”
Ruby’s forehead creased as she took in the coffee on the floor. Her nose scrunched in disapproval as something seemed to click in her brain, and she cut a glare over at Lark. “I guess I probably shouldn’t be handing out coffees without lids.”
The color on Lark’s cheeks deepened to crimson. Her shoulders curled in as her eyes darted from Ruby to the crowd forming around us. She hugged her arms around herself, lowering her face so the brim of her hat covered her eyes.
“Wait a minute…” Ruby tilted her head to the side and stepped closer to Lark. The furrow in her brow cleared as recognition flared in her eyes. “Holy crap,” she hissed.
Lark’s expression filled with dread, as if the next words out of Ruby’s mouth were a death sentence.
“Lark? Lark Meadows?”
A frenzied murmur spread throughout the crowd of the coffee shop, replacing the stunned silence. Lark’s head was on a swivel again as she stared around the crowd, looking like an animal being circled by predators. Her fingers clawed into her own arms as she gripped them tight over herself. Everything in me tightened, the look on her face making me want to pick her up and take her away from all these people.
“What are you doing back here?”
The question sounded more like an accusation, and I shot Ruby a glare.
“She doesn’t need your permission to be here,” I snapped. The way everyone was looking at her had my rage rising.
Ruby finally faced me, giving me a look that was somewhere between confusion and revulsion. “I don’t think anyone wants her back here.”
As I looked from Ruby, to the crowd, and back at Lark, anger scorched my insides. I embraced it.
The days after Thea’s murder were often a blur. I didn’t think of them; I actively tried to forget them. But I did remember the rumors. I remembered the whispers that scattered through the town in the wake of the tragedy. There weren’t any answers for what had happened, and people grasped at anything that could possibly have a shred of truth.
