Page 7 of Tyrant

It’s late. The streetlights cast eerie shadows as I stand leaning up against a lamppost. There isn’t anyone on the road except the occasional car, but they’re so few and so far between it’s almost like they don’t exist at all. It’s just me out here in the street, playing Raiden’s words over and over in my head as I wait for Lark to come out of her parents’ house.

She wants to be left alone, leave her alone. She has a life and it’s hers alone now. We guarded her until she was an adult, old enough to make her own choices. I never wanted to chase her away. She shouldn’t have to leave to live. This is prison. I’m the one locked up, not her. Let her go if she wants to go. Give her space. Don’t have her followed. Don’t pay anyone. No tabs. She’ll always be my sister, but she’s not a baby anymore. We have to respect her wishes.

I did as he asked, but I’m here now, watching Lark slink out of her parents’ front door, shutting it quietly so she wouldn’t wake them up, and the only thing I feel is regret powerful enough to send me to my knees.

I knew that nothing was okay when Lark texted me just after two in the morning, asking if I could meet her here. If she wanted to see me, all she had to do was ask during regular hours. Even if her parents didn’t like it, they wouldn’t have prevented it. Fuck, she could have texted me anytime in the past five months and I would have driven up to Seattle in an instant, in a goddamn heartbeat, no matter what I had going on here, no matter what Raiden said.

My eyes rake Lark’s body, noticing all the ways she’s changed. Her hair is freshly dyed that same jet black. It shimmers when she walks, but it’s the only part of her that seems alive. The rest of her is haunted, like she’s made of dust and shadows. She’s no ghost, but the specter of happiness hovers around her.

She tugs the collar of her black peacoat up tighter and does the top button as she walks down her parents’ little sidewalk. It splits their yard in half. She’s wearing leggings and something that looks like slippers. Not nearly warm enough for the way our breath gathers in the biting chill, but she doesn’t appear to notice.

When Lark tips her face up to find mine, searching me out intrinsically in the darkness, my heart hammers in my chest. She finds the lamppost a few houses down from her parents’ place like I’ve waited there every night of my life for her. Our eyes lock. We stare each other down for a few moments. Yes, moments. Neither one of us moves. My feet are frozen in my boots. I grabbed the wrong pair, and they’re not insulated. Iparked my old car a few blocks away, just in case she was texting late because her parents were giving her a hard time about something.

I hoped that’s all it was, but that’s clearly not it.

The sweet girl I took to prom in June is gone. It’s a few days before Christmas now. Only a matter of months and she appears troubled. Sad. Broken.

Fury rises inside of me, warming me with its potent fire against the cold night. Something is wrong. I’ll fix it no matter what it costs.

“Gray,” she breathes in a voice heady and thick, so unlike her normal lighthearted, laughing tone. Despite everything that happened, Lark always found a reason to smile.

Not now.

“Can we go somewhere?” Her dark eyes are liquid damp in the streetlight.

“Wherever you want.” I’ll take her to the ends of the earth if only that would put a smile back on her face.

“My parents said you bought a house, but no one really knows where it is.” Her lips quiver, but the motion doesn’t reach her eyes. They look flat and glassy, like she’s not even in there.

That scares me more than anything.

“I did. I’ll take you there, right now.” I force myself to slow down, calm my frantic heartbeat, the adrenaline oversaturated in my bloodstream. “If that’s what you want.”

A slow sweep of velvet soft black lashes against milky pale skin. “Yes. Please.”

There’s no mention of the time, her parents sleeping in the house just beyond, the date. Christmas is only a few days away. That’s why she’s here, back in Hart. Seattle is only an hour away, but she hasn’t come back since she left in July in that ratty beater of a car that her parents bought her as a gift for graduating high school. It didn’t look safe. I didn’t come to see her off. I was trying to take a step back and respect her as an adult. She wrote to Raiden asking us to back down after she left, to give her independence and surprisingly, he agreed.

It didn’t sit well with me, but I resisted every single urge to check up on her. I knew she was writing to Raiden, and she had my number. She could call or text me whenever she wanted.

I open the car door for her. She slips into the passenger side. I try not to notice how good she smells now, how soft and small, innocent and fucking tender she appears. Fragile. It makes me want to drive slow and extra cautiously so I don’t accidentally hurt her in any way.

I crank the heat up so that she’s not cold. She’s not shaking, but her aura of warmth has fled. She could never be hard. She’s not built that way. Vulnerable, though? She’s that in every way and it presses hard into me with jagged edges, biting deep into my protective instincts.

I take us to the edge of town, until we hit a gravel backroad. Mud, more like. I kill the lights. We’ve done this before. I haven’t stopped thinking about that night. Even with all the other shit going on, it’s kept me awake when I should be sleeping, fuzzy and hazy when I need to be focused.

“Why aren’t you using your headlights?” Lark whispers.

I focus on the road, gripping the wheel harder than I have to. Honestly, the stupid saying about blindfolds is probably true.I could do this drive without looking by now. I know every inch of my property and every rut and curve in the road that leads to it.

“It’s safer this way.”

“Yeah,” she breathes. “Because some people, now and in the future, don’t and might not like you.”

“We all have enemies. I sleep better at night knowing the majority of them can’t find me.”

“I’ve heard your dad is getting worse. The club wants him out. The brothers want you.”

How the fuck has she heard that? Did Raiden finally cave and let her visit? Call? No. He wouldn’t change his mind about that and even if she did get a call through, he wouldn’t say anything over lines that were monitored.

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