Page 34 of Lost Then Found
I drag a hand down my face, sigh hard. “I mean exactly what I said, Wren.”
Didn’t even make it twenty minutes through the front door before calling this family meeting. Now we’re all crammed around the same oak table we grew up at—where we ate every meal, did homework, fought, made up, and got lectured more times than I can count. Only this time, I’m the one in the hot seat.
Sage sits curled into the corner of her chair, hands wrapped around a mug she hasn’t touched in ten minutes. Her gaze stays low, fixed on a crack in the table, like if she stares hard enough, it might swallow her whole.
She’s twenty-five now, a woman forged in the years that stretched between my leaving and this moment. When I last saw her, she was thirteen, all sharp angles and hidden vulnerability, her emotions a visible tide she tried to suppress but never quite could. She felt everything with a startling depth, a sponge absorbing the unspoken anxieties and joys of those around her. She trailed behind us like a softer echo when were young, a quiet presence always on the periphery. And even then, her heart leaned towards the overlooked—the scrawny kittens abandoned in the barn’s shadow, the rejected calf nudging its mother’s flank.
Now, I catch glimpses of that same inherent tenderness, a flicker beneath the surface of her fierce independence. Because that’s there too, a quiet fire that can catch you off guard.
They’ve built a life without me. Figured out how to carry the load I left behind. Wren filled the cracks. Sage held the rest of it together. And now I’m walking through the door at thirty years old like I expect there to be space left for me.
Like the ghost of who I was doesn’t still hang in the corners.
Truth is, I feel like an outsider in my own family. I’m not the big brother they remember. And they’re not the little sisters I left behind.
Mom’s at the head of the table, arms crossed tight, her mouth pressed into a thin line. I know that look—she’s already thinking about all theways she would’ve handled this better. My little brother, Ridge, is on speakerphone from whatever rodeo town he’s in, the line buzzing faintly.
Then, finally, his voice: “Well, shit.”
Yeah. My thoughts exactly.
Sage shifts in her chair, arms folded across her chest. “Are you sure he’s yours?” Her voice is quieter than Wren’s. Careful. “I mean…how do you know?”
I let out a dry laugh, shake my head. “I just do.” I press my palms to the edge of the table, trying to ground myself. “If you’d seen him, you’d get it.”
Because fuck, the kidisme.
Same dark hair under his ball cap. Same sharp jaw. Same cleft chin. Same brown eyes. Same scatter of freckles across his nose. It was like looking in a damn mirror.
And the timeline checks out.
I left for basic at the end of May. Last time Lark and I were together was March—right before graduation. He would’ve been born that winter.
I remember because that night had been fucking unforgettable.
It was March in Montana—the kind of cold that settles in your bones and stays there. But we didn’t feel a damn bit of it. Not with the way she was straddling me in the cab of my truck, parked just past the tree line, windows fogged over from our breath and the heat rolling off our bodies.
Lark was on top of me, knees digging into the torn leather seat, jacket already tossed somewhere on the floor. Her hands were in my hair, pulling, gripping, kissing me like she was trying to leave a permanent mark—like she knew it might be the last time.
Her sweater had ridden up, exposing warm skin I couldn’t stop touching. My hands were all over her—rough, greedy, desperate—like I had to memorize the feel of her while I still could.
She gasped when I slid my hands under the hem and dragged that sweater over her head, leaving her in just her bra, skin pebbling from the cold. I smoothed my palms down her back, trying to chase the chill away, while my mouth found her throat—her pulse pounding beneath it like a drum Icouldn’t stop following.
She shivered when I bit the spot just below her ear. Rolled her hips against mine, slow and deep, like she knew exactly what she was doing. Like she wanted to break me in half.
And fuck, she did.
The truck smelled like us. Her honeysuckle perfume. Her lavender shampoo. Sweat, leather, heat. It was primal—messy and real.
I gripped her hips and thrust up into her, and she let out this soft, wrecked sound that damn near undid me. Nails dug into my shoulders. Lips parted around my name like it belonged to her.
I’ll never forget the way she felt—tight, hot, wrapped around me like she never wanted to let go. The way her breath fogged the air between us. The pink flush on her cheeks, the way her eyes fluttered shut when she came, gasping like it caught her by surprise every time.
After, she pressed her forehead to mine. Breathless. Shaking. Skin to skin in the cold.
And for a second, none of the other shit mattered. Not the goodbye. Not the years between. Not everything we lost.
Just Lark.
