We don’t talk much for the rest of the drive home. Though it would normally be a comforting quiet with Lark, my heart beats too quickly for me to feel relaxed. It only gets worse when we park. I try to take a deep breath as I walk over to the passenger side to open her door. With every step we take, I think she’s going to notice the way I hold her hand just a little too tightly, or the way I can’t seem to stop biting my bottom lip. But if she does catch on to those details, she never says so. She’s seemingly content to walk up the stairs side by side in silence. By the time we get to the landing, I’m nearly vibrating with nerves and anticipation.
“I got you something,” I say. I barely give us time to greet Bentley and take off our jackets before I tug Lark along to the living room. She looks at me with scrutiny and I shrug. “Early birthday present.”
“My birthday is in February. We haven’t even made it to Christmas yet.”
“Extra early.”
Lark’s gaze pans across the room before it lands on me. “Where?”
“Gotta figure that out for yourself, duchess.”
“Do I get a clue?”
I tap my finger against my lips to draw out her suffering before I finally say, “What kind of conduit is universal?”
A crease appears between Lark’s brows. She pivots on her heel, her focus roaming toward the kitchen until her expression suddenly clears. With the most feckin’ adorable grin, she grasps my arms and bounces on her toes. “Water. Constantine.”
And then she’s gone.
I trail in her wake as Lark heads to the Constantine poster and lifts it from the wall to reveal a safe. The smile she beams my way lights up every dark crevice in my heart.
“I don’t need to pry out an eyeball to open it?” she says as she spins the dial.
“Appears not.”
“What’s the code?”
“Go with the theme.”
I watch as Lark thinks on this for a minute then tries a few options. Her frustration mounts when nothing seems to work. It’s a valiant effort, and she seems determined to keep going until she finally lets out a dejected sigh and looks to where I stand with my hands shoved deep in my pockets. “Give up yet?”
“No,” she says with a scoff. She tries three more combinations before her shoulders fall. “Yes.”
I saunter up behind her, only stopping when my body is flush with her back. With a lingering kiss to Lark’s neck, I reach over her shoulder to spin the lock. “Well, well. Look who’s more up on their Constantine trivia now. Three, three, nine, three. The number on the back of Chas Kramer’s taxi.”
With the final number in place, I unlock the safe and stand back.
“Don’t gloat yet, Batman. I …”
Lark trails off as she opens the door, revealing her trophies. The snow globe. The coaster. The maracas were trickier to salvage, so I made her a new pouch from cowhide for the teeth of the broken one. There are a few other things I found hidden in the apartment, like a bookmark made of charred fabric and a beaded bracelet made of bone. And behind all those trophies, there’s something she’s never seen before.
“What’s this?” she asks as she pulls a cube of clear resin from the safe. She twists it side to side, examining the heart suspended in gold wire, frozen in time.
“That’s maybe the wrong question.”
“Who is this?”
“Dr. Louis Campbell.”
Lark stiffens. She stares at that heart. She doesn’t take her eyes from it, not even when they well with tears that she struggles to blink into submission. Her pain stokes the rage that lingers like venom in my veins. But there’s satisfaction too, in the hope that this trophy will give her some measure of closure to questions that have haunted her sleepless nights.
“Are you serious …?”
I nod.
Lark’s lip wobbles, and for a moment I wonder if this was the wrong thing to do. But when she looks at me, a smile breaks through the pain that creases her brow and floods her eyes with tears.
“This is the best present I’ve ever gotten,” she squeaks out. She feckin’ sobs as she wraps her arms around the cube and hugs it to her chest. Relief washes over me as I pull her into my embrace. Her body trembles as she lets go of at least some of this pain that’s haunted her for so many years. And I know this isn’t just something she wanted. It was something she needed.
When we finally separate, I pull the box from her arms and set it on the coffee table so I can take her shoulders and turn her away. “There’s one more thing,” I whisper as I nudge her toward the safe.
“More …?”
“You heard me.”
With a wary glance over her shoulder, Lark focuses on the items left inside, where I know there’s a manila envelope with her name on it. She keeps her back to me as she opens it. There’s a gasp as she withdraws the documents and reads the itinerary for a prebooked honeymoon trip to Indonesia I printed earlier today.
And then she flips to the divorce papers.
“What the fuck is this …?”
When I say nothing, she turns to face me, and finds me down on one knee.
A fresh wave of tears cascades down Lark’s cheeks in shining rivulets. She can’t seem to land on furious, or elated, or purely overwhelmed, but they all seem to combine when she says, “What the hell are you doing?”
“Proposing, by the looks of things,” I say with a glance at the diamond band I hold between us.
Lark looks around us as though the explanation can be found on the sofa, or out the window, or on the floor. Her gaze lingers on Bentley, who looks as confounded as she does. Then her eyes land on the papers that waver in her unsteady hands. I’m pretty sure a feckin’ eternity passes before her attention returns to me. “Why?”
“Because you never really had a choice in this marriage.”
Lark shakes her head. Her lips press into a tight line and her brow furrows. And I’m feckin’ terrified. I’m terrified to let her go. But I made a promise to protect her. From anyone, even herself. Even me. And the only way I can do that is to be sure she can live the life she wants. Otherwise, I’m not a protector. I’m a cage.
Lark’s expression is so hard and so pained that I can’t tell what she’s really feeling, but I know I need to keep going.
“You made this vow to save me. My brother. Your best friend. But I want you to choose the future you want, Lark. You can dissolve this marriage. Or we can do things another way. Maybe we start over and pretend we’d first met at Rowan’s place. Or we can stay married, have the honeymoon we talked about. You said it would be Indonesia, if this were real.” I take a steadying breath, but my throat burns when I swallow. It’s so hard to keep my eyes on her as I break open my heart to let her look inside. “This is real to me, Lark. I know I promised I wouldn’t let you go, but I was wrong. Because this decision is more important than me keeping my word. And for what it’s worth, I hope you choose me, in whatever way that needs to be. I’m asking you to stay with me. But I want you to choose what’s right for you.”
Lark holds my eyes.
And she doesn’t look away. Not as she tosses the itinerary over her shoulder, a move that incinerates my heart in a beat of panic. Not as she holds the divorce papers up and rips them apart, one after the next until each one is torn. Then she points at me with a trembling hand.
“I am madly in love with you, Lachlan Kane,” she says, jabbing her finger in my direction as though punctuating each word. “And I am also just madly mad. Don’t you ever give me divorce papers again.”
“I promise, duchess.” A burst of hope and relief and joy floods my chest. They are feelings I thought I’d never have, a life I never thought I’d live. Not until I made the choice to let Lark in. “I love you, Lark Kane.”
Lark’s anger dissolves. Her smile ignites. It’s the most beautiful she’s ever been, her happiness an unstoppable dawn.
“Good, you ‘feckin’ catastrophe,’” she says, and then she crashes into my arms. “Because I choose you.”
I slip the ring above the set on her finger.
And I choose her, like I have every day since I found the bottom of the chasm between us and decided to do whatever it took to claw my way into her light. I choose her like I will every day to come.
I kiss my wife. And I choose love.
EPILOGUE
MAGIC TRICK
Rose
My grandma used to say that the best magic tricks are performed by the ones who believe.
It’s true. I see it all the time at Silveria Circus. The best magicians are always the ones who understand that the true magic at the heart of a trick is possibility.
Maybe that’s why no one looks my way now. Because I believed in magic too.
Abe Mead lies dead on the factory floor. That fucker. Wouldn’t mind having another shot at killing him if I could. Maybe I’d have done a few things a little differently.
I pull my attention away from his cooling body. I don’t want him to take another second of my time.
So I put all my focus on something beautiful instead. Lachlan and Lark. They hold each other in a crushing embrace. They sway like two trees that have twisted together and weathered storms side by side. Maybe this will be the last big one. A thunderstorm that leaves clean air and vibrant colors behind. I’d like to think the weather will always be fair for them now, the skies always clear. I think that’s what I’ll choose to believe.
I glance down at my shirt. There’s almost nothing to show for everything that’s happened. Just a small hole in the flannel fabric on my side, right beneath my ribs. There’s no more than a few drops of crimson to stain my shirt. A little trick. Nothing to see.
But I can feel it.
It burns right there, while the rest of me feels cold. No one notices when I lie down on the floor.
Lachlan and Lark are still wrapped together when a door flies open somewhere nearby. Running footsteps echo against machines and concrete walls.
“Rose,” Fionn calls out. There’s panic in his voice. He repeats my name over and over. It sounds like it’s growing more distant. Not coming closer.
It feels like the first time I flew through the metal cage on my motorcycle. The terrifying roar of the engine. The flip of my stomach when I realized I didn’t know which way was up. I just pulled back on that throttle and sped through the sphere until everything else faded away except the headlight in front of me.
“She’s here,” Lark calls back when I don’t answer, but she sounds far away too. “Oh my God—”
“Christ Jesus. Fionn, help—”
The world doesn’t go dark. It goes bright white. In the final moment before the light washes the shadows away, I see Fionn in the distance. And I know he’s my home. My person.
My love.
Maybe magic is real after all.