The Billionaire Playboy's Regret (Lark and Max) novel Chapter 86

Driving back to her parent’s house, Lark was feeling sick to her stomach. Parked in the driveway, she watched as her parents were loading up six or seven suitcases each into a waiting truck. Her father seemed haggard and tired, and she knew he was desperate to get back to Gracie.

There was no news from the hospital on Gracie. They were all part of a group chat and Ollie, along with Fallon, were already in Houston and stopped in to check on her. She was still the same.

Lark felt her body was bone tired. The entire week felt too much, and she wanted nothing more than to decompress, pull her thoughts together and sort out what she was doing with her life. She looked up as her mom knocked on her window, gave a smile, and pushed the door open.

“Sorry, I was lost in thoughts.” She hiked her handbag up over her shoulder and sighed.

“I can see that. Everything okay?”

“No.” she gave a crooked twist of her lips. “Max doesn’t want to get married now.”

“What?”

“I made a drunken comment yesterday to the nurse about him manipulating me all the time and told him I knew I was the b***h, and he was the coercive one. He said he thought when everyone said it in the room at the hospital in Houston, we were joking. He only realized when I said it yesterday, he really did manipulate me, or at least he thinks he did. Anyway, he said he’s not going to have me wake up in the future regretting being married to him because I felt pressured and we’re on hold until I’m ready.”

“Wow.” Everly leaned against the side of the car. “How do you feel about it?”

“I’m,” she looked upwards trying to keep from exploding with the all the emotions she was feeling. “I’m angry Mom. I’m sad and I’m angry and I’m f*****g tired of people doing things which impact my life without giving me any f*****g control over it. I’m tired of people thinking I’m this silly little girl who can’t think for herself or a puppet to the Villeneuve twins. I’m not. Fallon made a comment today and it really grated on my last nerve. She said she doesn’t want to be me waiting on a rooftop and almost getting killed because she lets them control her. The thing is I don’t let anyone do anything. I never have. I make my own choice. I make my own decisions. Yes, some of them are bad horrible decisions which cost me. Expecting a teen boy to meet me on a roof was dumb but what was dumber was staying there, on a roof known for kids who go up there to have s*x, for a long time alone. I put myself in the situation. I should have left after five or ten minutes, and I didn’t. I was the one who threw the pot through the window when I caught Doug and his slutty girlfriend. I cost me my job. It was my stupid decision. I am the one who went with Ollie to a bar to meet a mafia boss. She asked me to come but I’m the one, me, who insisted on bringing the gun and putting it on Santiago. She didn’t do it, Mom. I did it. I was the one when Max asked me to marry him while he was higher than a kite and didn’t know better, who told Ollie I was going to hold the fucker to his promise and make sure he asked me again when he was sober. It was my choice.”

“Lark,” her mother gave a laugh, “you do make a lot of stupid choices.”

“I do but I own them, Mom. I don’t blame anyone else for what I choose to do. Johan is on this trip lately of how the Villeneuve twins put me through hell and part of it is my own fault because I wined and moaned about it so much but gosh, they were my best friends. I did stupid things with them too and dragged them along.”

“Like?”

“When I decided in ninth grade, I could be a lawyer and a world-famous painter concurrently and decided I needed inspiration and begged them to help me break into the art gallery downtown after hours so I could study the paintings of the artist I liked. The guy was a jerk and called me a kid and only adults were allowed in the building, so we broke in. I saw a lot of nude art that night.”

Everly laughed at her comment. “I didn’t know this one.”

“Because we got away with it, since unlike Ollie, my plans didn’t result in us getting caught,” she grinned a toothy smile. “Or the time when I was working at the ice cream shack and the manager who was only a year older than me started docking my pay because she said I was overfilling the ice creams when my friends came. She only took like five or ten dollars off each paycheck, but I was a teenager, and ten bucks was a lot of money. Like a lipstick or a mascara.”

“Oh my god, she did what?”

“Yes. She used to say I was giving Ollie, Johan and Max ice creams which were too big. They tipped huge! Anyway, we broke into the ice cream shack and stole six tubs of ice cream. Max even bought a deep freeze which he put in a room at the school. We ate free ice cream for months.”