Excerpt: At First Spark

EXCERPT: AT FIRST SPARK by @renee_harless releasing May 20th! 

#PreOrderHere 

https://mybook.to/atfirstspark

The Sweet Gum Café smells like grease and coffee and something sweet that’s been sitting too long on a heated rack. 

Lark slides into the booth across from me, glancing around like she’s cataloging everything at once.

“This feels very… you,” she says.

“Should I be concerned?”

“You probably should be.”

I huff a quiet laugh. And just like that, the edge of the day softens. Something I’m afraid only Lark could do.

“Tell me something about yourself. Something I can’t find out by asking any person in this room.”

Her inquiry should have been expected, but panic rushes through me at the same time.

“The me you know now wasn’t always me,” I say.

Her brows rise in that way that asks me to continue without saying a single word.

“What changed?”

I hesitate, afraid to show her that part of myself, then answer anyway.

“I was the town goofball for a long time. In my large family, it was a way to guarantee I got some attention. Funny T-shirts, silly slogans, things like that. I just wanted to make people laugh.”

Lark smirks and says, “I can see that about you.”

“Yeah, then there was a fire at my parents’ farm,” I say. “Nothing big. But I was there.”

“And?”

“And I didn’t know what to do, like I was frozen on the spot.”

Her expression doesn’t shift into pity, so I keep talking.

“I watched everyone else move like it mattered,” I say. “Like they knew exactly how to fix it.”

“And you didn’t.”

“No.”

I exhale slowly.

“It was as if suddenly I felt like the current version of me was taking up space, taking away the air they needed to breathe. I didn’t like that version of me.”

Her gaze holds mine.

“So you became someone else.”

“Yeah. Someone my family and the town could be proud of.”

She doesn’t respond right away, just watches me, like she’s seeing something new. Something she didn’t expect. 

I shake my head slightly.

“What you do matters, Holt. You matter, always did.”

#smalltownromance #reneeharless #spicyromance @theauthor.agency