Chapter 20 #2
The shift caught him off guard. "What?"
"The agent. I said yes. To the graphic novel. To the representation. To all of it." Her chin lifted. Slight. Defiant. "I told her to use a real author photo. My face. Not the avatar."
Jack felt something expand in his chest. Not surprise — something deeper. Pride, maybe. Or the recognition that Clara had done the bravest possible thing while he was sitting in a motel room feeling sorry for himself.
"That's — Clara, that's incredible."
"I did it without you." Her voice was steady. Not cold. Just clear. "I need you to know that. I didn't do it because you left or because you came back or because I was trying to prove something. I did it because it was mine to do. My decision. My work. My face."
"I know."
"And I need you to know that I meant what I said. Before you left. I'm not going to make myself small for someone who can't choose me. I'm not going to rearrange my life around someone else's fear. I did that for four years and it almost killed me."
"I know that too."
"So if you're here — if you're really here, and not just here until the next anniversary or the next phone call or the next time the fear gets loud — then I need you to be here. All the way. Not with one foot out the door. Not with the bag packed in your head."
"The bag's in the closet," Jack said.
Clara blinked.
"I unpacked. Before I started on the railing. Put everything back." He held her gaze. "The bag's empty and it's in the closet behind your winter coat, and if I have anything to say about it, that's where it's staying."
She stared at him. He watched it land — watched her gaze go to the closet door, then back to him, then to the truck parked outside the window, then back to him again.
The man who kept one bag mentally packed at all times.
Who'd measured his life by how quickly he could leave.
Who'd built exits into every room he'd ever entered.
The bag was in the closet.
"You bought a truck," she said. Quietly.
"I bought a truck."
"You hate owning things."
"I know."
"Trucks need oil changes. And insurance. And a place to park."
"I'm aware."
Something cracked in her expression. Not broke — cracked. The way ice cracks in spring. Not all at once, not dramatically, just a shift in the structure that lets the warmth underneath start seeping through.
"If you leave again," she said, "I will not come get you. I will not drive to Belfast. I will not chase you."
"I know."
"And I will let Maeve make good on her threat."
"The body-disposal one?"
"That's the one."
"Understood."
Clara stood there, arms still crossed, hair still wild, still wearing his flannel, still barefoot on the cold stone of the gallery.
The morning light was catching her now — copper and gold, the same way it caught her every morning, the same way it would catch her tomorrow and the day after that if he was lucky enough to be here to see it.
She uncrossed her arms.
That was it. Not a grand gesture. Not a tearful embrace. Just Clara Hawkins uncrossing her arms — lowering the barrier she'd been holding between them, one small, deliberate act of trust from a woman who'd earned the right to keep her walls up forever.
Jack stepped forward. Slowly. Giving her time to change her mind, to recross, to tell him to stop. She didn't.
He put his hands on her face. Gently. Sawdust and cable grease and all. She let him.
"Hi," he said.
"Hi."
He kissed her.
This was the kiss of a man who had walked away and come back and understood the difference between the two. Clara's hands found his shirt — gripped the fabric, then relaxed, then gripped again, like she was arguing with herself about how much to let him in.
She let him in.
Her arms went around his neck. His went around her waist. They stood on the gallery in the early morning light with the ocean below and the railing half-finished beside them and kissed until the coffee went cold in the blue mug on the railing.
They made it to the bedroom this time.
Clara clasped her hand in his, leading him through the main room past her drafting table — the panel of Marina sailing toward the storm still pinned under the lamp — past the kitchen where two mugs sat on the shelf like a pair, down the short hallway to the bedroom where the quilt was rumpled and the plaster cracks made their familiar map on the ceiling.
Clara turned to face him. Still in his flannel, the one that was too big for her, the sleeves rolled to her elbows. She looked up at him with an expression he'd never seen before — not guarded, not unguarded. Something between the two. A woman deciding, in real time, how much to risk.
"I need a second," she said.
"Take as many as you want."
She breathed. Closed her eyes. Opened them.
"Okay," she said. "I'm good."
Jack kissed her again. Slower now. His hands found the buttons of the flannel — his flannel, on her body, the intimacy of that almost undoing him — and unfastened them one at a time.
The first button revealed the hollow of her throat.
The second, the faint freckles across her chest. The third, the soft curve of her breasts, bare underneath.
She hadn't been wearing anything under his shirt.
That knowledge hit him low and hot, and his fingers stalled on the fourth button.
"You okay there?" Clara murmured, a ghost of a smile on her mouth.
"Just — having a moment."
"Take as many as you want."
He exhaled a laugh against her collarbone and finished the buttons.
The flannel fell open, and he pushed it off her shoulders, letting it pool on the floor around her feet.
Clara's fingers worked his t-shirt up, her palms skating over his stomach and chest as she pulled it over his head.
The touch of her hands on his bare skin — warm, deliberate — sent heat spreading down his spine and pooling low in his gut.
His jeans went next. Clara's fingers found the button, the zipper, and Jack stepped out of them while his hands traced the curve of her waist, thumbs hooking into the waistband of her underwear.
He dragged them down slowly, his knuckles grazing the outside of her thighs, her calves.
She stepped free, steadying herself with a hand on his shoulder.
When they were bare, standing in the morning light with nothing between them, Jack traced the freckles on Clara's shoulder. A slow line, connecting dots. The same thing she'd done to him that first morning after — her fingers mapping his scar, his sternum, the lines of his chest.
"Like what you see?" Clara murmured.
"Yeah." More than she knew. "Get in bed."
"Bossy."
"Only when I know what I want."
She got in bed.
He followed her down onto the quilt — her grandmother's quilt, the one that had covered them through every version of this — and settled over her, weight braced on his forearms. Clara's thighs parted to make room for him, and the press of skin against skin — his chest against hers, his hips cradled in the V of her legs — drew a shudder from both of them.
Four days. It had only been four days, but his body was reacting like it had been months, every nerve ending tuned to the warmth of her beneath him.
He kissed Clara's throat. Her collarbone. The hollow between her breasts. Slow, deliberate. Clara's fingers threaded into his hair, tightening when his mouth found her breast — a slow, open kiss that made her arch up into him, her breath catching on a sound she didn't bother to hide.
"Jack—"
He drew her nipple between his lips. Gentle at first, then firmer when her hips rolled against him, the friction of her body against his cock sending a sharp pulse of want through him that made his arms shake.
He could feel her — warm and slick against his stomach — and it took everything he had to keep the pace slow instead of giving in to the instinct to grind against her.
He moved lower. Kissed the underside of her breast. The soft skin below her ribs. The dip of her navel. Clara's breathing changed — quicker, shallower — and her hand stayed in his hair, not guiding, just holding on.
Clara’s low moan created electric sparks in every nerve ending. He pressed his mouth to her hip bone. Looked up at her. “God, I missed the taste of you.”
Bit her lower lip on a shy smile and let her knees fall open.
Jack settled between her thighs and kissed the sensitive skin along the inside of her leg.
Clara twitched, her fingers tightening in his hair.
He took his time — mapping the territory he'd learned over weeks of paying attention, reading her responses the way he read grain in wood.
Slow kisses tracking higher. The graze of his stubble against her thigh drawing a sound that went straight through him.
When his mouth finally found her, Clara's hips lifted off the mattress and her hand fisted in the quilt.
"Oh — God—"
He went slow. Long, deliberate strokes of his tongue, learning her rhythm again, finding the places that made her gasp and the ones that made her whole body tense.
He'd always loved this — the way Clara came undone under his mouth, the way her composure cracked and the woman underneath emerged, unfiltered and raw and trusting him with the most vulnerable version of herself.
Her thighs were trembling. Her breathing had gone ragged, punctuated by small, desperate sounds that she'd be embarrassed about later and that he would never, ever get tired of hearing.
He slid one hand up her thigh, then pressed two fingers inside her, curling them forward while his tongue kept its steady rhythm.
Clara's back arched off the bed. "Jack — right there, don't — don't change anything—"
He didn't change anything.