Chapter 20 #3
Her orgasm built in waves he could feel under his hands and mouth — the tightening of her thighs, the clench of her body around his fingers, the way her breathing went silent for one suspended second before she shattered.
A full-body shudder, her hand pulling his hair hard enough to sting, a broken moan muffled by the arm she'd thrown over her face.
He worked her through it. Gentle now, easing her down, pressing soft kisses against her inner thigh while she caught her breath.
"Come here," she managed, her voice wrecked. "Now. I need you up here now."
He crawled back up her body, and Clara kissed him — messy, open-mouthed, tasting herself on his lips and not caring. Her hands found his face, his neck, slid down his chest to wrap around his cock. Jack groaned against her mouth, his hips jerking forward into her grip.
"Clara—"
"Nightstand," she breathed.
He reached for the drawer — the same drawer, the same box.
His hands were shaking enough that Clara took the condom from him, tore the wrapper with her teeth, and rolled it on herself.
Her fingers were sure and deliberate and the sensation of her hand stroking him through the motion made his vision blur.
"Now," she said. Not a request.
He settled between her thighs. Pressed forward slowly — a careful slide that drew a low moan from both of them. She was warm and tight around him and the feeling was so intense he had to stop, forehead against hers, breathing hard.
"God," he managed.
"Yeah." Her voice was barely there.
They stayed like that for a moment. Foreheads touching. Sharing breath. The morning light warm on their skin and the sound of the ocean through the window.
Then Clara moved her hips. A slow, deliberate roll that made them both gasp, and the stillness broke.
He moved with her. Long, unhurried strokes, building like a slow tide. Clara's legs wrapped around his hips, pulling him deeper, her nails dragging down his back in lines that burned in the best possible way.
"Right there," she breathed, and he shifted the angle, and felt her whole body clench around him — a ripple that drew a groan from somewhere deep in his chest.
He kept the pace even when every instinct wanted faster. Watched Clara's face — her eyes half-closed, lips parted, the flush climbing her neck and cheeks. He wanted to see every second of this. Wanted to memorize what Clara Hawkins looked like when she trusted someone enough to stop guarding.
"I love you," he said. The words fell out of him — rough, unplanned, not the careful first declaration from earlier but the raw, uncalculated version.
The one that surfaced when her body was tight around him and her face was open and undefended and he was so deep inside her that he couldn't tell where he ended and she began.
Clara's eyes opened. Met his. Green and bright and devastating.
"I love you too," she whispered. "Don't stop."
He didn't stop.
Her breathing quickened. Her hand found the back of his neck, fingers gripping, pulling his face down to hers.
She kissed him — messy, graceless, and the sound she made against his mouth was half moan, half something more vulnerable.
His hand slid between them, his thumb finding her clit, and her whole body jerked beneath him.
"Oh fuck — Jack—"
He kept the pressure steady, circling while he moved inside her, and felt the moment she tipped over — the sudden clench, the way her breath cut out entirely for one suspended heartbeat, then the shudder that rolled through her whole body.
She came with his name in her mouth and her nails buried in his shoulders, and the feeling of her pulsing around him — tight, rhythmic, relentless — pulled him over the edge with her.
It wasn't quiet this time. A groan that started in his chest and tore out of him as his hips stuttered, burying himself deep, his body shaking with the force of letting go.
Not just physically — all of it. The fear, the flight, the seven years of holding himself at arm's length from anything that could hurt him.
He let it go the way you let go of a ledge when you finally trust the ground to hold you.
Clara held him through it. Arms around his back, legs still wrapped around his hips, her breath hot against his neck. Holding him the way you hold something you almost lost and have decided to keep.
They lay there afterward. Breathing. Tangled in the quilt. Hearts hammering against each other's ribs.
He pulled her closer. Pressed his mouth to her hair. The morning light was filling the room now — golden, warm, catching the plaster cracks on the ceiling that he was going to fix. Not this week. Not because he was anxious. Because they needed fixing and he'd be here to do it.
"I called my mom," he said into her hair.
Clara was still for a moment. "When?"
"On the drive back. From the truck. She cried."
“That must’ve been hard to hear,” she murmured.
“Yeah, but I earned it.” He traced a line along Clara's shoulder. "She wants me to come home for Thanksgiving. Mom, not Josie. Well, Josie too. She wants to meet you."
Clara tipped her head to look at him. "Josie wants to meet me?"
"She called you 'the lighthouse woman' and said if I screwed this up she'd drive to Maine with both kids and the hamster."
"I think I'd like Josie."
“I’m certain you’d love Josie.”
Clara settled back against his chest. Her fingers found the scar on his ribs — traced it lightly, the way she'd done that first morning, mapping him with an artist's attention. Only this time she wasn't learning something new. She was confirming something she already knew was there.
"The railing still needs the third section," she said.
"I know. I'll finish it today."
"And the plaster cracks."
"Those too."
"And the window in the spare room sticks."
"I'll add it to the list."
Clara smiled against his chest. He felt it — the curve of her mouth against his skin, small and real and not quite ready to be a full smile yet but getting there.
"Welcome home, Callahan," she said.
Jack closed his eyes. Held her. Let the words land in the place where the fear lived and felt them settle there like mortar in a crack — not erasing the damage, not pretending it hadn't happened, but filling it. Making the structure sound.
"Yeah," he said. "Home."
Outside, the sun was up. The ocean kept its rhythm. The lighthouse stood the way it had stood for two hundred years — steady, patient, built to last.
And in the bedroom, on a quilt made by a grandmother who'd understood that the things worth keeping were the things you chose to tend, two people who were very bad at timing and very good at loving each other decided to stay.