Chapter 7 Clara
SEVEN
CLARA
Wes stared at me with heavy brows as my heart thudded in my chest. With my shoulders squared, I didn’t move. If it was a battle of wills, Wes had never seen Clara Darling’s stubborn streak.
Finally, his shoulders dropped and he exhaled. “Fine.”
A giddy zip ripped through me.
Holy shit. He said yes.
My offer to help Wes had come from a genuine place. Anyone could see that he was suffering and too stubborn for his own good. All he needed was a little help getting on his feet—metaphorically, of course—and he’d be back to his old charming self.
It made sense to me why he wouldn’t want strange nurses living at his house. Not only was he trying to get his life back, but walking on eggshells around a stranger in your own home had to have been maddening.
Sure, I was only one degree away from being a stranger, but I’d technically known Wes all my life.
We were friends . . . sort of.
He gripped the door and stepped aside to make room for me, leaving a wedge of cold air slicing between us. We just . . . stood there. Me with my overstuffed luggage and manic smile, him with his exhausted eyes and What the hell have I done? energy.
The silence made me itchy. “So . . . Do I sign a lease or just pay you in homemade dinners and witty banter?”
One of his brows lifted up. “No lease. No banter.” His voice was flat and rough around the edges. “Just . . . come in.”
It wasn’t exactly the charmed, warm welcome I was used to. I told myself not to take it personally, but I still felt the sting anyway.
I reached for the first suitcase and dragged it across the threshold. He had moved to close the door when I stopped him with a hand to the wood.
“Hang on. There are a few more.” Heat crept up my cheeks as I scrambled back out to grab the other two overstuffed suitcases and muscled them into his house. By the time I got the third one over the lip of the doorway, I was breathless and sweating in my coat.
Wes’s eyes narrowed at how the zippers of my luggage bulged and strained to stay closed. “You said temporary, right?”
I blew a stray piece of hair out of my face with a huff. “Yeah. Of course.”
His wary gaze stayed locked on my overpacked suitcases.
“Oh . . . that.” A nervous chuckle bubbled up.
“A lot of this is for work. I model wedding dresses. There are only a few of my favorites here. The rest are still at my fiancé—ex-fiancé’s apartment.
I haven’t gotten them yet but couldn’t leave without these .
. . I’m going to style a few to add to my portfolio and—”
Wes stood silent, his eyebrows dangerously close to his hairline.
“I’m rambling. I’m sorry.” A lump lodged in my throat.
This was supposed to be a hypothetical offer. A “sure, I’ll help” that never made it off the dining room table. Now my suitcases were in his foyer, and my stomach was doing Olympic-level backflips.
I cleared my throat. “Where can I put these?”
Wes shook his head. “Come on,” he said, the words coming out more like a sigh than an invitation.
I wrapped my fingers around the suitcase handles and followed him.
The door clicked shut behind us, and the quiet hit me first. Star Harbor’s main drag was only a few miles away, but out here, on the outskirts of town, it felt like we were in our own little world.
No traffic, no chatter, just the faint sigh of wind through trees and the soft creak of his house settling.
I’d seen the place from the road, but stepping inside was something else entirely.
The living room opened right up into the kitchen, all warm wood and clean lines.
Vaulted ceilings with exposed beams drew my eyes up, and built-in shelves flanked a stone fireplace like something out of a magazine.
The kind where the family wears coordinated sweaters and drinks cocoa without spilling.
Except instead of cocoa there were empty Chinese take-out containers, a couple of crumpled napkins, and what might once have been a sock now fossilized under the coffee table.
Beyond the living room, big windows lined the back wall.
Through them, I caught a glimpse of the pine forest hugging the edge of his property, dark green against the winter sky.
There was a narrow break between the trees—a sandy, worn path I would’ve bet money led straight to the dunes and down to the beach.
Of course his house backed up to a postcard.
My brain, ever the opportunist, immediately slapped a wedding over the top of the scene—white chairs lining the path, twinkle lights strung through the branches, a small wooden arch at the tree line, Lake Michigan glittering in the distance.
I could practically see the caption: Evergreen Dunes Elopement.
“Your house is . . .” I searched for the right word and landed somewhere between Architectural Digest and sad bachelor den. “Beautiful,” I settled on, because it was. Even under the mess.
Wes made a low sound that might have been a scoff. “It’s just a house.”
I took in the custom trim, the way the kitchen island was perfectly proportioned to the room, the little reading nook tucked under a window with built-in drawers beneath. This wasn’t just a house. This was someone’s dream. His dream.
I whispered under my breath, “No, it’s definitely not.”
You didn’t get details like that by accident.
I could see him in every choice—practical and solid, but with these flashes of softness he probably didn’t even realize he had.
The deep farmhouse sink. The way the outlets were perfectly placed, like he’d thought through how a person would actually live here.
The warm pendant lights over the island that made even the stacks of mail and abandoned coffee mugs look almost intentional.
It was gorgeous craftsmanship at war with clutter and neglect.
Kind of like the man standing in the middle of it, pretending not to notice.
As I dragged my suitcases farther in, I started to see the places where the house didn’t quite match the man living in it anymore.
There was a small lip where the tile met the hardwood leading into the hallway—nothing I would’ve clocked before, but suddenly it looked like a trip wire. The hallway in the back was narrow.
And the couch . . . sheesh.
The couch was clearly command central. Blankets piled at one end, a dent in the cushions exactly where his body would fit.
The coffee table was a graveyard of take-out containers, pill bottles, and half-tangled charging cords.
Everything he might need was within arm’s reach, like he’d built himself a little bunker and never bothered to come out.
This house was clearly designed for the old Wes—the one who could sprint up and down stairs and haul lumber without thinking. The space hadn’t gotten the memo that everything had changed.
A sharp, surprising thread of protectiveness tugged in my chest. I’d never looked at a man’s house and thought, Okay, how do we make this less of an obstacle course for his life?
But I was thinking it now.
“Upstairs,” Wes said, breaking into my thoughts. He nodded toward the staircase at the back of the house and reached for the handle of the nearest suitcase.
He stopped at the base of the stairs, and something like fear swept across his face. It was gone almost as quickly as it came, replaced by that familiar, closed-off blankness.
Before I could offer to help, his hand wrapped around the suitcase handle. With his other, he gripped the banister and started up. The movement wasn’t smooth—it took effort, deliberate and careful—but he did it. One step, then another.
My heart lodged somewhere in my throat.
I hovered a few feet behind him with the other two suitcases, every instinct screaming at me to stay close in case he slipped, but not so close that I turned into another person smothering him. Hayes’s voice echoed in my head—He doesn’t want my help—and I forced myself to let Wes set the pace.
By the time we reached the top, I was panting and sweaty, my arms burning from hauling my wardrobe and emotional baggage up his stairs. Wes adjusted his stance like the climb had cost him more than he wanted me to see.
“There are three empty bedrooms,” he said, nodding down the short hallway. “You can take your pick.” His chin jerked toward the first open door. “This one is mine, but the rest are free.”
I peeked past his shoulder into the primary bedroom.
It was beautiful. A king-size bed centered against the far wall, flanked by matching nightstands. A big window with that same view of the pines and a sliver of sand path. An en suite bathroom beyond an open doorway, all sleek tile and glass.
And absolutely no sign that anyone actually lived there.
The bedspread was smooth and unwrinkled, the pillows perfectly fluffed. No kicked-off jeans on the floor, no boots by the door, no half-empty glass of water sweating on the nightstand.
Nothing.
It felt wrong that I was the one moving into the room next door while he was downstairs wearing grooves into his couch.
I swallowed, suddenly lightheaded.
“I, uh . . . I’ll take one of the guest rooms,” I said, my voice softer than I meant it to be. I tore my gaze away from the life he’d stopped claiming and forced a smile. “Wherever you want me.”
His jaw ticced at that, something unreadable flickering over his face. Then he turned and nodded toward a door across from the primary. “This one’s empty.”
The guest room Wes pointed to was as neutral as they came—soft gray walls, simple dresser, a bed made up in plain white sheets and a navy comforter. A single lonely hanger swung in the otherwise empty closet. No art on the walls, no rug, no personality. Just a room waiting for a story.
Apparently, for now, that story was mine.
I rolled one suitcase over the threshold and set it by the dresser. The other two waited in the hall, and so did Wes, his hand still braced on the handle of the one he’d carried up.
Hayes’s voice from dinner floated back to me. He’s refusing care. Missing appointments. Firing the last three live-in nurses . . . I’m just really worried about him.
Standing here, next to an empty room and an untouched primary suite, I finally understood why the care company didn’t want to send anyone else.
Wes wasn’t a broken faucet you could fix with the right wrench.
He was . . . complicated. Hurting. And I’d just volunteered to be in the front row for all of it.
A sliver of doubt slid under my rib cage. I was good with chaos—fashion shoots, late photographers, demanding designers. I knew how to step into a disaster and make it look intentional. This, though? This was someone’s actual life.
What if I wasn’t enough?
What if I made it worse?
I glanced back at Wes, and the way he was standing just slightly off-balance, like his body still wasn’t entirely his. Then I recognized the feeling creeping over me—the same one I always got on set when everything was teetering: that moment right before I took charge.
“Well,” I said, forcing some lightness into my voice, “I guess we should lay down some ground rules. I promise not to reorganize your entire life . . . on the first day.”
One corner of his mouth twitched. It wasn’t a full smile, but it was something. “That supposed to make me feel better?” he asked, dry as dust.
A tiny spark of satisfaction flared in my chest. “Also, for the record, there is absolutely a no-sponge-bath clause in my contract.”
This time, I got a low huff that might have been a laugh. It vanished almost as quickly as it came, but I caught it.
“Noted,” he said.
Wes stepped into the room without asking and lifted my second suitcase like it weighed nothing. Muscles flexed in his forearm, the movement automatic despite everything his body had been through. He set it down by the closet, then nodded toward the last one still in the hall.
“I’ll grab that one, and then I’ll get out of your hair,” he said. “You can . . . settle in.”
For half a second, something like amusement flickered over his face. It was gone almost as quickly as it came, but I saw it.
There he was—the man who used to give Hayes endless shit and flirt with half the women at the Lantern.
Buried, but not gone.
That tiny glimmer was enough to keep my feet planted instead of bolting down the stairs and pretending this had all been a very elaborate joke.
“Thanks, roommate,” I said softly.
He paused in the doorway, his shoulders going tight at the word. “Yeah,” he murmured, not quite looking at me. “Roommate.”
Then he was gone, his uneven footsteps retreating down the hall, the house swallowing him back up.
Silence rushed in behind him.
I sat on the edge of the bed and looked around at my new, featureless little kingdom. Luggage busting at the seams. Four blank walls. A closed door across the hall leading to a bedroom he refused to sleep in.
Scared wasn’t a strong enough word for what I felt.
I was scared of failing him. Scared of saying the wrong thing and watching him shut down even further. Scared that this was just another way I was putting my life on hold for someone else’s.
But there was something else too. Stubbornness. The same streak that had grabbed Kit’s hand and run out of a church in a wedding dress. The part of me that refused to let his house—or his life—feel this empty if I could help it.
I lay back on the too-perfect bed and stared at the ceiling. I’d moved in with my brother’s best friend. Maybe I was out of my mind. Or maybe—for once—I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
Somewhere downstairs, a floorboard creaked, and I pictured him settling onto that damn couch again.
“Okay, Wes Vaughn,” I whispered to the empty room. “Let’s see if we can get you back into your own life.”