Chapter 9
NINE
WES
The PT clinic smelled like disinfectant and rubber mats. Bright overhead lights bounced off every metal surface, making the place feel more exposed than it already was.
Clara checked us in at the front desk like this was any other appointment and then drifted toward the seating area while I made my slow way to the back.
Gone were the tiny pajama shorts and soft T-shirt.
Clara had pulled on dark jeans that hugged her legs, a fitted sweater that did nothing to hide the curve of her waist, and a pair of ankle boots that added just enough height to make her look like she belonged in one of those lifestyle shoots I used to flip past in magazines.
Her hair was down now, falling in loose waves around her shoulders, and there was the faintest sheen on her lips that hadn’t been there earlier this morning.
“Wes.” My therapist, Jess, spotted me the second I came around the corner. Her dark ponytail swung as she crossed the room, tablet in hand. “Good to see you back.”
I grunted something that might have been hello.
Her eyes did a quick sweep from my face to my gait, a mental checklist I’d grown to recognize.
Weight-bearing: good.
Range of motion: needs improvement.
Attitude: surly.
“You brought company,” she said, nodding past my shoulder.
I didn’t have to turn to know she meant Clara.
“She’s just my ride,” I said. “It’s nothing.”
Jess’s mouth tipped into the slightest smirk. “Support systems aren’t nothing. They’re important.”
My skin crawled. “Can we just . . . do the thing?”
“Always so charming,” she muttered, but she stepped aside and waved me toward the parallel bars.
I glanced back as I moved into position. Clara had picked a chair against the far wall, near a rack of outdated magazines. She’d already sat, one leg crossed over the other, her phone in her hand.
She wasn’t staring at me.
For some reason, that annoyed me.
“Okay,” Jess said, bringing my focus back. “Let’s start with walking the bars. Nice and easy. I want to see where we’re at today.”
We were at “tired and cranky,” but I knew that wasn’t what she meant.
I wrapped my hands around the cool metal and took a breath. Step, shift, step. The prosthetic did what it was supposed to do, mostly, but every movement still felt like doing algebra with muscles that only knew basic math.
“Lengthen your stride a little on the left,” Jess said. “You’re babying it.”
“It’s trying to kill me,” I grunted.
“That’s why you’re here.”
We went through the motions. Walking drills. Balance work. A sadistic exercise with a foam pad that made my residual limb work twice as hard just to keep me upright. Sweat slid down my spine, my T-shirt sticking to my back.
Every few reps, my eyes flicked to Clara.
She was scrolling with her thumb, her expression neutral. At one point she set her phone aside and picked up a magazine, flipping through pages without really looking at them. She shifted in her chair, uncrossed and recrossed her legs.
Not once did I catch her openly watching me.
I wasn’t sure what pissed me off more—that she wasn’t hovering and fussing like everyone else, or that I kind of wanted her to look up and see that I wasn’t completely useless.
“Again,” Jess said when I stumbled. “You’re capable of better than that.”
I clenched my jaw and went again. Harder this time. Pushed through the burn in my hip, the electric zing of phantom pain. Focused on the bar in front of me instead of the woman pretending to be utterly uninterested in my progress.
“Better,” Jess murmured. “There he is.”
By the time she moved me over to the step platform, my leg shook with fatigue. She nudged the riser up a notch anyway.
“You’re not made of glass, Vaughn.”
“Tell that to everyone else,” I muttered.
She raised an eyebrow. “You letting them treat you like you’re going to break, or are you just assuming that’s what they’re thinking?”
I didn’t answer. I was too busy not falling on my ass.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Clara stand and walk to the water cooler, refill a paper cup, then go back to her seat. Her gaze skimmed past me once, quick as a blink, before she sat down again and pulled her knees up, the magazine balanced on her thighs.
It shouldn’t have mattered. I was here for me. For my leg. For the life I wasn’t sure I wanted but apparently hadn’t given up on, because I was voluntarily sweating under fluorescent lights while a woman half my size told me to lift my knee higher.
Still, every time I stuck a landing or didn’t wobble on a turn, a small, stupid part of me wondered whether Clara had seen it.
Jess finally released me with a clap on the shoulder and a “Same time next week, Vaughn,” like I hadn’t just done an hour in her personal torture chamber.
By the time I made it back to the front, my leg felt like it was made of wet cement. The world had that sharp, too-bright edge it got when I was past my limit and pretending I wasn’t.
With Clara at my side, the clinic doors whooshed open, and cold air knifed in. There was a short concrete ramp down to the parking lot, dusted with a fresh layer of snow that some half-assed plow job hadn’t quite cleared.
I paused at the top, jaw tight.
Clara stepped through ahead of me, letting the door close gently behind. She didn’t reach for me. Didn’t rush to block the ramp with her body like a guardrail. She just shifted a little closer to the side and bent her arm at the elbow, hand hanging loose between us. Not touching. Just . . . there.
An offer, not an order.
I told myself I didn’t need it and took one careful step down. The prosthetic hit a slick patch and skidded a fraction sideways, the kind of slide that would have sent me sprawling a month ago. My muscles seized.
Before I could overthink it, my hand shot out and caught her forearm.
Warm. Solid.
The world steadied.
We stood like that for half a breath—her arm under my grip, her body a grounded line next to mine—before I realized what I was doing and let go like she’d burned me.
“I’ve got it,” I muttered.
“I know.” Her tone stayed mild. She tucked her hands back into her coat pockets. “The car’s right there.”
It was easier, that was the worst part. The ramp, the snow, the whole thing. Having her arm within reach had made it easier, and I hated that so much I could feel my teeth grinding as I eased myself into the passenger seat.
I spent the ride home stewing in it.
Stewing in the fact that PT had gone better than the last time. Stewing in the fact that I’d pushed harder with her in the room. Stewing in the fact that borrowing her arm for two seconds had saved me from eating pavement.
Clara seemed to pick up on my mood, because she didn’t bother with small talk this time. The car filled with the low murmur of the heater and the thrum of tires over packed snow. Every so often she tapped the steering wheel in time with a song only she could hear.
By the time we pulled back into my driveway, the knot between my shoulders felt like it had its own pulse.
Inside, I went straight for the couch. The cushions welcomed me like an old, shitty friend. I dropped down with a grunt, leg screaming, hip throbbing in time with my heartbeat.
Clara didn’t hover. She just moved through the living room like a quiet storm.
She picked up the empty pill bottles and half-full ones, set the current prescriptions into a small ceramic dish she’d grabbed from the kitchen, and left the expired ones in a separate pile.
She gathered two clearly fossilized take-out containers, popped them open just enough to confirm their level of horror, then snapped them shut again and carried them to the trash.
She didn’t sigh. Didn’t make a face. Didn’t give me the “this isn’t healthy” talk I could practically recite from memory.
She just . . . triaged.
A glass appeared on the coffee table within reach—clean, full of water, the condensation already beading on the side. She didn’t say drink this. She didn’t say anything at all.
To her, it was probably just basic living. Clearing surfaces. Making sure I wouldn’t accidentally poison myself with bad lo mein.
To me, it felt like she was rearranging my failure. Putting it into neater piles so it looked a little less pathetic.
My house had been my cave. My evidence. The mess, the bottles, the couch groove—they all told the story of a guy who’d earned the right to be left alone. Watching her quietly dismantle that story one crusty container at a time made my skin itch.
“Clara,” I said, sharper than I meant to.
She glanced over from inside the kitchen, where she was rinsing out one of the containers. “Yeah?”
Before I could decide what I wanted to say, she disappeared down the hall. I heard her door open, then close.
Good. Fine. I could breathe better with her out of sight.
I let my head tip back against the couch and stared at the ceiling.
The house was quiet again, minus the hum of the fridge and the occasional creak of old wood.
I tried to let the familiar emptiness settle over me.
Tried to sink back into the numbness that had carried me through the last few months.
It didn’t take.
A few minutes later, her door opened again.
I looked up without meaning to.
She grabbed her coat off the hook and shrugged into it, fingers working the buttons.
“You heading out?” I asked, the words out before I could stop them.
“Yeah.” She didn’t look at me as she dug in her bag for her keys. “Meeting Kit in town.”
Kit. Right. It could’ve been true. Might have been a date. Might have been anything.
The fact that I cared at all sent a hot, ugly spike of something through my chest.
Jealousy.
There was no other name for it, and I hated it.
I had no right to it. She was my best friend’s little sister and, more importantly, a grown woman doing me a favor I’d made as unpleasant as possible.
She could go out with whomever she wanted.
Fill her nights with drinks and laughter and men who didn’t need a prosthetic to get up a flight of stairs.
Still, the idea of some guy I didn’t know being brought back here—to this house, this couch, this tiny, fragile routine we’d barely started—made my hackles rise.
“We need some rules,” I said.
Clara paused mid-zip, her brows lifting as she turned to face me fully. Hands went to her hips, a spark of defiance in her gray-blue eyes. “Fine,” she said. “Let’s hear them.”
Shit.
I hadn’t actually thought that far ahead. I just knew the sight of her all put together and ready to walk out of my front door had flipped some switch I hadn’t known was there.
Don’t say anything about the pajamas. Don’t say anything about the nipples. Don’t say anything that makes you sound like a possessive asshole.
“The first one,” I said slowly, “is no random guys in my house.”
Her head tilted. “Excuse me?”
“If you’re going to date, fine.” The word caught in my throat, bitter. “Just . . . not in my living room. Okay?”
For a beat, I thought she might fight me on it. Demand to know why I thought I had any say over her life. Call me out for being a hypocrite, or an idiot, or both.
Instead, she laughed.
Not a big, wild laugh. Just a low, disbelieving huff that did nothing to reassure me. She shook her head, amusement curving her mouth, and didn’t bother giving me an answer at all.
She just slipped her keys into her coat pocket, opened the door, and stepped out into the cold, leaving my rule hanging in the air like an unanswered question.
Somehow that made me even more pissed off.