Chapter 11
ELEVEN
CLARA
When I stepped inside, the house was warm and dim, the late afternoon already starting to bleed into evening. I toed off my boots by the door and listened.
The TV was on low in the living room—some sports channel, the soft murmur of commentators drifting down the hall—but Wes didn’t say anything, and I didn’t call out. We were still in that weird phase where every interaction felt like opening a door you weren’t sure you had permission to touch.
I hung my coat on the hook and headed for the kitchen, refusing to look in his direction.
The fridge hummed quietly, the same old magnet from the hardware store clinging to its side like it had been there since the dawn of time.
The counters were less chaotic than when I’d first arrived, but only because I’d taken a pass through that morning while he pretended not to notice.
No random guys in my house.
The memory of his voice—tight, annoyed, and a little too pointed—made something in me flare. Not hurt, exactly.
More like . . . challenge accepted.
Kit’s words from earlier echoed in my head: Make him mad. Maybe he needs to be mad more than he needs to be sad.
“Okay, landlord,” I muttered under my breath. “Let’s play.”
I rummaged in the junk drawer until I found a pad of legal paper, its sheets a sickly shade of yellow. There was a thick black marker rolling around in there, too, probably from a jobsite. I snagged both and slapped the pad down on the counter.
In big, looping letters, I wrote at the top:
HOUSE RULES
Underneath, I added:
Rule #1: No pity parties.
Rule #2: No sponge baths.
Rule #3: No random guys in the house (per the landlord).
Rule #4: Landlord must attend his own PT.
Rule #5: Tenant reserves the right to eat ice cream for dinner without judgment.
I capped the marker and leaned back to admire my work. It was ridiculous. Petty. Absolutely designed to get under his skin.
It also made me weirdly giddy.
This was my tiny way of reclaiming a little territory in a house that still didn’t feel like mine. If he got to lay down rules, so did I. If he was going to act like my presence was some huge imposition, then he could at least be forced to look at his own reflection in cheap neon stationery.
I peeled the page off the pad and walked over to the fridge. With a small, satisfying smack, I used the magnet to stick it dead center, right at eye level.
“Perfect,” I whispered, a smug little laugh slipping out. I could practically see his face when he spotted it—jaw tightening, eyes narrowing, that muscle in his cheek ticcing.
Affection tugged at the edges of my irritation. I didn’t want to humiliate him. I just wanted him to engage. To do something other than sink into the couch and disappear.
From the living room, the volume on the TV nudged up a notch, like he was flipping channels.
“Anytime now,” I told the note, giving it one last pat. “Go rile up the beast.”
I left the note to do its evil work and climbed the stairs toward my room, scrolling absently through my phone. Kit had already texted a string of dagger emojis and a GIF of someone rubbing their hands together, which made me snort.
“Operation Poke the Bear is underway,” I typed back, then tossed my phone onto the bed.
I dug in a drawer for pajamas and pulled out the softest sleep shorts I owned. Across the hall in the primary bedroom, I could hear the shower kick on and the low rush of water through the walls.
Normal house sounds. Background noise.
I shimmied into my shorts and was halfway through tugging my T-shirt over my head when a sharp thud echoed through the quiet.
I froze.
For a heartbeat there was nothing—no curse, no follow-up noise, just the steady rush of water.
My stomach dropped.
He slipped. He hit his head. He’s bleeding out on the floor and he can’t get up.
The thought hit so fast it stole my air. Before I could talk myself out of it, I was in the hall, bare feet slapping against the wood. The door to Wes’s room was closed, soft light peeking out from the crack where it met the jamb.
I knocked hard on the wood. “Wes?” My voice came out too high. “You okay?”
Nothing. Just the faint sound of running water from the en suite bathroom.
Panic spiked. I pushed the door open and stepped into his room, the warm, humid air wrapped around me. The bathroom door was only half-shut, light peeking from the gaps. I crossed the room in three strides and knocked on the door, louder this time.
“Wes, I’m coming in, okay?” I waited a heartbeat for him to yell at me, but could only hear running water. My heart rate doubled. “Wes? If you don’t answer, I’m coming in.”
Still nothing.
I gripped the handle.
“Oh please,” I whispered, and shoved the door all the way open. “Don’t be dead.”
A wall of steam hit me first, fogging the mirror and blurring the edges of the tile. The shower was on full blast, water pattering against stone. Through the haze, the glass door was a fogged-up rectangle—and inside it, a very large, very naked man.
Wes was braced against the tile with one hand, the other arm bent, jaw tight, chest heaving.
He was standing, but only just, his weight clearly shifted to his good leg.
The residual limb on the other side was bare and stark, his skin an angry mix of pinks and whites.
Muscles trembled under the strain of holding himself steady.
For a split second my gaze dropped—taking in the solid line of his thigh, the dark hair at the base of his stomach, and, yes, the very real, very unmissable view of his dick, water and soap sliding over every inch of him.
“Oh my god—sorry!” I sucked in a breath and slapped a hand over my eyes, spinning so fast I nearly slipped. “I thought you fell. I heard—I thought—are you okay?”
Behind me, there was a wet scrape and the squeak of skin against glass as he shifted, trying to cover himself with absolutely nowhere to go.
“Jesus, Clara,” he snapped, his voice rough and way too close. “Ever heard of knocking?”
“I did knock!” My heart was pounding so hard it felt like it might punch right through my ribs. “Twice! You didn’t answer. I thought you cracked your skull open or something.”
His breathing stayed uneven, like maybe he had slipped a little, and maybe it had scared him too.
“I’m fine,” he snapped. “Get out!”
I kept my face turned toward the steamed-up mirror, eyes pinned forward, but my peripheral vision was apparently an asshole, because I still caught another flash of him when I risked a tiny sideways glance.
This time, the shock of nakedness took a back seat to everything else. The way his hand splayed across the tile. The way his muscled shoulders glistened under the spray. The way the scarred limb ended abruptly. How his thigh quivered where it worked twice as hard to keep him upright.
Wes didn’t look fine. He looked like a man standing on the edge of a cliff, pretending the view didn’t terrify him.
“You don’t . . . look fine,” I said quietly, keeping my back to him.
That hit something raw.
“Well, I’m not dead,” he snapped. “So congratulations, the wellness check worked. Now get the fuck out.”
The bite in his tone should have pissed me off. It did, a little. But under the anger, all I heard was humiliation.
“Fine.” My cheeks burned so hot I was amazed the steam didn’t sizzle. “Next time I’ll let you bleed out, then,” I muttered, even though we both knew I wouldn’t.
I backed out of the bathroom, fumbling for the handle without turning around, and pulled the door shut behind me. My pulse was still racing when I crossed back through his bedroom and out into the cooler hallway, slamming that door, too, for good measure.
Only when I was in my own room with the door firmly closed did I sag against it, pressing the heels of my hands to my flaming face.
Fantastic. Less than a week into our roommate experiment and I’d already seen my landlord’s dick.
And no matter how hard I tried to scrub the image from my brain, what stuck with me more was the look on his face—pain, stubbornness, and the kind of vulnerability that made my chest ache.
I slid down the back of my bedroom door until I hit the floor, knees bent, heart still thundering like I’d sprinted the length of the dunes.
I pressed my palms over my face and tried to breathe.
He was not just Hayes’s grumpy best friend anymore.
Not just the surly, former Delta Force operator who’d glared at me across bar tables and grocery aisles.
Now my brain had a full-color, high-definition image of him—scarred and solid and so very, very male—filed under Do Not Think About This Ever Again, which of course meant it was the only thing I could think about.
But it wasn’t just the naked part.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the way he’d been braced against the tile, muscles shaking, jaw locked. The way his hand had white-knuckled the wall like letting go wasn’t an option. The way that residual limb ended too soon, skin stretched and angry, working twice as hard to keep up.
The unfairness of it punched through me all over again.
That someone could go from running jobsites and creating beautiful homes to nearly wiping out in his own shower because the floor was slick and he was too stubborn to sit.
That a man who’d probably walked into firefights without flinching now had to plan his every step in a goddamn bathroom.
My mind replayed his body, but it lingered longer on the limb than on his dick. On the ugly-beautiful mix of what he’d survived and what it cost him every day. On the panic in my own chest at the idea of him going down and no one finding him in time.
Sorrow twisted through the attraction until I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. I’d barged in. I’d seen more than I was supposed to. I’d made an already humiliating moment worse, then snapped back at him like I hadn’t just walked straight into his worst nightmare.
And under all that, coiled tight and hot, was the part I really didn’t want to look at too closely: I’d liked what I saw.
Not the pain. Not the fear. But the rest of it.
The broad shoulders, the carved lines of muscle, the way his body still looked capable and strong even when he was off-balance. The way just being near him in that tiny, steam-drenched room had lit me up like a live wire.
I dropped my hands to my lap and stared at the wall, my pulse finally starting to slow.
Living with Wes Vaughn had already been complicated when he was just a grumpy landlord with a broken hero complex.
Now I’d seen exactly how stubborn he really was and exactly how dangerous he could be to my peace of mind.
Across the hall, his bedroom door opened and shut, and footsteps moved slowly back toward the stairs. I held my breath without meaning to, listening to the creak of the floorboards as he passed.
This was supposed to be temporary. A favor. A little cosmic karma cleanup.
Instead, it felt like I’d just stepped into the deep end without checking how far the bottom went.
And for the first time since I’d dragged my suitcases over his threshold, one thought cut through the noise, sharp and clear:
I am in way, way over my head.