Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
WES
The house felt wrong the second Clara walked away.
I stood there in silence, snow melting in small, dark circles on the mat, breathing like I’d just run a mile instead of walked across the yard. Frigid air still clung to my clothes. My lungs burned in that sharp, clean way from laughing too hard in the cold.
My lower lip was tender, skin stretched tight, like it remembered the exact shape of hers and was insulted we’d stopped. Every time I swallowed, I tasted winter air and Clara Darling, the faint ghost of her breath and the mint on her tongue.
My dick hadn’t gotten the memo that we were friends now either. It sat there at half-mast in my pants, heavy and stubborn, throbbing in time with the mental highlight reel my brain insisted on playing.
Her weight settling on top of me.
Her fingers in my coat.
The way she’d whimpered when I dragged her closer, like she’d been waiting for me to lose control.
It was adrenaline. A one-off. Roommates. Friends.
I repeated the words in my head like a script I’d been handed and told to memorize.
Terrible idea. Adrenaline. Roommates. Friends.
My body’s answer was simple and obscene.
Let’s do it again.
I huffed out a frustrated breath, dragging a hand over my face, and turned toward the kitchen like movement alone could burn it off.
Evidence of her was everywhere.
Her wet boot prints tracked across the tile—small, messy, toes pointed a little inward at the doorway where she’d paused.
A single wavy hair clung to the shoulder of my coat, catching the light when I shifted.
Her knitting shit still occupied the armchair—yarn a tangled, angry ball, needles stabbed through it like she’d tried to pin it into submission and walked away mid-fight.
I checked the clock on the stove—PT in forty minutes.
For weeks, maybe months now, the idea of leaving the house at all had been a fight. Today, the thought of staying in it—with Clara upstairs, flushed from sledding and still tasting like the best part of my life—felt like the real danger.
I needed some distance. Neutral ground. Fluorescent lights and ugly rubber flooring and someone telling me what to do with my traitorous body.
I shrugged the rest of the way into my coat, fingers clumsy on the zipper.
I was tired, but my leg felt good—too good.
The residual ache was low, manageable, more of a hum than a scream.
My balance still buzzed with the memory of the hill, the way the sled had carried me and my body had remembered how to trust movement instead of bracing for impact.
She’d done that. Clara had shoved me down a hill and kissed me like it was the most natural thing in the world.
The thought made my chest tighten and my cock twitch, which was exactly why I needed to get the hell out of here.
I jammed my keys into my pocket and moved toward the stairs, my prosthetic ticking faintly against the hardwood. Halfway there I hesitated, my hand braced on the newel post.
I could just leave.
She’d figure it out when she heard the truck. Less conversation. Less room to say something I couldn’t take back. I shook my head. That was a coward’s move and exactly the kind of thing that would put that kicked-puppy look in her eyes the next time she saw me.
Adrenaline. One-off. Roommates. Friends.
Friends didn’t sneak out like teenagers after getting caught.
My jaw flexed. I tilted my head up toward the second floor.
“Clara?” My voice boomed up the staircase.
There was a beat of silence, then the thud of hurried footsteps. Her door opened, hinges soft. “Yeah?” she called back, closer now.
She appeared at the top of the stairs a moment later, one hand on the railing, hair pulled into a ponytail that was already working pieces free. Her cheeks were still pink from the cold. Her mouth looked a little swollen, like mine.
My stomach dropped straight through the floor.
Focus.
“I’ve got PT,” I said, clearing my throat. “I’m gonna head out.”
A small line formed between her brows. “Oh.” She came down two steps, socked feet careful on the wood. “Let me grab my shoes. I can—”
“I’ve got it,” I cut in, faster than I meant to. Her eyes flicked up, surprised. I forced my shoulders into a shrug that felt like it belonged to someone else. “They’ve got parallel bars and ugly carpet. I think I can manage the parking lot.”
The joke landed flat between us.
Clara paused on the stair, fingers tightening around the banister. The shift in her face was tiny—just the barest dimming of something bright, a shadow that crossed her eyes before she caught it and smoothed it away.
“Oh,” she said again, lighter this time. “Sure. Yeah. Of course.”
She tried for a smile and it almost worked.
Guilt punched me square in the chest.
She was reading it exactly the way I’d earned—the guy who’d kissed her like a starving man, then agreed it was a bad idea, then made sure he didn’t have to be trapped in a car with her.
Self-preservation tasted an awful lot like cowardice.
I hooked my fingers tighter around my keys so I wouldn’t reach for her. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours,” I said. “Try not to strangle the yarn while I’m gone.”
Her mouth twitched, a flicker of real amusement slipping through. “No promises.”
For half a second we just looked at each other—her on the stairs, me at the bottom, a whole house and one very stupid rule between us.
Roommates. Friends.
I turned before I could wreck it any more than I already had.
The front door clicked shut behind me, the cold outside hitting my face like a reprimand, and I walked to the truck, telling myself distance was the right call.
My body throbbed with a different opinion all the way down the driveway.
The drive into town was only fifteen minutes, but it felt like an hour.
My hand sat at ten and two on the steering wheel, knuckles pale, jaw locked so tight my molars ached. The heater hummed, blowing warm air at my face. Outside, the world was all white and gray—plowed banks along the road, bare trees, the occasional smear of lake effect hanging low over the fields.
Inside my head, it was Clara.
Clara on the hill, cheeks flushed, laugh breaking open the air.
Clara in my lap, snow in her hair, mouth hot and eager on mine.
The soft, desperate little sound she’d made when I dragged her down against me, the way her whole body had gone pliant and hungry at the same time. The snap of control I’d felt when she opened for me like she’d been waiting.
My dick had not mellowed in the intervening drive time.
It had settled into a steady, sullen throb that made every bump in the road a reminder. The memory played on a loop, high definition and unhelpful—her taste, her fingers in my coat, the exact grind of her hips when she’d tried to get closer.
I adjusted myself once, muttering a curse, and focused on the double yellow lines.
Absolutely not.
There was wanting, and then there was jerking off to your best friend’s sister, then having to look her in the eye over coffee and pretend you hadn’t. I’d already checked off the first two, and I was barely holding the line on the third.
By the time I pulled into the PT lot, my shoulders were so tight it felt like my traps were welded to my neck. I killed the engine, sat there with my hands still clamped on the wheel, and took one slow breath.
Inside, the clinic smelled like disinfectant and a weird mix of lemon cleaner and burned beans.
Country radio murmured from a wall speaker.
Jess looked up from her tablet when I came in, purple sneakers, dark hair in a messy knot, eyebrows lifting in a way that said she was cataloging every inch of my posture already.
“Well, look who it is,” she said. “You’re early. Feeling ambitious or just sick of your own house?”
“Little column A, little column B,” I muttered, signing myself in.
She gave me a look that hit more than muscle and bones. “Good. Let’s take advantage before you remember you hate me.”
The routine was familiar by now. Parallel bars. Warm-up laps. Stretch, then strength. I moved through it the way I always did—mechanical at first, then a little looser once my body remembered it knew how.
Only today something was . . . different.
When Jess sent me toward the ramp—a gentle incline up to a platform, the kind of thing that had felt like Everest the first few weeks I’d been here—my stomach didn’t immediately seize.
“Same as last time,” she said, stepping back. “Up and down. Focus on the step-through. Don’t stare at your feet.”
I set my prosthetic on the ramp, weight shifting forward. That old spike of fear flashed, quick and automatic, like a faulty alarm.
Steep. Slippery. Lose your footing, and you eat shit in front of everyone.
Except it wasn’t steep. The rubber was tacky. My knee locked the way it was supposed to, the microprocessor in the joint doing its quiet, expensive job.
My body remembered the hill. The drop. The speed.
And the part where I hadn’t fallen.
I exhaled and took another step. Then another.
I pivoted carefully and came back down, focusing on the smooth roll of heel to toe, the way my weight transferred.
There was a small wobble near the bottom, a tiny hitch where old panic tried to claw its way back in, but my core caught it, the rest of my muscles stepping up and doing what they were supposed to do.
Jess’s voice came from my left. “Your balance and confidence are up across the board today. Whatever you’ve been doing?” she said, sounding annoyingly satisfied. “Keep doing it.”
Clara’s laugh exploded in my head. Her hand on my chest when she shoved me. The world dropping away. The sled flying. Her straddling me in the snow ten seconds later.
Yeah. About that.
“Guess I’m just . . . getting used to it.” My voice came out rough as I stepped off the ramp, flexing my foot to shake out the phantom fizz. “The leg’s having a good day.”
“Your leg,” she said, crossing her arms, “is doing exactly what you ask it to do when you trust it. That’s you, not the hardware.”