Chapter 24 Wes
TWENTY-FOUR
WES
The living room was quiet enough that I could hear the heater hum. I was stretched out on the couch with the same book I’d been reading for an hour, my eyes sliding over sentences that refused to stick. Every time the clock flipped to a new minute, my gaze snagged there like it had a hook in it.
She was at the Lantern with half of Star Harbor, laughing at bad jokes and dancing on two good legs. I had considered texting Hayes, but the last thing I wanted to do was salivate over Clara while her brother watched me like a hawk.
One lie was hard enough to cover.
Besides, I’d already sent one idiotic text about how the dazzling was going, then sat there acting like I wasn’t checking my phone every other page.
So I kept pretending I was only awake because the couch was uncomfortable and the book was decent, not because the idea of her fumbling with the front lock alone in the dark made something low in my gut stay coiled and tight.
Headlights swept across the ceiling in a slow arc, painting the walls in pale blue. A car door slammed outside, muffled through the snow. My hand stilled on the page, my pulse kicking up as boots hit the front steps and the doorknob rattled.
The front door swung open on a rush of cold air and noise—the low thump of some distant bass still vibrating in her bones, the soft smack of her boots against the mat as she kicked snow off them.
“Shit,” Clara muttered under her breath, wobbling a little as she toed one boot free. The other followed with a damp squeak.
Kit’s headlights were already disappearing down the road through the front window, a streak of white fading into the dark.
My thumb sat in the crease of my book, holding the same page I’d been pretending to read for a solid fifteen minutes. The words blurred as she stepped into the living room.
Her cheeks were flushed, high and bright, from either dancing or the wind off the lake.
Maybe both. Her hair had gone a little wild, the waves looser now, and a few strands escaped to brush her jaw.
Her outfit looked just as good as when she’d left—those jeans that hugged her curves like they had a personal stake in it, the soft top that dipped at her collarbone, a faint shimmer at her mouth where she’d reapplied gloss at some point.
It should not have been legal for one person to look that good in my doorway.
“You’re still up?” she asked, one brow lifting as she leaned down to drop her keys into the bowl.
“I was finishing a chapter,” I lied, the book suddenly heavy in my hand.
She wrestled out of her coat, shoulders twisting, hair catching on the collar until she huffed and yanked it loose. Her smell hit me as she tossed her coat over the back of the armchair—bar air and winter, the faint salt of sweat under her perfume. My fingers tightened around the paperback.
Some asshole had put his hands on her.
It shouldn’t have bothered me. That was what people did at a bar—pressed close on sticky floors, slid palms down backs, leaned into each other when the band got loud.
Some faceless guy had been where my hands had been earlier, and even just thinking about it made a low, unfamiliar growl curl in my chest.
I had no claim. No right. No anything.
“So how was it?” I asked, aiming for neutral and landing somewhere closer to anger.
Her mouth curved as she walked farther into the room. “Loud. Sticky. Full of bad decisions in progress,” she said. “So, you know. The usual good time.”
She stopped near the end of the couch, her fingers tangled in the hem of her shirt. A little crease formed between her brows. She swallowed hard and planted both hands on her hips.
“Okay,” she said after a heartbeat, exhale coming out in a rush. “So . . . just hear me out before you tell me I’m insane.”
My shoulders went tight. “That’s . . . never a reassuring opener.”
Her laugh was quick and nervous. She took one more step toward me, close enough now that I could see the smudge of mascara at the corner of her eye, the way her pulse fluttered in her throat.
“You know how you keep acting like your life is over?” she said. “Like you don’t dance, you don’t go out, you don’t flirt, you definitely don’t do anything fun that involves another human body?”
“That’s a sweeping generalization,” I muttered as I rose.
“It’s also true.” Her eyes slid to meet mine. “You haven’t lost your body, Wes. You lost your mojo. There’s a difference.”
Heat climbed the back of my neck. “Jesus, Clara.”
“I’m serious,” she pressed on. “You keep acting like this . . .” Her hand gestured vaguely at my leg, my couch, my entire existence. “Means you have to retire from . . . all of that. From touching. From letting anyone touch you. From sex. Which is bullshit, by the way.”
Every word landed like a tap to a bruise I tried not to think about. My jaw clenched.
“What exactly are you proposing?” I asked, even though some desperate, half-starved part of me already knew.
Her lips parted, tongue darting out to wet the bottom one. That tiny movement punched straight through my stomach.
“I’m proposing,” she said slowly, like she was picking her way across thin ice, “that you need . . . a safe space to figure out how your body works now. What feels good. What doesn’t. Where the limits are and where they aren’t.”
A hollow laugh scraped my throat. “Kind of hard to book lab time for that.”
Her chin lifted a fraction. “You don’t need a lab.” She swallowed as her hands opened. “You have me.”
The room tilted, just a hair.
I frowned. “What?”
She took another step closer, until the toe of her foot bumped the edge of the rug. Her scent wrapped around me, skin washed clean with cold air, the softer scent underneath that was just her.
“I mean,” she rushed on, words tumbling faster now, “I’m here. I’m not a stranger. You trust me. Mostly.” Her mouth hitched. “We’re already . . . doing this weird roommate emotional PT thing. It wouldn’t be that big of a stretch to . . . expand the syllabus.”
“Syllabus,” I repeated, because my brain had temporarily forgotten what language was.
“It’s like PT,” she said, eyes bright, hands flying as she talked. “Except way more fun. We figure out what positions work with your leg, which ones don’t, how you like to move now, what feels good, what you need. No pressure. No audience. No expectations you have to live up to except your own.”
My cock hardened so fast it hurt.
Images slammed into me, sharp and visceral—Clara straddling my lap on this couch, fingers in my hair, my hands gripping her thighs while she rode me.
Another of her knees bracketing my hips in that damn bed upstairs I’d barely started sleeping in again.
Clara bent over the kitchen counter, cheek pressed to the cool surface, my hand fisted in her hair as I sank into her from behind, testing how deep I could go.
I shifted, praying she couldn’t see how obvious my physical reaction was.
“Clara,” I said, voice rough, but she was already barreling ahead, nerves sharpening her words.
“You’d get to practice,” she said, cheeks flushing deeper now.
“Without worrying you’re going to disappoint somebody or freak them out or have to explain every single thing in your head.
You don’t have to fake confidence for me.
You don’t have to pretend you’re fine with angles or speed or whatever else your brain is screaming about. We just . . . figure it out together.”
Her throat worked on a swallow. For a second the bravado slipped and I could see the nerves trembling under it.
“It’s like friends,” she finished quietly, mouth curving into a grin. “Friends with some really good benefits.”
Silence stretched between us, thick as steam.
Her eyes stayed on my face, searching, and she braced. Like she fully expected me to laugh or tell her she’d lost her mind, like she was already rehearsing how to pretend it didn’t matter when I did.
My body had its own opinion.
Heat poured through me, low and heavy, pooling where I could do exactly nothing about it except breathe and try not to shift too much.
Every place I’d touched her earlier in the snow felt vivid again—the curve of her ass under my hands, the soft drag of her tongue against mine, the way she’d moaned into my mouth when I’d pulled her down harder.
She was offering me all of that on purpose this time. No accident. No adrenaline excuse. No we tripped and fell into a kiss.
“Fuck,” I breathed, the word leaving me before I could stop it.
Her fingers laced. “Is that a . . . good fuck or a bad fuck?”
My laugh came out broken. “Complicated.”
My best friend’s words dug in under my ribs like barbs. He trusted me. Hell, he looked at me like I was still the guy he’d grown up with, not the half-built version limping around my own life.
“You want me to use you as . . . practice?” I slowly dragged my gaze back to her, because looking away felt dangerous for different reasons. “To test-drive my fucked-up sex life on you?”
Her nose scrunched. “That is truly the worst phrasing I have ever heard.”
“That’s what you said,” I shot back, even though we both knew it wasn’t.
Not exactly.
“I said,” she corrected, voice firming, “that you deserve to know your body isn’t broken.
That you’re allowed to want things. That a bad thing happened to you, and it does not get to take this too.
” Her jaw set. “If I can help you remember what it feels like to want something without panicking, then . . . yeah. I want to do that.”
My heart hammered so hard it hurt. My eyes narrowed. “What’s in it for you?”
Her eyes flicked to my rock-hard dick and up again as she bit back a smile. “I think we both know the answer to that.”
Cocky bravado filled my chest. At least that small part of me wasn’t completely dead. I cleared my throat. “You realize this isn’t going to be tidy. This doesn’t stay in some neat ‘lesson’ box once we cross that line.”