Chapter 24 Wes #2
“I’m a grown woman, Wes.” Her eyes flashed. “I know how sex works. I also know how not having it fucks with people’s heads. We could set parameters. Rules. No falling in love. No grand gestures. No getting weird if we’re in the same room as my family.”
The laugh that tore out of me was closer to a choke. “You think it’s that simple?”
She hesitated, just for a second, then lifted her chin. “I think you need a win. I think I can give you one. I think we’re both adults who are attracted to each other, and pretending we’re not is getting ridiculous.”
The honesty of it hit me harder than any tease she could have thrown.
She was right. She was wrong. She was everything in between.
No falling in love.
My gaze slid over her without my permission—the stubborn line of her jaw, the spark in her eyes, the mouth I already knew tasted like cinnamon and trouble when I let myself have it. My chest ached, a deep, slow throb that had nothing to do with lust.
“You’re asking me,” I said quietly, “to take the one person in this town I have absolutely no business touching and make her the solution to every nightmare my brain has about my body.”
Her voice softened. “I’m asking you to let me help you remember you’re still you.”
Something in my chest cracked.
Phantom pain flared low and mean, the nerves in my thigh spitting static into nothing. My hand twitched against my knee. Panic flickered at the edges—images of losing balance, of my leg giving out mid-thrust, of lying there humiliated, of her seeing all of it, not the fantasy but the failure.
My dick did not care about any of that. It was already at full attention, heavy and aching against my zipper, screaming its own answer.
“Wes,” she said, barely above a whisper now. “Say something.”
I looked at her. Really looked.
Flushed from cold and dancing, hair a little wild, vulnerability written in the tight set of her mouth. Every inch of her alive, right here in my living room, offering herself up like she didn’t know what that did to me.
My tongue felt thick. My thoughts tangled on themselves.
Yes burned on the back of my teeth.
No sat there, too, heavy with every reason I didn’t deserve this.
The book slid out of my hand and thudded softly onto the cushion beside me.
I still hadn’t answered.
“No.”
The word scraped out of me, heavy and rough. Her face flickered, like someone had cut the power for half a second.
“I mean—” My throat worked, useless. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
There it was. Clean. Cowardly.
She went very still.
For one bare heartbeat everything she was feeling showed—hope cracking right down the middle, confusion rushing in behind it. Then her features rearranged themselves with brutal efficiency, expression smoothing out like she’d ironed it flat.
“Right.” She nodded once, eyes dropping to somewhere over my shoulder. “Obviously. It was just an idea.”
Her hand shoved in her pocket, then came out again like she needed something to do with her hands. A thin little smile tugged at her mouth, all edges and no heat.
“Forget I said anything,” she added, voice going bright in a way that made my chest hurt. “Blame the cider.”
I hated that I could hear the crack under the joke.
“Clara—” I started, reaching for something I couldn’t even name.
She was already pulling back, putting space between us one careful step at a time. “It’s fine, Wes,” she said, not quite looking at me. “Seriously. I’m going to go wash the bar off me and try not to die of humiliation.”
The laugh she tacked on was weightless and wrong.
She turned toward the stairs. The sway of her hair, the line of her shoulders, the stiff set of her spine—all of it pulled away from me. At the bottom step, she paused just long enough to toss “Good night, Wes” over her shoulder, like it cost her nothing.
“Good night,” I managed.
Her feet thudded softly on the stairs, that familiar rhythm climbing higher, then fading. A door clicked shut down the hall, quiet as a pin falling.
The silence that rushed in after her was vicious.
My body still ached with want, cock hard and heavy, skin buzzing with the memory of her pressed against me in the snow and again when we danced. Every cell I owned was screaming that I had just told the one woman I actually wanted that I did not want her.
Regret hit so fast I almost swayed.
You fucking idiot.
The words echoed in my skull, sharp and accurate. She had offered me trust and heat and a way back into a part of myself I missed so much it made me mean. I had thrown up a wall and told her no because the alternative scared the shit out of me.
Relief slid under the regret like oil—thin, ugly, and immediate. No pressure. No test I could fail. No chance of her watching my leg buckle or my body short-circuit and realizing I was every worst-case scenario I already believed about myself.
Shame rose right on its heels.
She had heard exactly what I had not meant to say: not I am scared, not I do not deserve you, not your brother trusts me with you and I am already hanging on by a thread.
Just no.
No to her. No to the plan. No to the possibility that any of this could be something other than pain.
Upstairs, the pipes creaked as water started in the bathroom. The sound crawled over my skin, a reminder that she was up there, stripping off that bar air, cheeks probably still pink from dancing, washing away a night I had just managed to make worse.
My hand clenched on the couch cushion until my knuckles ached.
Every part of me felt wrong.
Silence pressed in on me from all sides.
My pulse still hammered from the conversation, too fast and uneven, like my body was trying to outrun the words I’d already said.
No.
The look on her face replayed, over and over, like a bad highlight reel. That tiny flinch. The way her eyes had gone bright and flat at the same time. The brittle joke she’d wrapped around herself like armor because I’d been too much of a coward to wrap anything else around her.
With a shake of my head, I gripped the banister and hauled myself up the stairs without another thought. Her door was halfway down the hall, light leaking in a thin line at the bottom.
The shower was off and her room had gone quiet.
I could hear the faintest sounds from inside—drawers shifting, the soft drag of feet on the floor.
My brain supplied an image I had no business entertaining: Clara wrapped in nothing but a towel, cheeks pink from hot water, hair damp and curling at the ends, lips still wet and waiting.
Heat punched low in my gut, sharp enough to tighten my grip on the jamb as I stopped in front of her door.
This was a bad idea. All of it. I was about to knock on the door of my best friend’s little sister, the woman living in my house, the woman I had turned down three minutes ago while my entire body screamed yes.
I had no speech prepared, no neat, grown-up explanation. Just the bone-deep knowledge that letting her go to sleep believing she’d embarrassed herself alone was not an option I could live with.
My hand lifted and my knuckles met wood in two hard knocks, the sound echoing down the narrow hallway.
“Clara,” I said, voice rough, closer to a growl than anything reasonable.
My fist settled against the door, every nerve strung tight.
“Clara, open the door.”