Chapter 30
THIRTY
WES
Clara stepped out of the bathroom in one of my T-shirts, rubbing a towel through her damp hair.
The sight hit harder than anything that had happened in the last hour, and that included having her come apart in my lap.
The shirt hung halfway down her thighs, neck stretched just enough that one bare shoulder showed.
Her legs were pink from the shower, toes curling against the rug like she wasn’t sure where to stand.
She had wiped off her makeup, leaving nothing but freckles and flushed cheeks and those big doe eyes that had no business looking that soft in my room.
She hovered in the doorway, hand on the frame, like she was waiting for me to point her back down the hall. I was propped against the headboard, leg stretched out and waiting for her to finish.
I’d spent the time she was in the shower figuring out exactly how to say what I wanted. “You should stay.” I cleared my throat. “If you want.”
Her fingers tightened on the doorframe. Surprise flickered across her face, fast and sharp, followed by something that looked a lot like hope trying very hard not to be obvious.
“You sure?” she asked. It came out lighter than it had any right to. “You might wake up and regret voluntarily sharing a bed with a notorious blanket thief.”
The fact she needed to ask did something twisty to my insides.
“I’ll risk it,” I said as I pulled the comforter back. “Stay.”
She searched my face for another second, but crossed the room and climbed in on what could so easily become her side of the bed, careful of where my leg was, moving like she’d been doing this for years instead of minutes.
The mattress dipped under her weight, soothing in a way that scared the hell out of me.
She settled with her head on my shoulder, one arm draped across my stomach, her knee hooking gently over my thigh.
Her hair smelled like my shampoo, warm and clean, wrapping around me when she shifted.
I slid my arm around her automatically, my palm fitting in at the small of her back.
The move felt effortless and enormous all at once.
I let my hand drift in slow circles over her hip, fingers drawing patterns across her skin.
Contentment and terror ran neck and neck in my veins.
I had no idea what this was anymore, only that the idea of her getting up and walking down the hall suddenly felt like someone standing and leaving halfway through a sentence.
She shifted, tucking closer, and something bright caught the lamplight.
The engagement ring flashed against my chest, the diamond throwing little shards of light onto the sheets.
I went still.
There it was. The past, gleaming on her finger in my bed. A promise made to someone else, in another life, catching the light between us.
Her gaze followed mine.
She froze, then winced. “Right,” she muttered, voice too bright. “That.”
She pulled her hand back like it had burned her and tugged at the ring, twisting it off in one rough motion. It slid free, leaving a faint indentation on her skin. She held it between two fingers for a heartbeat, then huffed out a short, brittle laugh.
“I don’t even know why I’m still wearing it,” she said with a huff, aiming for casual and dismissive.
She reached blindly toward the nightstand, like she was ready to drop it in a drawer and pretend it had never existed.
“Hey,” I said quietly.
My fingers closed around her wrist before she could let it clatter away like pocket change. Her hand hovered between us, ring glinting in the lamp glow.
“I know why.” The words dragged out of a place I didn’t visit often. I curled her hand into my chest. “You’re mourning a life that doesn’t exist anymore.”
Her eyes snapped to mine.
Every shield she had went down. All the jokes, the deflections, the breezy bravado. Gone. What was left was a woman who looked like someone had yanked the floor out from under her and told her to make it look pretty.
Her throat worked. “I built my entire life around a lie,” she whispered.
“Not because I wanted Greg the way you’re supposed to want your future husband, but because it was a plan.
A direction. A way to be useful. To fix something for someone.
” Her mouth twisted. “Turns out you can’t build your life on a lie and expect it not to collapse. I feel so stupid.”
I eased the ring out of her fingers and set it gently on the nightstand, not in the drawer, not flung away. Just there. A fact. Something that had existed and ended.
“You lost a map,” I said. “Doesn’t mean you’re lost.”
She made a small, choked noise that might have been a laugh if there hadn’t been that much grief under it.
“Some days I feel pretty lost,” she whispered.
“Everybody else seems to have their lives at least directionally correct. Marriage, kids, jobs that make sense. I had . . . this whole thing drawn out in my head. Where I’d live an exciting career.
” Her fingers curled into me. “Now I’m back in my hometown, living in my brother’s best friend’s spare room, starting over. ”
My chest tightened.
She hummed. “I just can’t shake this ridiculous feeling that maybe I can do it on my own. Maybe I never needed him or his money in the first place.”
“It’s not ridiculous.” I slid my thumb over her knuckles, slow and steady. “And for the record,” I said, “your brother’s best friend’s spare room has been significantly improved by your presence.”
She let out a breath. “I just thought I had a plan.”
“I know what it’s like,” I said. “When your plans get shot to hell in one afternoon.”
The ceiling suddenly felt very close. I stared up at it anyway, because looking at her while I said this felt like too much and not enough at the same time.
“I thought I had everything figured out.” My jaw clenched. “Then I woke up in a hospital bed with half a leg and a brain that couldn’t make sense of anything.”
Her grip on me tightened.
“I gave up on myself,” I said, voice flattening on the edges of the words.
“Told myself I was ‘adjusting.’ What I was really doing was hiding. Let the couch downstairs become home base. I told myself it was because it was easier, closer to the door, better for the leg. Some nights that was true.” I swallowed. “Some nights it wasn’t.”
She went very still against me. “What do you mean?”
I drew in a breath and let it out slowly.
“I crashed on the couch because the idea of being up here made my chest lock up. It’s too far from exits.
Too far from help. Too many steps between me and getting out if something went wrong.
I didn’t trust my body not to betray me.
Leg fail, phantom pain hit, smoke alarm going off for some bullshit reason—whatever it was, my brain ran a highlight reel of me stuck up here like a turtle on its back. ”
Silence pressed in, thick and listening.
“I hated that feeling,” I admitted. “Hated that I could barely handle my own damn staircase. So I told myself the couch was more comfortable. Anything except saying out loud that the second floor of my own house felt like a trap.”
The words sat there, ugly and true.
Clara’s hand moved up, slow and sure, until her palm rested warm and flat over my heart.
“You’re not trapped up here,” she said softly. “Not with me.”
It was such a small sentence. It slid under my ribs like a blade.
I covered her hand with mine, pressing it there a little harder than I meant to. “I know,” I said, and the thing was, I did. “That’s the messed-up part. Ever since you moved in, the upstairs has felt less like enemy territory.”
My mouth twisted. “It’s easier to come up here when I know I’m not alone with it. With all of it.” I cleared my throat. “I feel safer knowing you’re down the hall.”
Her breath caught.
She shifted, turning her face enough to look up at me. Her eyes were glossy, lashes wet, but there was steel under it. The good kind. The kind she turned on herself and everyone she loved when she decided something mattered.
“So I’m your emotional support person now,” she said, voice wobbling just a little. “Your human security blanket.”
“You’re a very loud security blanket,” I muttered.
She huffed out a watery laugh and pressed closer, sliding her bare hand up until it curved against my jaw. I leaned into it without meaning to.
“That’s me,” she said. “Cozy, bossy, great hair.”
“That is accurate,” I said.
I bent my head and pressed a kiss to the top of her hair, letting my lips rest there for a second longer than was strictly casual. Her fingers flexed against my chest in response, like she felt the line we were crossing and decided to step over it anyway.
Her gaze stayed locked on the discarded ring. “You know, if I ever do it again,” she whispered, “it’ll be because it’s right. I don’t care if it’s a gum wrapper. I just want it to feel like me.”
The discarded diamond sat on the nightstand now, a small circle of gold catching a sliver of lamplight.
Not on her hand. Not on her.
I swallowed past the gravel in my throat. “I just need you to know that I’m not someone you need to fix.”
“I have never thought that, even for a second.” Her big eyes met mine. “I’m glad you’re finally figuring that out for yourself.”
Clara curled in closer, fitting herself against me like she’d been designed for that exact space. Her bare fingers spread over my sternum, tucked under my palm. Her legs tangled with mine beneath the sheets, her foot brushing the sensitive skin of my calf before settling.
We had rules on the fridge for everything except this growing feeling I couldn’t ignore.
I didn’t say I love you.
The words sat heavy on the back of my tongue, untested and huge.
What I did admit, just for myself, staring up at the ceiling while her breaths evened out against my skin, was that this—her in my bed, my shirt on her body, our lives braided together in the quiet between midnight and morning—was what love felt like for me.
Darkness settled, soft and private. My thumb kept tracing slow lines on her arm long after I felt her muscles loosen, after her breaths turned into soft, steady pulls of air against my chest.
She fell asleep first, warm and solid and real in my arms.
I stayed awake a little longer, listening to the heater hum and the faint whistle of wind against the window. For the first time in longer than I could remember, lying in my own bed upstairs, I didn’t feel like a man waiting for something to go wrong.
I didn’t feel broken.
I felt free.