Chapter 33 Wes #2
She turned on her heel and walked back to the table, spine straight, shoulders tight. The slight tremor in her hands as she picked up a stack of photos was the only tell she hadn’t gone completely numb.
The room felt colder just from the space she put between us.
I sank back into the couch cushions like my bones had turned to lead, staring at the blank TV screen, listening to the soft, careful sounds of her stacking books instead of the easy, looping hum we’d had the last few days.
My leg hurt. My ego hurt worse.
I dragged a hand over my face. The crack I’d just put in us felt small on the surface.
Deep down, it was already starting to split wide open and bleed.
The knock came sharp and no-nonsense.
My jaw clenched. Every part of me wanted to sink deeper into the couch and pretend I wasn’t home, let whoever it was stand on an empty porch and call it a day.
From the kitchen, cabinet doors clicked shut a little louder than necessary. “You expecting someone?” Clara called.
My leg protested as I pushed to my feet. “No,” I muttered.
Hayes stood on the step in his work jacket and a sweat-dark baseball cap, jaw tight, eyes already checking me for damage. He swept me once, head to toe, taking in the stiffness of my stance, the way I’d braced a hand on the jamb without thinking.
“Austin called,” he said by way of hello. “Said you took a spill. You okay?”
A spill. Like I’d tripped over a curb, not eaten shit on a half-finished staircase and had to get disassembled in front of my crew.
My skin crawled.
“I’m fine,” I said, stepping back to let him in.
He snorted under his breath but came inside, stomping snow off his boots on the mat. “You don’t look fine.”
His gaze pinned me in place.
“So.” He sighed, and his hand gently slapped his side. “What happened?”
“Wet stair,” I said. “Bad footing. I went down. The end.”
His eyes narrowed. “You hurt?”
“Bruised.” I rolled my shoulder like it proved something. “Nothing’s broken.”
He blew out a breath, some of the tightness leaving his shoulders. “Good. Don’t do that shit, man.” His mouth hitched, but there wasn’t much humor in it. “We don’t get to lose you. My mom would haunt my ass for eternity.”
The punch of that landed in the usual spot and hurt in familiar ways.
Then he added, almost offhand, but not really, “Clara would lose her damn mind if you did real damage.”
That one detonated somewhere new.
Clara, on my porch hauling in too much luggage, her face determined as she ripped off the ring. Clara, in my bed this morning, breathy and soft and all in. Clara, at my table an hour ago, asking how my day was like she had a right to know, like she really was my person.
I swallowed and it felt like gravel.
Clara appeared, arms crossed over her chest, shoulders squared like armor.
“So I didn’t imagine it,” she said. “Something did happen.” Her eyes found mine, sharp and scared and already building a case. “You fell?”
Humiliation surged hot and choking. Being witnessed by one of them had been bad enough. Both at once felt like being pinned to a dartboard.
“I said I’m fine,” I snapped. “Everyone can stop hovering.”
Clara took one step closer, her gaze never leaving my face. “You are not fine,” she said. “Why didn’t you call me?”
Because I didn’t want you to hear me stutter through it. Because I didn’t want you to see the leg come off in the middle of my failure. Because I didn’t want you to have proof of exactly how bad of a bet I truly am.
“Because I didn’t feel like giving a blow-by-blow to my live-in safety committee,” I said instead, the shitty line sliding out slick and sharp.
It hit its mark. Her mouth went tight, eyes going glassy for half a heartbeat before steel dropped in behind them.
Hayes straightened and stepped in. “Hey,” he snapped, voice cutting through the room like a whip. “Don’t fucking talk to her like that.”
I flinched. Shame spiked so fast I almost stepped back.
He was right. That was the worst part. He was right, and the truth crawled over my skin, that I was standing in my own living room lashing out at the one person who had done nothing but show up for me.
Clara shook her head, a quick, sharp movement, then looked back at her brother. “I can take care of myself,” she said, steady. “If he has something to say to me, I can take it.”
Her focus whipped back to me, eyes flaring as her chin lifted in defiance. “So say it. Stop snapping at everyone and tell me what’s actually going on.”
The room closed in. Walls, windows, the weight of their attention. Fight-or-flight roared in my veins, that familiar rush of panic.
I need out. I need air.
There was a third option. The one I knew best.
Burn it down before anyone else can.
Hayes’s gaze flicked between us, reading the pressure build. He blew out a breath and stood, hands up in a loose I’m-not-fighting-you gesture.
“You two should talk,” he said. “I’m not refereeing this.”
On his way past me, he jabbed a finger lightly at my chest. “But not like that again. I mean it.”
I nodded once, which was pathetic considering the words that had already left my mouth. It was the best I had.
The door shut behind him with a soft click that sounded louder than the knock had.
The house felt huge and too small at the same time.
Silence stretched. Clara watched me from across the room, arms still wrapped around herself like she was the only thing holding her together.
“So,” she said finally, voice low and shaking just enough to give her away. “You fell. You scared everyone. And now your solution is to treat me like I’m the problem?”
I stared at the floor for a beat, then lifted my head. There wasn’t anywhere else to look that didn’t have her in it.
“I went up to the second floor,” I said, words coming out flat. “My leg slipped. I went down and couldn’t get my footing to get back up without help.”
Venom clung to every syllable, all of it aimed directly at myself.
Her expression softened immediately, like someone had opened a window. She took a step closer, anger bleeding into something worse.
“I’m sorry that happened,” she said. “That sounds terrifying. Why didn’t you call me?”
The question went straight through whatever flimsy armor I had left.
Because then it would have been real in your eyes too. Because I can live with them seeing me as pathetic, but I cannot live with you thinking it.
“Because this”—I gestured between us, hand slicing the air—“is exactly why today happened.”
She reeled like I’d shoved her. “What are you talking about?”
“I got cocky,” I ground out. “I started believing I was . . . fixed. Normal. Like I could just stroll into a site and be the guy I used to be.” I laughed once, humorless and sharp. “Joke’s on me, I guess.”
Her chin lifted. “No. That’s on wet stairs and gravity. That’s it.”
“You already built one life around taking care of someone else’s shit,” I said, the words tearing their way out. “You stood up there in a dress and realized you’d signed up to be the emotional support wife, not a partner.”
Color drained from her face. “That’s not what this is.”
“Isn’t it?” The snarl scraped my throat raw. “I can’t even walk up a set of stairs without needing three guys and a fucking incident report. Today proved exactly what I’ve been trying not to say out loud: I am not a safe bet, Clara. Not for you. Not for anyone.”
She took another step toward me, close enough that I could see the shimmer in her eyes, the fine tremble in her mouth. “You fell,” she said again, desperate for me to listen. “That’s all. You’re allowed to have a bad day. That doesn’t erase everything we’re building.”
Her hand hovered near my chest, fingers curling like she wanted to touch me and didn’t know if she was allowed anymore.
“I get to choose this,” she said, voice rough. “I get to choose you.”
The hope in that sentence hurt worse than the fall.
“You think love or choice or whatever the hell you’re calling this today is going to matter when you’re dragging my ass off the floor in ten years?
” My voice shook, but I couldn’t stop. “When every room we walk into, you’re scanning stairs and exits and wondering if today’s the day my body fails me again? ”
I swallowed hard, tasted blood and regret and couldn’t tell them apart.
Her first tears slipped free, tracking hot down her cheeks. She didn’t bother wiping them.
“That’s not fair,” she whispered.
“Your brother trusted me with you,” I said, Hayes’s face flashing behind my eyes, that mix of worry and faith that had no business being aimed at me. “Today was proof he shouldn’t. I’m one bad day away from wrecking everything I touch.”
She shook her head hard enough that her hair swung. “That’s not what happened.”
“The fuck it didn’t.”
Silence pressed at the edges. If I stopped talking, I knew what would happen. I’d cave. I’d let her talk me down off this ledge, curl around her like nothing had cracked, and then we’d both be standing there next time the leg gave out with fewer exits and even more to lose.
“You wanted to help me figure out my body again,” I said, going for the throat. “Mission accomplished. I can get off. I can fake being normal a little better now. You don’t need to keep doing this.”
Her face crumpled. It was like watching a building collapse in slow motion.
“Is that really what you think this is?” she asked, voice breaking but sharp. “That I’m still here for practice? For rehab?”
My mouth opened. The truth crouched right there.
No. I think you’re here because for some reason you picked me, and if I let you stay, I will ruin you.
“Yes,” I said instead.
The word dropped between us like an executioner's axe.
She stared at me, long enough that I felt every stutter of my heartbeat. Then she nodded, once, like a verdict.
“Got it,” she whispered. “Message received.”
She stepped back. Each inch might as well have been a mile.
“If you decide you want to stop punishing yourself long enough to tell me the truth,” she said, voice low and lethal, “you know where my room is.”
She swallowed, eyes shining and furious and heartbreakingly done.
“Until then,” she added, quieter, “I’m done begging you to let me in.”
She turned and walked up the staircase, her shoulders squared like she was holding herself together by pure stubbornness. I heard her close the door a moment later. She hadn’t slammed it, just shut it with a quiet, final click that echoed louder than any shouting match we could have had.
The house went still.
I stayed where I was, breathing like I’d just run sprints instead of tearing my own life in half with a handful of sentences.
My leg throbbed in time with my pulse, phantom pain spiderwebbing through my thigh, but it barely made a dent in the ache sitting square in my chest.
Eventually, gravity dragged me down. I sank onto the couch, elbows on my knees, hands hanging uselessly between them. The TV stared back at me, black and blank.
She had given me every out. Every chance to tell her the truth.
I’d chosen the version that hurt us both, because it was the only one that made sense with the story my brain refused to stop telling: that I was a walking hazard, a wreck in progress, a problem to be managed, not a man to be loved but pitied.
Every time I reached for something good, I turned it into collateral damage.
I leaned back, head hitting the cushion, eyes burning as the ceiling fuzzed in and out of focus.
I had dared to believe I was whole again, and the universe had reminded me exactly where I stood.
Punishment for wanting too much settled into my bones like wet concrete, heavy and cold, setting hard around the shape of a man who had just proved his worst fears right.