21. What Im Building
twenty-one
What I'm Building
Jax
"Clara?"
The plastic bucket yields beneath my shifting weight as I straighten my spine. I lift my hands from her waist, resting my palms flat against my denim thighs to give her space.
The pink skin framing her blue eyes remains swollen, and her fiery red hair stands out in wild, tangled strands against the gray wool of the office blanket.
Her gaze remains fixed on her own lap. Her fingers twist together, her knuckles bleaching out to a sharp white. When she speaks, the words tumble out in a breathless rush.
"I once mentioned going to Houston University with Stanley, right?" she says, her voice skipping along the high register.
I nod jerkily, already feeling tense about the fact that Stanley has potentially hurt her before, even though I had my guesses.
I keep my hands flat on my knees, matching her sudden, vibrating stillness.
"I met Stanley, and he liked me, but the feelings weren’t mutual," she says, spitting the name straight into the floorboards.
"But Stanley never takes no for an answer. “
A hard, dry heat centers right behind my breastbone as she continues.
“He tracked my schedule for more than four months. I would find him outside my morning lectures. He would stand by the coffee cart on the quad, sit three tables away in the library. Every single day without a stop.”
I can only imagine how persistent the bastard can be, but I force myself to remain calm.
“Then the spring semester ended, and there was a house party off the boulevard.” She swallows hard before she continues. “Naturally, he was there. He kept my company and made sure my glass stayed full until I blacked out."
My jaw tightens until my molars ache from the pressure, my vision narrowing down to the pale line of her collarbone.
"I woke with my body feeling heavy," she whispers, her chin dropping toward her chest, and I see her close her eyes tightly.
"I remember the light through the blinds of that off-strip rental house hurting, and my brain was still trying to process things when I saw him. He sat in a chair by the closet.”
She lets out a short laugh. “He looked so smug. He was fully dressed, his shoes tied, and he smiled at me and said I was incredible."
My fingers curl into fists against my thighs, the fabric of my work pants straining against my knuckles. The urge to find a highway, to drive west until I can put my hands around Stanley’s throat, thickens the saliva in my mouth.
"I got out of bed and left," she says, her shoulders rising with a sharp intake of air. "Six weeks later, the test came back positive.”
I inhale sharply and close my eyes briefly. That low-life piece of shit.
“I requested a meeting and told him. He kept his eyes on his phone while he slid a check for five thousand dollars across the table.”
“That bastard.” I can’t help but murmur under my breath.
“He told me to go to a clinic in Louisiana, so his family's insurance records stayed clean. I couldn’t believe his guts. I tore the paper in half and dropped the pieces into his water glass.”
She finally looks up to meet my gaze.
“He went purple, and I knew he hated that he couldn't buy my silence.” She lifts her chin, defiance shining in her eyes.
“I packed two boxes, left the university, and hid in a single room on the north side of Houston near the bypass. My dad was already getting sick down here, and I refused to carry that shame to his porch."
The small office smells of stale chicory coffee and the hot zinc of the outer bay roof. Outside, the rhythmic metallic expansion of the tin planks echoes through the window.
"The room faced the highway truck lane," she continues, her voice thinning out. "The air smelled of diesel fuel and hot grease. I spent seven and a half months alone in that space until that day.”
I watch as she draws in a deep breath. “It was during October, and the rain had been falling for days. The linoleum by the stairs was slick from a roof leak. I was carrying the laundry basket down to the landing.”
I squeeze my eyes briefly, already imagining where this is heading.
“My heel caught the loose edge of the rubber tread. I hit the wooden baluster on my left side. The impact snapped the pine railing. I lay there on the cold wood for twenty minutes, listening to the semi-trucks down on the bypass. I thought we were fine. I went back to the room. I brewed tea.”
“Then midnight came, and I started bleeding heavily."
I lean forward, the heat in my chest turning into a cold, heavy ache that leaves my throat dry.
"The ambulance took forty minutes to navigate the bypass traffic," she says, her hand falling limp against the wool blanket.
"The emergency room was packed to the doors.
The nurses rolled my gurney behind a yellow plastic curtain next to the janitor's supply closet.
The delivery was over in minutes. She arrived too early. "
“You don’t have to do this, Nora.” I finally say.
It’s almost too much to watch her recount all the details with such clarity.
She stops, staring at the rusted iron latch of the office door.
"Eleven minutes," she continues as though she hasn’t heard me.
"Eleven minutes," she says again, her voice shaking and her lower lips wobbling.
"That is the exact time she breathed. The nurse tried to pull her away, but I kept her flat against my ribs under the cotton blanket. She had a tiny patch of red fuzz on her head. The exact shade of mine. I counted every single rise of her chest. Eleven times. Then she went still."
A single drop of moisture falls onto the wool between her knees.
"I called my dad at three in the morning," she says, as another tear rolls down her cheeks. " Drove five hours straight through the midnight fog until he hit the hospital parking lot at dawn.”
“He and Gran stayed in that room. They packed my two boxes into the truck bed and brought me back to the coast.”
“It was hard, but I moved on for the longest time. I thought Houston was buried.”
“Then, the day I met you, I ran into him during a professional mixer in downtown Houston. Running into him was almost too much, and that was why I was in the bar. I never thought I would meet him again in Moonrise."
She rubs her palms against her knees, her breathing shallow.
"We buried her out there where the high salt grass meets the deep water channel by the dock," she whispers, her voice completely flat now.
"There is an old live oak where the wild clover grows thickest over the roots.
We didn't use a funeral home. We didn't put up a headstone or file a county record. But I know the exact spot she’s buried.”
She looks at me, her eyes burning bright with unshed tears.
“That is why I can't let the Hargroves touch this land, Jax. The thought of him buying this property makes the air leave my lungs." She pauses and inhales sharply. “That’s why this land means so much to me.”
She ceases speaking and sits perfectly rigid on the mattress, her lower lip bleeding color where her teeth grip the skin. She faces me with a guarded, defensive tilt to her chin, bracing for the standard words of comfort that attempt to minimize the loss.
"Her name was Clara."
"I was wondering when you'd let me meet her."
I remain on the edge of the cot, my boots planted on the floorboards, my eyes fixed on her wet cheeks.
"Clara," I repeat.
I speak the name clearly, letting the sound carry into the empty fabrication bays outside the door.
Nora’s chest hitches, her shoulders trembling under the thin tank top.
I reach across the small space separating us. My hand is gray from the angle grinder, the skin rough and calloused from years of handling iron, but I place my palm flat over hers on the blanket. I press down, letting her feel and know she’s not alone.
"Clara," I say it again.
She lets out a short, ragged sound and drops her forehead straight against our joined knuckles.
Her shoulders shake against my knees as the built-up tension leaves her spine.
I hold her steady while the noon sun climbs higher over the marsh, her skin burning hot through the black cotton of my shirt.
"Nora," I say after a while, keeping my voice low.
She doesn't lift her head, but her fingers curl up under my palm, her nails biting slightly into the side of my thumb.
She keeps her face hidden against my hand. "Yeah?"
"I'm not letting you go," I say.
“What?” She says, finally lifting her head.
"I am done letting you run the clock," I tell her. "We are taking this further. You stay with me. We see what we are building here."
She remains quiet for a long beat.
“What do you say?” I press as my heart thuds wildly in my chest.
If she says no, I intend to keep asking until she changes her mind.
When she finally meets my eyes again, her face is wet, but her mouth is set in that same formidable line I saw when she stood up to Victor Hargrove on the speakerphone.
"I thought you'd never ask, Rowe," she whispered, a tiny, sharp spark of the old fire returning to her blue eyes.
"I don't ask twice," I say.
By dusk, the boys have cleared out.
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I find her down at the dock, sitting with her knees pulled up, watching the last light burn orange across the water. She doesn't hear me come up behind her. I've gotten good at moving quietly around this property. Twenty years of practice.
I sit down beside her, my boots hanging off the edge of the planks same as hers.
"You're quiet," she says, not looking over.
"Thinking."
"About?"
I reach into my pocket. My fingers close around the small iron piece I welded together two nights ago, after she fell asleep, working by the light of the drafting lamp until my hands stopped shaking.
It's nothing fancy. Two bands, twisted into one, the seam smoothed down until you'd have to know to look for it.
I take her hand and set it in her palm.
She goes still.
"I built this yard from nothing," I say. "On land that wasn't whole. Took me twenty years and I never once thought I'd want anything past it."
I look at her.
"I'd like to build what comes next. On land that is. With you in it."
I pause, turning her hand over so the twisted iron rests between our palms.
"And nothing about that asks you to leave Clara behind."
Nora stares down at the iron in her hand, turning it slowly between her fingers. When she looks back up at me, her eyes are wet, but her mouth is twitching at the corner.
"That's a terrible proposal, Rowe."
I grin.
It's not the grin I give the boys, or the one I give Stanley right before I put my hands on him. It's the one that reaches all the way up, the one nobody in this town has seen on my face in twenty years.
Her breath catches. I watch her realize it, the way her whole expression shifts, like she's been waiting on that exact grin since the first night at the bar and didn't know it until just now.
"Yes," she says.