Chapter 34 Clara
THIRTY-FOUR
CLARA
I hadn’t slept much.
I knew he hadn’t either. I was painfully aware of his movements across the hall—the soft thud of his footsteps on the hardwood, the shower turning on, then off again, like he couldn’t quite settle in.
Wes had stayed in his room. I’d stayed in mine. The space between us felt bigger than the whole damn house.
I zipped the duffel and sighed.
It wasn’t even that big. A week’s worth of clothes, my toiletries, my laptop, and the overstuffed folder full of shot lists and contracts for the farm shoot. Half my closet still hung in place, my shoes still lined up underneath. My favorite sweatshirt draped over the back of the chair.
I wasn’t emptying my life into a suitcase, but I was drawing a line.
I wrapped my fingers around the strap, testing the weight. It dug into the pad of my palm, heavier than it had any right to be.
The thought made my throat close. I swallowed hard, hitched the duffel onto my shoulder, and stepped into the hall.
The house was too quiet. No TV, no music from his phone. Just the low hum of the heater and the faint clink of ceramic from the kitchen.
Of course he was making coffee.
My heart lurched when I saw him at the counter, shoulders broad and familiar in a worn T-shirt, frowning at the coffee maker as it slowly brewed. Two mugs sat on the counter, side by side.
The sight of that second mug nearly undid me.
He heard the duffel bump the wall and turned. His gaze skimmed my face, dropped to the bag on my shoulder, then snapped back up again. Confusion flickered into something sharper, alarm tightening his features.
“Where are you going?” His voice came out rough with panic teasing at the edges.
My heart thudded so hard it felt like it might leave bruises. I tightened my grip on the strap until my fingers ached.
“I’m going to stay with Kit for a bit,” I said, amazed at how steady my voice sounded. “Until after the shoot. Until I can figure everything out.”
He took a step toward me, a small hitch in his movement betraying the lingering fallout from the fall he refused to talk about.
His jaw flexed. “You don’t have to do that.”
His words were instinctive, automatic reassurance. You don’t have to go. You don’t have to change. You don’t have to leave.
I shifted the duffel higher on my shoulder and lifted my chin, forcing myself to really look at him—sleep-creased, unshaven, eyes bruised with exhaustion and something close to panic.
“That’s the thing,” I said softly. “I do.”
The words burned all the way up. I let them sit between us, hot and undeniable, then took the breath I’d been avoiding since last night.
“I love you.”
His whole body went still.
The air felt different after that—thicker somehow, charged. He stared at me like I’d just spoken in a language he didn’t know he understood, like he’d heard the words and they’d hit bone.
I didn’t look away. I wanted him to see all of it—the shake in my hands, the way my chest hurt, the fact that I meant every syllable.
“I love you, but I also love myself,” I said, my voice quieter but no less clear. “I can’t stay in a house where you choose your fear over both of us.”
Something in his expression cracked. His mouth opened, then snapped closed again. He looked like he was reaching for a denial, an argument, an apology—anything—but whatever he found wasn’t enough to make it past his throat.
“You’re not a monster, Wes,” I went on, because I needed him to hear that part too. “You’re just scared. All the time. Of getting hurt. Of hurting me. Of not being enough.”
I saw the flinch in his eyes even though his shoulders stayed rigid.
“I understand that more than you know,” I said. “I have built my life around someone who struggled to accept himself before.”
Greg’s face flashed in my mind—the tight, brittle smile, the way his shoulders had always looked like they were carrying something heavy he couldn’t put down. The realization at the altar that I was signing up to carry it with him forever.
I shook my head, eyes stinging, but I didn’t let the tears fall. Not yet.
“I can’t do it again,” I whispered. My voice cracked. “I can’t fix this for you.”
Silence settled over the kitchen. The coffee machine gurgled in the background, oblivious.
He took another breath, like he might try again. “Clara—”
I shifted my grip on the duffel and took a step back, toward the door.
“You don’t have to earn anything with me, Wes,” I said, gentler now. “You just have to show up as you. For us. Until you can do that, I have to go.”
His eyes were wet, and he looked like he’d been hollowed out and didn’t know what to do with the space.
“Clara, wait—please,” he tried, the words breaking halfway out.
I held his gaze for one last second, letting him see it all—the love, the hurt, the line I was drawing in permanent marker.
“Goodbye, Wes,” I said.
Then I opened the door before I could lose my nerve, stepped into the slap of cold air, and pulled it shut behind me.
The chill hit my cheeks, sharp enough to feel like punishment. I blinked hard, the duffel strap weighing down my shoulder as I descended the front steps and across the shoveled path to my car. My knuckles were white on the keys by the time I slid behind the wheel.
I didn’t cry on the drive to Kit’s. I kept my hands at ten and two, breathing in and out, in and out, counting stop signs like they were the only thing keeping me from turning around.
By the time I climbed the stairs to her apartment, my eyes burned and my chest felt hollow. I shifted the duffel higher, lifted my fist, and knocked.
My knuckles stung. My eyes did too.
The further I drove away from Wes, the more broken I felt.
Kit yanked the door open on the second knock, took one long look at me, and blew out a low whistle.
“You look like shit,” she said, eyeing me. “Who are we murdering?”
A laugh scraped out of my throat, raw around the edges. “Hi to you too.”
Her gaze dropped to the duffel clutched in my hand, then back up to my face. The joke slid off her expression like water. Protective little-sister mode slammed into place.
“What happened?” she asked, already stepping aside. “You know what, save it. Get in here. Shoes off, emotional baggage on.”
The hallway behind her smelled like fried onions from the diner downstairs and someone’s laundry detergent.
Inside was all Kit: plants on every surface, a leaning gallery wall of thrift-store frames, a couch that had seen better decades.
A mug with drying paintbrushes sat on the coffee table beside an empty ramen bowl and three different kinds of lip balm.
My mind flipped back to all the houseplants I’d killed.
Poor dead Phil would have thrived here.
I toed my boots off, and my grip tightened on the duffel.
“Can I stay for a little while?” The words came out small and stilted.
Kit’s eyebrows shot up, then pulled together. “Obviously,” she said. She hooked two fingers in the duffel strap and dragged it inside, kicking the door shut behind me. “Couch. Now.”
The cushions sagged under me, and I tucked my feet up. My arms wrapped around a throw pillow because I needed something to hold on to that wasn’t my own rib cage.
Kit folded herself into the opposite corner, facing me, one knee bumping my thigh. “Okay,” she said. “Start with why you’re crying and work your way toward why you have luggage.”
The laugh that burst out of me tilted straight into a sob. I pressed the heel of my hand to my sternum, like I could hold everything in place.
“We fought,” I said. “Wes and I.”
Kit’s mouth flattened. “Okay, but last time we talked he was just your grumpy rehabilitation raccoon, and now you’re on my couch with sad-girl energy and a go bag. Please fill in the middle.”
Heat crawled up my neck. I stared down at the pillow seam between my fingers. “It wasn’t just a fight,” I admitted. “We’ve been more than roommates.”
Her eyes went wide. “Define more.”
My laugh came out thin. “We’ve been sleeping together.”
There was a beat of stunned silence.
“Wes? Hayes’s best friend Wes. Wes who we’ve known since we were kids. Wes Wes?” She blew out a breath. “I mean I get it. He’s hot in that rugged, ‘maybe my magical pussy can cure your depression’ kind of way but . . . holy shit.”
I exhaled, trying to find a good place to begin. “It started as—” I broke off, wincing. “Okay, you have to promise not to make it weird.”
Kit leaned in, eyes glittering. “Those are the exact words someone says right before it gets so weird. Give me the PG-13 version, because I am not emotionally prepared for full-penetration details before lunch.”
“It started as sex lessons,” I blurted. “For him. So he could figure out how the physical mechanics worked now. After the accident.”
She just stared at me. “I’m sorry,” she said slowly. “Sex. Lessons.”
I groaned, dropping my head back against the cushion. “It wasn’t like that. I wasn’t grading him. He was scared. I offered. We made rules. It was supposed to be controlled and helpful and very . . . mature.”
A slow, delighted smile curved her mouth. “You absolutely made a syllabus.”
“I did not make a syllabus,” I said, annoyed. “I maybe—it was an organized approach.”
Kit pressed a hand to her heart, desperately trying not to grin. “I’m so proud.”
Ignoring her teasing, I told her about watching his confidence come back in stuttering pieces.
How it had felt to be the safe place he could practice wanting again.
How somewhere along the way, practice had stopped being the right word and I had fallen stupidly, quietly, all the way in love with my grumpy, injured, ridiculous roommate.