Chapter 35 Wes
THIRTY-FIVE
WES
I stared at the door like it might crack open and rewind the last ten minutes if I glared hard enough.
It didn’t. Obviously.
The house was stupidly quiet. No Clara humming under her breath in the kitchen. No soft pad of her feet on the stairs. Just the tick of the heater, the faint rattle of the vent, and the echo of the door closing behind her playing on a loop in my skull.
It felt like she’d taken the center of the place with her. Like the walls were still here, the furniture still in the same spots, my boots still by the mat—but the gravity was gone.
I love you.
The words hit first. They always did.
I love you. I also love myself. I can’t stay in a house where you choose your fear over both of us.
My jaw clenched until it hurt. I could still see her, duffel strap biting into her shoulder, eyes bright and steady and so damn sure.
She told you exactly what she needed.
You picked fear anyway.
She asked you to show up. You ran.
I dragged a hand over my face, palm scraping against stubble. The living room blurred at the edges—same couch, same coffee table, same stack of mail on the console. Same life I’d been pacing circles around for months.
Except it wasn’t the same. Not really.
I could see myself in the reflection of the dark TV screen—broad shoulders, bad leg, haunted eyes.
The guy who had slept on the couch because stairs felt like enemies.
The guy who’d timed showers to when someone else was home, just in case.
The guy who’d let the house go quiet and stale because the alternative was letting anybody see how far he’d fallen.
Then Clara had walked in with her boxes and her rules and her ridiculous optimism and, somehow, breathing hadn’t felt like a chore anymore.
And I’d still managed to drive her out.
My feet carried me to the kitchen without checking in with my brain. Habit. Muscle memory.
I opened the cabinet without thinking. The good bourbon sat where it always did, amber and patient, promising quiet in a glass. I curled my fingers around the neck of the bottle, thumb rubbing over the label.
I could pour some into my coffee.
Or skip the coffee and just go straight for the hard reset.
A couple of big swallows, let everything fuzz at the edges until her voice didn’t sound so clear.
Until my body stopped remembering the exact weight of her curled against me in my bed.
Until my chest didn’t feel like someone had wedged a fist behind my ribs and just . . . left it there.
My grip tightened.
I set the bottle back down and shut the cabinet hard enough that the door rattled.
The sound cracked through the quiet, sharp and ugly. It didn’t make me feel better. It didn’t do anything except prove, once again, that I could make noise and still be a coward.
If I was going to hurt, I was going to know exactly why. I didn’t want to drink her into a blur. I wanted every second of this to sting.
I leaned back against the counter, leg throbbing deep in the socket, and stared at nothing.
The old script kicked in, automatic as breathing.
You flew too close to the sun, Vaughn. Thought you were back. Thought you could be that guy again. The one who took stairs without thinking. The one who walked a jobsite without turning into a safety hazard. The one who could stand next to a woman like Clara and not drag her down with him.
Look how that turned out.
A different thought shoved in, quieter but meaner.
No, that’s not it.
The universe didn’t shove you. You did this part on your own.
You swung the hammer. It just watched.
My throat went tight. I pushed away from the counter and limped into the living room, dropped down onto the couch like my strings had been cut.
The leg hummed with that bone-deep ache that meant I’d overdone it. My stump burned where it met the socket, a raw reminder of plywood stairs and rough hands and the worst seconds of my year.
I could feel the spiral opening up under me, familiar as the grooves on my palm.
Clara, laughing with some faceless guy who didn’t have to think about where his foot landed.
Clara, planning shoots and hanging her name on a studio window while I sat here counting pills and pretending jobsites didn’t scare the shit out of me.
Clara, with a partner who didn’t need a contingency plan every time they left the house.
I dug my fingers into my thighs, nails biting through denim, like I could anchor myself to the present.
The house felt smaller by the second. The air heavier. Every corner held some ghost of her—a mug on the counter, a blanket tossed over the arm of the couch, a sticky note on the fridge with her loopy handwriting telling me to buy more coffee.
Sitting here was just letting the tide pull me under.
I lurched up too fast. The socket protested, a sharp jab up my thigh, and I grunted, catching myself on the back of the couch. The edges of my vision went gray.
Then I focused on the key bowl by the door.
My hand moved before my brain could talk me out of it. Keys jingled in my fist, cool metal biting my palm.
From the outside, it probably looked like I was doing something reasonable. Going after her. Trying to fix what I’d broken.
I wasn’t that noble.
I just knew if I stayed in this house one more minute, surrounded by the shape of her without the reality, I was going to crawl back into every old version of myself she’d spent weeks trying to drag me out of.
I yanked the door open, stepped into the cold, and let it close behind me.
I didn’t point the truck toward Kit’s place.
My hands were already turning the wheel toward the one person who’d been there for the first wreckage and might—if I didn’t screw it up—help me figure out what the hell to do with the second.
I sat there with my hands on the wheel, staring at the familiar front steps, the dent in the railing we’d put there moving a couch in five years ago.
I could turn around. Go home. Crawl back into the pit I’d dug in my living room.
Instead, I killed the engine and hauled myself out of the truck.
The cold slapped my face awake. Gravel crunched under my boot as I limped up the path, leg a steady throb. My knuckles were stupidly tight when I knocked.
The door swung open a second later.
Hayes stood there in a faded Star Harbor hoodie and sweats, hair shoved back like he’d had his hands in it. His brows shot up when he registered it was me on his porch.
“Uh,” he said. “Hey.”
My throat felt like sandpaper. “I’m here to say I’m sorry,” I managed.
The words landed between us with a dull thud. Something in his shoulders eased, tension sliding down a notch. He took one step back and crooked two fingers in a “get in here” gesture.
“Then don’t just stand there like a lost puppy,” he said. “It’s freezing.”
Warm air hit me when I stepped inside—coffee, laundry detergent, whatever he’d cooked recently.
He nudged the door shut with his heel and jerked his chin toward the couch. I lowered myself onto the end. He took the armchair opposite, forearms braced on his knees.
Up close, I could see the crease between his brows. Worry, not anger, and somehow that was worse.
“I shouldn’t have snapped at you,” I said, staring at my hands. “Or her. You were right—about not talking to her like that. I crossed a line and I’m sorry.”
The admission scraped its way out, rough and reluctant. It was still the truth.
Hayes let out a low breath, rubbing a thumb along the line of his jaw. “You were scared and in pain,” he said. “It’s still not an excuse, but I get it.”
He tipped his head, eyes narrowing just a little. “Did you happen to apologize to her, or am I getting the exclusive premiere?”
A humorless sound huffed out of me. “She left before I could.”
Something flickered behind his eyes. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I don’t blame her.”
Hayes was always a protective older brother. Honestly, I knew he was giving me a break because of our friendship. Instead of piling on, he just watched me, giving me enough silence to hang myself or spit it out.
“When I went out to the site, I figured I’d . . . you know. Be the boss for five minutes.” I told him my version of everything that happened. Enough that my chest felt tight all over again.
Hayes didn’t interrupt or crack a joke when I paused. My friend watched me with that steady, infuriatingly patient look he’d been perfecting since we were teenagers. When I finally ran out of words, he sat back, palms rubbing once down his thighs.
“Okay,” he said.
I stared at him. “Okay?”
“You fell,” he said, like it was the simplest thing in the world. “It sucked. You scared everybody.” He lifted a shoulder. “That’s not proof you’re broken, Wes. That’s proof you’ve got a crew that gives a damn.”
The words hit like they were bouncing off armor I didn’t remember putting on. I shook my head. “It didn’t feel like that.”
“I know it didn’t,” he said. “But how it felt and what it was are not the same thing.”
I looked away, jaw clenching, because the worst part was that I could see his angle and some traitorous part of me wanted to believe it.
“I’m a grown man,” I said. “I used to take stairs without thinking about it. Now I’m an OSHA hazard who needs a spotter every time he wants a different view.”
His mouth twitched. “You’re very dramatic when you’re spiraling, you know that?”
I let out a breath that was almost a laugh, then scrubbed my hands over my face.
Hayes slouched farther back in the chair, one ankle over his knee, his socked foot bouncing once. “So,” he said mildly. “Clara walked out with a bag.”
The words dropped like a brick in my stomach.
“What did you do?” he asked.
I let my hands fall. Met his gaze because I owed him at least that much. “What I always do,” I said. “I panicked and lit everything on fire.”
His jaw tightened. “Define everything.”