13. Clara
Chapter 13
Clara
T hrowing my purse at my bed after work, I muffle a shriek. I am completely ready for today to be done. If one more person complains about something, tells me what to do, or yells at me, I will throw punches. Stupid work being stupid.
I yank off my clothes, chucking them into my hamper, before wrestling myself into the coziest sweatshirt I can find and some pajama shorts. The wood floor is frigid against my feet, so I pull on fluffy socks before flopping down on my mattress. My hair falls out of its messy bun, sticking to my face. The strands smell like coffee and chocolate. I’m not going to take a second shower today, so I guess I’m just going to smell like a mocha for the rest of the night.
My phone buzzes beside me, and I’m almost too mad to even see who’s calling. On the second ring, I drag it in front of my face. “Dad” flashes across the screen. I let out a huff, both glad it’s not my mom, and ticked that she still isn’t talking to me.
“Hi, Dad,” I say.
“Heya, Clara-girl. How are you doing, mija? All recovered from the race?”
I wiggle up the mattress until my head is on my pillow. “All healed up. How are you?”
“You know, same old, same old. Your mom just wanted us to coordinate when I should pick you up for Thanksgiving. I have to get my dates in before they post the November schedule at the store.”
“So she shunted me onto your plate and still won’t talk to me?”
His sigh is deep. “You know your mom. She just wants what’s best for you, Clara-girl.”
“No. She wants what she thinks is best for me, regardless of what I want. But whatever. I’m not putting you in the middle, not like she does. I’m free anytime the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, so as long as you aren’t pulling a double shift, I’ll be ready.”
The silence on the other end has me tapping my fingers against my thigh, waiting for the inevitable defense my dad is going to wage on behalf of my mom. And I’m so sick of hearing it.
“Clara, your mom isn’t perfect, but she loves hard. Sometimes, maybe it doesn’t look like it, but she loves you.”
“Not as much as she loves using me as her perfect little accessory.”
“Clara! I won’t listen to you talk about your mother that way. ”
I squeeze my eyes tight, wishing for just an inch more patience. But I have none. I’m all tapped out. “Listen, Dad. I’ve got a lot of work to do tonight. Text me when you get your schedule.”
It’s easy to imagine him standing there, scratching the back of his head while he decides if he’s going to fight with me. But schoolwork wins. It always does with him. “Okay. Love you, mija.”
“Love you too, Dad.”
I chuck my phone across the mattress, trying to rub the anger off my face with my palms. I can’t take any more. I just can’t.
The sounds of the guys moving around the house—Walker making dinner, Jansen teasing him, the occasional scuffle and scrape from the other two upstairs—the rhythm of their everyday moments eases some of my frustration.
Once I no longer feel like screaming into my pillow, I haul out my business law notes for one last review before tomorrow. I squeezed in some studying during the first few hours of my shift, after reading through the—assignment? Specs? The parameters of what Jasmine wants the guys to do over Thanksgiving.
I wish I’d done my studying in the opposite order. Work got too crazy to do anything besides force a smile and make it through, and even after reading the darn criminal document, I still have no idea what I’m looking at. At least I would have been ready for my midterm tomorrow if I’d switched it around .
I force myself to sit up, my notes in my lap, and I dive back into studying, losing track of time. A knock on my door jolts me out of my head. “Come in,” I call.
Walker strolls in, his hands in his pockets, the smell of roasting meat and veggies trailing him. “Hey,” he says, dropping onto the mattress next to me.
“Hi,” I say, closing my notebook and setting it on the floor. I watch Walker, trying to gauge where he’s at. Does he regret last night? Please don’t let it be that—last night was magic for me.
Shifting so I’m facing him, I wait. He came in for a reason, and it had better be something like “Do you like stewed onions,” and not “Let’s just be friends.”
I don’t think I could go back to being just friends with Walker. I’d try, if that was what he really wanted, but it would be torture every time I saw him. And I don’t know what I’d do if I saw him with someone else. Double standard? Yup. But I never assumed humans were anything but messy, fucked-up creatures. And as much as I want to deny it, I’m a messy, fucked-up human, too.
He runs his hand through his hair, the black strands folding into ridges and valleys, reminding me of my own fingers digging ridges into the cool strands, my heart skipping a beat at the memory.
He doesn’t reach for me, though, and he isn’t looking at me, so my heart rate spikes for an entirely different reason. I’ve messed this up. Somehow, I ruined a good thing before it even really was a good thing. Maybe I shouldn’t have scratched him? That was probably too much. Shit .
“So are you coming to the meeting tonight?” he finally asks, staring at his slippered feet.
I take a breath, trying to keep myself from spiraling without knowing what is going on. “It kind of sounded like Trips expected me to be there, so I was planning on it.”
Walker glances at the door, still not meeting my gaze. “Are you sure you want to?”
Worrying this much is stupid. I scoot closer to him, my knee touching his, and snag his hand. He glances down at me, something that looks an awful lot like regret in his eyes. “I don’t understand what you’re asking, Walker,” I say.
He leans closer, cradling my cheek with his free hand, and just stares at me. It should be awkward, I should be weirded out by this prolonged gaze, but instead, it’s trance-like, his breath and mine matching, in and out, in and out, as he looks for an answer to an unasked question in my eyes.
After forever, he sighs, leaning forward to kiss my forehead before flopping back on the bed. I swallow back a strange swelling of emotion, a confusing mess of desire, tension, and soul-deep longing clothed in dread, then lie down beside him, propped up on my elbow so I can see his face. “Walker, you need to talk to me. I can’t guess what’s going on in your head.”
He tugs me down so my head is tucked under his chin, my chest pressed against his, his arm locking me against him. His silence lingers, though, despite the closeness between us, and my tears threaten. I force them back down. No tears unless I have a damn good reason for them. I’ve cried enough: over an abusive ex, over a selfish mother, over lost years and lost confidence. “Please,” I whisper .
I feel his nose tickling the curls on the top of my head before his breath whooshes out. I glance up at him, but he’s staring at the ceiling. “You know we’re not the good guys, right?” he asks.
Honestly, that was a thought I’d been avoiding. Because no matter how I look at it, it’s never quite made sense. How could these guys be anything but good? “Are there actually good guys and bad guys, Walker? Heroes and villains?”
His lips twist. “Maybe not like in the movies. But I think there is a scale of good to bad, and we all fall somewhere on it.” He rolls onto his side so he can see me, holding me close while his words try to shove me away.
He runs his hand through my hair. “Clara, you’re naturally good. You see the good in people, the parts that are worth loving.”
I shake my head a bit, something close to rage in my chest. “That’s not good, Walker. That’s me being na?ve. You’re praising me for being a fool.”
He runs his thumb across my bottom lip, and I want to bite it, to put this emotion out into the world, but I hold back. Barely. “You say that, and maybe that’s part of it. But Clara, before you met us, you were on a path to become a hero. You wanted to save the world from the bad guys, to make the world a safer place.”
He rolls onto his back again, not taking me with him. “Then you met us. And now you’ve committed blackmail, illegally manipulated a surveillance mic, helped us break into a police station to plant evidence, and you’re what? Going to help us plan a heist tonight? This stuff, it’s jail time if we get caught. We fuck up and you could go to jail, Clara. Or worse. ”
I prop myself back up, placing my hand over his heart, the solid da-dum da-dum there easing the strain in my chest. “So could you, Walker.”
“Yeah, but I’m not good, Clara. None of us are. You’re different.”
I gather my thoughts, the rage still threatening to overcome the careful words I string together for Walker. “Walker, I made a choice with Bryce. I chose Trips over a system that wasn’t protecting me the way I’d hoped it would. I chose the methods you guys use to keep me safe, to keep all of us safe, because they work. Good isn’t the same as lawful, Walker. You guys break the law, but you aren’t bad people.”
He closes his eyes. “I’m selfish, hedonistic, and I’m an arrogant ass when I want to be, Clara. I know this about myself. I would rather spend time with good food and good art than tend to someone’s sickbed. Give me the choice between saving some random kid and one of Da Vinci’s notebooks, I’ll save the notebook every time. I meet a new person, and I immediately unravel how to trick them, how to prove to myself that I’m smarter, sneakier, better than they are.” Walker looks at me now, and the steel in his gaze is arresting. “I’m not a good guy. I’m not even the best of the bad guys.”
Sliding my hand up to his cheek, I run my thumb along his cheekbone. “Then maybe I don’t want to be one of the good guys either, Walker.”
He pulls me close again, some of the ache in my chest easing. “But for how long?”
I shake my head, even though he can’t see me. “As long as I like. It’s my life, and I get to choose what it looks like. Right now, I’m happy here.” I shift so I can press my lips to his, but he holds himself back. “I want you, Walker. I want your kindness, your cookies, your art, even your freaky ability to put on and take off personalities like coats. And if that means I have to be one of the bad guys, then I guess I’ll be a bad guy, too.”
“You can’t just pick when you’re the good guy or the bad guy, Clara. The bad, it sticks to you, like paint in your nail beds. It’ll keep you, lock you in until you’re so deep you don’t even want to see the light again.” His grip loosens, as if he’s scared to keep me with him. “I just can’t help but think that we shouldn’t have tossed you in the deep end like this. Doing this, it’s a high, Clara. And we fucking started you at the top dose. You might not actually want what you think you want.”
The tentative ease in my chest shatters. Under no circumstances am I going to let a man tell me what I do or don’t want. Not again. Never again.
Because, of course, that’s why I had to sit awkwardly on the couch while everyone else read the brief. He’s taking my choices from me. All because he thinks I’m high on danger?
I took weeks to recover from my brush with danger. Weeks. I spent hour after hour, day after day, alone in my room reconciling my actions, reframing the person I was, rebuilding myself from the broken bits left of my old life. Those are definitely the actions of a person high on a successful heist.
My barely tethered anger rears, the reins I’d wrapped around it snapping completely. I push out of his arms, bracketing him beneath me as words pool like flames on my lips. “Are you telling me what I feel, Walker? Can you somehow look at me and guess the future? Can you name my regrets before I have them? Because unless you’re some kind of psychic, you’d better get off your high fucking horse. I’m a big girl, Walker. I might not know everything about what you guys do, but if you for one second believe I’m too high on danger to know my own mind, you’d better fucking walk out of this room and not come back. Because I sure as fuck thought you knew me better than that.”
His dark eyes lock on mine, his own anger reflecting my own. “You know what? You’re right. I’m not a psychic. I’m just one of the guys you’re fucking.”
“So that’s it? You’re just my friendly neighborhood fuck buddy, warning me about the ambient high on this side of the street?”
His face falters, a pitch-black ache coloring his demeanor, before he scrambles backwards, out from under me and onto his feet on the other side of the mattress. “If you don’t want my advice, then don’t take it, Clara. I’ll be one of your fuck buddies. I’ll be your friend. But don’t ever count on me to be your white knight. I’m not the type.”
“Well, thank God I’m not some fucking damsel in a tower, then.” My words burn hot against my tongue as I look at this man across a mattress, the bedding still rumpled from our night together.
I want to apologize so badly I physically ache with the need. There should be peace between us. I need last night to mean something—to not just be some mindless fuck, but a new beginning.
What if I really was just a mindless fuck?
Looking at Walker, locked between fury and grief, I see the same emotions reflected at me, framed by the way he leans forward, fists clenched, eyes glassy. The silence is alive with more: words, rage, or sorrow, I don’t know, but it ripples like a kite on a string.
Only, one thing I promised myself during those long days of soul searching was that I’m done keeping the peace. If I fuck up, I’ll own it. But otherwise? I’m done fixing shit I didn’t even break.
Walker’s staring at me like I’ve taken his favorite toy and lit it on fire. And maybe I have.
The longer we pause in this moment, the more I feel my resolve falter. Maybe if he understood how important it is that I choose for myself? Maybe if I told him how much last night meant to me? I can fix this. I know I can.
My mind whirs, digging for the right words to smooth things over, but before they form, the oven chimes in the kitchen.
Walker turns away, blinking at the heavy dark outside my window. Then, with one rub across his face, he wipes away the anger, the hurt, leaving the smug smile of a stranger grinning back at me. “Dinner’s in ten,” he says, sauntering out of the room like he didn’t just snap off the fledgling wings of our something more.
I force myself to close the door behind him, my feet heavy on the floor. If he wants to pretend we’re nothing to each other, that we might fuck occasionally, but God forbid we have feelings about it, well, maybe I can play that game too.
Because I made a vow during those few weeks here alone in my room: I’m killing off the parts of myself that no longer fit, the shrunken sweaters that have locked me into an imperfectly perfect shape for years. And the girl who wants to run out into the hallway crying, begging for forgiveness? She’s going to be my first victim.
So if that’s who Walker wants? Then I guess he’s shit out of luck. Because she’s bleeding out on the floor right now, and I don’t plan on offering her even one fucking Band-Aid. Bye-bye, good girl Clara.
I’ve let my beast out of her cage, and she’s wild, ready to fight. My claws are out, my teeth are bared. And I’m no kept kitten.