7. Chapter 7
Claire
Eleven at night, my father's voice still in my ear, and I'm stress-baking because it's the only thing keeping my hands busy right now.
The muffin batter is too thick. I know it. I don't fix it. I just keep stirring.
I hung up and opened my laptop to the contract fee schedule before I even set down my phone.
Fifty thousand for twelve weeks. Structured in three installments. The second one clears in eight days.
I need this job to hold together.
I pour the batter into the tin and slide it into the oven, and then I stand there with my hands on the counter and my forehead tipped down toward the oven door.
My phone buzzes.
Hannah texts like she's leaving a voicemail. Full sentences. No shortcuts. Everything she's thinking right there on the screen.
Dad's not sleeping. He keeps going to the church office at night and leaving the light on. Mom keeps saying everything's fine in that voice she uses when everything is NOT fine. Are you okay?
I type out:
I'm handling it.
Delete it.
Everything's going to be okay.
Delete.
Call me tomorrow and we'll figure it out.
Delete that too.
I send her a single heart and put my phone face-down on the counter.
There's nothing useful I can say from ninety miles away at eleven o'clock on a Tuesday, so I go back to baking because at least baking has rules. Measurements. Timers. Outcomes you can predict.
***
The knock comes at eleven-thirty.
My first thought is that something happened. My mother. My father. A hospital somewhere. My hand is already shaking when I get to the door.
It's Darius.
He fills my doorframe the way he always does, broad shoulders stretching the opening and making my townhouse suddenly feel a size too small.
His light brown hair is messy, his jaw shadowed with stubble, and he's wearing gray sweats and a black hoodie that somehow make a professional football player look approachable.
Almost.
The effect is ruined by the fact that he looks unfairly good for midnight. And by the two coffees he's holding.
Because apparently that's who Darius Webb is now.
He grins when I open the door. Slow. A little sheepish. Like he knows exactly how this looks and he's decided to own it anyway.
"Jaylen told me where you lived," he says. "Which I know." He shifts his weight. "Saw your light on. Figured you were up working late." He holds up the cups. "You looked upset earlier. Wanted to bring you something to make you smile."
I stare at him.
"I'm going to have a conversation with Jaylen tomorrow."
"Yeah." He holds out the cup. "You want the coffee or not?"
I take it and step back to let him in.
***
My kitchen table has flour on it. There's a cooling rack with a test batch of blueberry muffins from the first round, a spoon on a towel, measuring cups I haven't rinsed.
He takes it all in without comment and pulls out the chair on the side that isn't covered in baking mess. He sets the coffee down and waits.
I sit across from him.
"You were worried about me."
His eyes lift to mine.
"Should I not have been?"
I stare at him. Because the honest answer is that most people wouldn't have noticed.
He leans back in the chair like he's comfortable here, like my flour-covered kitchen table at midnight is exactly where he planned to be. "You looked like you were carrying something heavy today. Figured you probably still were."
"That's surprisingly perceptive of you."
One corner of his mouth lifts.
"Don't sound so shocked."
"I thought you only paid attention to yourself."
"Most of the time, sure."
The honesty of it catches me off guard. Then he takes a sip of coffee.
"But I was paying attention to you too."
It shouldn't hit me the way it does. I try not to let it show.
I give him the short version of the call: my father's surgery, the timeline that just moved, the specialist fee, the reason I took this assignment.
Not the version with context and footnotes.
Just the facts, the way you hand someone the headlines when you don't have the energy to explain the whole story.
He doesn't offer to fix it. He doesn't say I'm sorry and fill the next thirty seconds with something that's really about making himself feel less uncomfortable. He just listens. All the way to the end of it. And when I stop talking, he nods once, like he heard me, and asks:
"You bake when you're stressed?"
"Every time."
He looks at the muffins on the rack. "Are those any good?"
"They're a little dense."
"Can I have one?"
I push the rack toward him. He picks one up, peels back the paper, and takes a bite like it's the most natural thing in the world to be sitting in my kitchen at midnight eating stress muffins.
He's in the middle of a diet I know for a fact includes zero refined sugar, zero white flour, and a meal plan his nutritionist rebuilt from scratch after Atlanta.
He eats the whole thing.
"That's good," he says. Like he means it.
He wipes his hand on a napkin.
"So what's actually wrong?"
I look at him.
"All of it."
He's quiet for a moment. Thinking quiet, not uncomfortable quiet.
Then he says, "Do you need money? Right now, before the installment clears?"
The bite of muffin in my mouth goes down the wrong pipe. I cough once, then twice.
Darius immediately reaches for the glass of water sitting beside me and slides it across the table.
"You okay?"
I stare at him.
"Did you just offer me money?"
His expression doesn't change.
"Darius."
"I didn't say loan."
"That is not better."
A corner of his mouth twitches.
"I'm just asking."
Heat creeps into my cheeks, which is ridiculous. It's not romantic. It's not even appropriate. It's just Darius being Darius and trying to solve a problem with the resources he has.
Still. Nobody has offered to catch me when I fall in a very long time.
I shake my head.
"The bonus from the project should cover the gap. I've already run the numbers." I wrap both hands around my coffee. "I just need everything to hold together long enough for the math to work out."
He studies me for a second, then nods. He doesn't argue.
Somehow, that's almost worse.
We sit there for a while. The oven timer goes off and I pull the second batch out.
He tells me about the first time he ever had a home-cooked meal, some detail from a foster family in Beaumont, a woman who made corn bread from scratch every Sunday whether anyone asked or not, and I don't write any of it down and he doesn't seem to expect me to.
By the time I'm setting the second batch on the cooling rack, it's past one.
***
At some point we moved from the kitchen table to the couch. I don't remember making the decision. It just happened.
My notebook is open beside me. His coffee sits forgotten on the table.
Darius is talking about something, and I should probably know what. Instead, I'm watching the way his sleeves are pushed up to his forearms, the way he takes up too much space on my couch, and the way he's looking at me.
Then his hand settles on my knee. It's an easy, absentminded touch, like he doesn't even realize he's doing it.
Every thought in my head disappears.
He keeps talking for another few seconds before he notices I'm not listening. His gaze drops to his hand and then lifts back to me.
The room goes quiet. Neither of us moves.
I can feel the warmth of his palm through my leggings. I can hear my own heartbeat. The look in his eyes is different now. Softer. Less guarded.
More dangerous.
His thumb shifts once against my knee. It's the smallest movement, but it feels like a lot more than that.
My breath catches. Darius's gaze drops briefly to my mouth before returning to my eyes.
Then he leans closer. Not enough to crowd me. Not enough to assume. Just enough to ask.
The air between us tightens. For one reckless second, I wonder what would happen if I met him halfway.
Heat crawls up my neck before I can stop it.
Then common sense returns.
I gather the empty coffee cups and carry them into the kitchen. My pulse is doing something deeply unprofessional.
I keep my back to him and wait for my pulse to stop acting like he almost kissed me.
"It's late," I say.
My voice comes out steadier than I feel. Darius nods.
Neither of us mentions what almost happened.
He grabs his coffee from the counter and heads for the door. When he reaches it, he pauses.
For a second, I think he's going to say something. Instead he opens the door.
"Good night, Claire."
The way he says my name does absolutely nothing to help the situation.
"Good night."
The door closes behind him. I lock it and lean back against the counter.
The apartment is finally quiet. I should be relieved.
Instead, I keep thinking about the look in his eyes when he leaned toward me. The way my heart forgot how to function for a second.
And before I can stop myself, my mind goes right back to that moment.
The worst part is how much I wanted him to keep going, and I really shouldn't have.
Instead, I close my eyes and immediately make everything worse, because in my imagination I don't reach for the coffee cups — I stay exactly where I am.
Darius notices. His gaze drops to my mouth, and this time neither of us pretends not to know why.
The distance between us disappears, and one second I'm trying to remember why this is a terrible idea, and the next his hand is at my waist, warm and steady enough to steal my breath.
"Dangerous," he murmurs, and the word settles low in my stomach as heat races down my spine.
I should step back, but I don't. His mouth brushes my ear, and before I can stop myself my hands are on him — broad shoulders, a hard chest, the ink winding up his arms disappearing beneath his sleeves, making me wonder where the rest of it goes.
My fingers slide over the muscles in his forearms, and it's a mistake — a big one — because the second I touch him, every sensible thought I've ever had threatens to evaporate.
Big mistake. No one should be allowed to have arms like this.
Not unless the goal is to ruin someone's judgment.
His hand tightens at my waist, the room suddenly smaller and warmer, and the look in his eyes makes it painfully clear that if I gave him an inch, he'd take the whole mile. The terrifying part is that for one reckless second, I think I'd let him.
I open my eyes. Absolutely not.
I grab the coffee cups and march them into the kitchen before my imagination gets any more creative.