14. Chapter 14
Darius
I'm adjusting the radio when Claire steps outside, and the sight of her knocks the rest of the world out of focus.
She's in a soft blue dress, her hair down around her shoulders, a small gold cross resting at her collarbone. Simple. Calm. Beautiful.
She opens the passenger door, and for a second all I can do is take her in.
"Hello," she says, buckling her seatbelt.
"Hey," I manage, trying not to stare.
We pull onto the road, and that's when I notice it.
The quiet. Not the focused kind she gets when she's planning something or mentally organizing a day. This is different. She sits with her hands folded in her lap, watching the city slide past the window, her expression soft and far away.
Something's on her mind. And for the first time, I want to know what it is.
I keep my eyes on the road and let it sit for a few minutes before I glance at her again. Still quiet.
Something tightens in my chest that I don't want to look at directly.
I keep coming back to what she told me in the stairwell — that her father wants her to call it off, that he thinks a man like me takes good women down with him.
He's not wrong about my record. And the fact that he said it out loud, to her, about me, sits somewhere I can't shake it loose from.
Maybe it got to her. Maybe she's sitting there doing the math — her father's disapproval, her career, the whole arrangement — and the number she's coming up with isn't good. Maybe she's looking at me the same way he does.
A liability with upside.
I don't ask. I just drive.
And there it is — that familiar pull in my gut, right before something good decides it doesn't want me after all.
***
We pull into the church parking lot, and I'm still trying to figure out why Claire's been so quiet when I see her.
She steps past our row — bright sundress, kid on her hip — and she’s the sort of woman a man notices without meaning to. My eyes go before my brain does.
Old habits. Bad ones.
"Hey," Claire says loudly.
I face forward. "What?"
"You do remember you're engaged to me, right?"
"I wasn't —"
Nope. Absolutely not.
There is no version of that sentence that ends with me alive.
"I was checking the parking situation."
She turns just enough to pin me with a look that feels like she's testing whether she can set me on fire using only her eyes. Like she's deciding whether to laugh, lecture me, or leave me in the car to think about my choices.
"There are twelve open spots, Darius."
"You never know," I mutter.
She faces forward again, but a smile tugs at her mouth — the kind that says she's amused and annoyed and maybe a little pleased she caught me slipping.
I don't say another word until we're inside.
***
The church is smaller than Lakewood, no stadium screens or light rigs, just wood pews and stained glass and the kind of quiet that makes you sit up straighter.
A few heads turn when we walk in. Claire handles it the way she handles everything — steady eye contact, easy smile, sits down like she belongs.
I sit beside her and pick up the bulletin.
The bulletin is four pages long.
I read it twice and we are still three minutes from the opening prayer.
The pastor's name is Pastor Ellison. He wears reading glasses and speaks like a man who has practiced saying hard things gently, and I decide within the first five minutes that he is not someone I can charm.
He starts talking about joy, about community, about showing up. I nod along. This is manageable.
Ten minutes in, my eyelids start their slow campaign against me.
Fifteen minutes in, I lose the battle.
My chin drops. My eyes close. The pew is not comfortable, but comfort is not the requirement for sleep apparently —
Claire's elbow connects with my ribs.
Hard.
I sit up straight and press my lips together.
She does not look at me. She is watching the pulpit with perfect attention, back straight, hands folded, the picture of a woman who has never once fallen asleep in church.
I lean one inch toward her ear. "I was resting my eyes."
"You were snoring."
"I don't snore."
"You made a sound."
"That was breathing."
"Darius." Still not looking at me. "I could be at home watching Grey's Anatomy right now. You owe me a full sermon."
I face forward and breathe through my nose.
***
Pastor Ellison shifts about ten minutes in. One second he's talking about joy, and the next he pivots like he's been waiting for the perfect moment to drop the hammer.
Now he's talking about guilt.
Not the soft kind — the kind you earn by doing something you knew better than to do, and doing it anyway.
He says guilt keeps you twisted backward, dragging around a moment that's already over, while responsibility forces you to face forward.
Same weight in the chest, completely different direction.
Something in me tightens. Is he talking about me? Why does this feel personal? Like he's reading straight off a page I never meant anyone to see.
My right hand drifts to my left forearm before I even register the movement.
A nervous habit, the kind you pick up when something hits too close and you're trying to keep your face neutral.
It's only when my fingers brush skin that I realize what I'm doing — rubbing the same spot I always do when something is working its way through me.
I don't call attention to it. I just let my hand rest there, steadying myself while the pastor keeps talking like he's aiming every word straight at me.
Monica called yesterday. Through the prison system's automated line, so there's a robotic intro before her voice comes through — and then there she is.
Thin and careful, like she's holding something she's afraid to drop.
Hey, baby boy. I've been watching the news.
I just want you to know I'm so proud of you.
I love you. I'm sorry. That's it. Thirty seconds, maybe less.
I've listened to it four times and haven't called back.
I kept the birthday cards she sent to the foster home. Every one of them, in a box under my bed, because I didn't know what else to do with proof that she was thinking about me. I read them alone, never told anyone, and spent the next twenty years pretending they didn't exist.
And every time I read one, the anger came right behind it. Because if she loved me enough to send a card, why did she leave us alone that day? Why wasn't that love enough to make her stay?
Pastor Ellison says: "Shame chains you to yesterday. Accountability opens the door to tomorrow. Forgiveness is the courage to walk through it."
I stare at the stained glass above the altar.
Claire is singing softly beside me, just under her breath, the words already familiar to her. She doesn't check to see if I'm okay. She just keeps singing.
That's the thing about her. She sees the tell — thumb to the tattoo, jaw going tight, all of it — and she never makes it a production.
I leave my fingers on Ethan's name until the hymn ends.
***
Outside on the church steps, the evening is cool in that early-fall way, the sky still holding the last of the light. Claire stands beside me while the congregation filters out around us, and she waits until we have a little space before she asks.
"What were you thinking about? During the sermon."
Not are you okay. Not do you want to talk about it. Just: what were you thinking about.
I watch a family cross the parking lot, two little kids running ahead of their parents. Then I pull out my phone and find the voicemail.
"My mother called yesterday. Through the prison system." I hand her the phone. "I haven't called back."
She listens to it. Listens again. Hands the phone back.
"What do you want to do about it?"
"I don't know."
She nods like that's a complete answer.
"That's the most honest thing I've heard you say," she says. Not teasing. Just true.
***
We walk back through the neighborhood, past a row of bungalows with their porch lights glowing, and the quiet between us is easy. The kind that lets you think without feeling alone.
I tell her about Coach Mercer.
About the Northside Community Center — the one that always smelled like gym rubber, sweat, and whatever snack the after-school program was handing out.
About the day a ten-year-old kid with too much anger and nowhere to put it got handed a football and told to run a post route.
And how Mercer didn't laugh when I messed it up.
He just showed me again. And again. And again.
"He kept showing up," I say. "Every Saturday. Every week. Four years straight. He didn't care that I was a foster kid or that I didn't know how to act half the time. He just… stayed."
Claire listens like she's storing every word.
"He taught me how to run routes, sure. But he also taught me how to show up.
How to work. How to believe I could be something other than a statistic.
" I shake my head, remembering. "He was there the day I got my scholarship offer.
And he was standing right next to me when I got drafted.
Like he'd known the whole time I'd make it. "
Claire's voice is soft when she finally speaks. "He sounds like the kind of person who changes everything."
"Yeah," I say. "He was."
We keep walking, and the air feels lighter. She bumps her shoulder against mine, just barely, and I don't know if she means to — but it feels like she does.
Then she says: "The first time I gave a briefing in front of a full executive room, I shook so badly I held the podium with both hands. The whole thing. Fifteen minutes. Both hands, white-knuckle grip, hoping nobody was looking at my arms."
"Did they notice?"
"One guy in the front row definitely noticed."
"What'd you do?"
"I held on tighter and kept talking." She shrugs. "You don't get a second chance to show them you can handle the room. So I handled it."
I look at her. "How old were you?"
"Twenty-four."
"You had no business being that composed at twenty-four."
"I had no business being in that room at twenty-four." She smiles. "But I was there."
We walk in silence for a while, the kind that doesn't press or demand anything. Claire doesn't rush to fill it. She just walks beside me, steady, like she knows the weight of what I said and isn't afraid to hold a corner of it with me.
I'm the one who feels it shift first — something loosening in my chest, something I didn't expect. I haven't told that story in years. Haven't trusted anyone with it. Most people get the highlight reel, the polished version. Not the truth.
But with her… it came out easy.
For the first time in a long time, talking about where I came from doesn't feel like reopening a wound. It feels like something I survived. Something I built from.
And walking next to her, it feels even more true.
***
We reach the car, and I open the passenger door for her. She turns like she's about to say something, but the words never make it out. Instead, she steps closer.
She looks up at me, steady and sure, and something in my chest settles.
I lift my hands to her jaw, slow and careful, the way I've been thinking about since Charlotte. No rush. No performance. No one to see it but us.
She leans in.
The kiss is quiet. Intentional. A choice we're both making with our eyes open, not a moment that got away from us. Her hands rest against my chest, her breath softening, the world narrowing to the space we're standing in.
We stay like that for a long time, the kind of long that doesn't need to be measured.
When we finally get in the car, I set a piece of cinnamon gum on the dashboard without saying why. She picks it up, turns it between her fingers, and keeps it there like it means something.
***
I park outside her building and neither of us moves to get out.
"I want to go see her," I say. "Monica." The name still feels strange in my mouth, like a word in a language I haven't spoken in years. "Not to forgive her. Not yet. I just — I need to look at her and understand something. I don't know what exactly."
Claire is quiet for a second.
"Do you want me to come with you?"
I don't even think about it. "Yeah."
"Okay." She pulls out her phone. "I'll find the visiting schedule in the morning."
We sit there for a minute, both of us facing forward, both of us pretending we're not still feeling the echo of what just happened.
My pulse finally settles. My shoulders drop.
For the first time in a long time, the day feels like it's ending in the right place.
Like maybe I'm ending in the right place.
Nothing about my life has been simple lately, but this — her, tonight, the quiet between us — feels like something I could build on. Something steady. Something good.
I pull up to her building twenty minutes later and she gathers her coat without rushing. At the door she turns and looks at me through the passenger window, and for a second neither of us says anything. Then she gives me a small smile — real, not professional — and goes inside.
I sit at the curb until the lobby light swallows her.
Then I pull onto the highway and let the engine open up, the city blurring past on both sides, and something in my chest still feels warm and loose in a way I don't have a name for yet.
My phone lights up on the console.
I glance down.
Camille Pierce.
Fuck.