Chapter 13
Claire
By the time I zipped up my bag and slipped my cardigan over my shoulder, I was more than ready to call it a day.
It had been one of those endless school days, glitter spills, two scraped knees, three friendship dramas, and a tearful lunchtime meltdown over a lost hairclip shaped like a bumblebee.
The usual chaos of teaching little kids.
The usual exhaustion that was somehow both draining and rewarding.
I had wanted to leave before Ethan and lily came back from their shopping. It should’ve been simple.
But then the front door opened, a burst of cold November air rolling in ahead of hurried footsteps and Lily barreled into the kitchen like a comet.
“Claire!” she squealed, hair a wild halo around her head.
I bent instinctively, catching her as she launched herself into my lap. “Hey, bug. You have fun?”
She nodded vigorously, strands of her messy hair sticking to her cheeks. I smoothed them back, fingers brushing through tangles the way I had since she was a toddler. My heart softened, then tightened.
Because if Lily was here…
He would be right behind her.
My pulse stumbled. For a second, just a second, I felt the urge to bolt. To grab my bag, mumble an excuse, and slip out the side door before the inevitable collision.
But I couldn’t move.
I forced myself to finish smoothing Lily’s hair, to keep my breathing measured even though the air felt charged, the way it always did when he was near, even after all these years.
I’d lied to myself when I told Emma I would be unaffected by him. That I was above it. That time and hurt and adulthood had sanded all the edges of that old, na?ve love down to nothing.
But standing there in the Walkers’ kitchen, Lily’s small arms still looped around my neck, I felt that old pull like a gravitational force, ancient, familiar and unwanted.
And then I felt it. That prickling awareness along my spine. That unmistakable sensation of being watched.
I turned.
And there he was.
Ethan Walker. In the flesh.
Not a memory, not a ghost. Not the disaster of a teenage dream I had spent a decade outgrowing.
Just Ethan.
I took in a shallow breath.
My body heated instantly, like it was conditioned for him, it betrayed me as it always did when he was near.
The inappropriate memory of his relentless mouth on me flooded my mind, how he’d suck bruises raw on my skin in his youthful inexperience, his lips and tongue leaving my skin hypersensitive, too tender to even bear the touch of fabric.
He used to keep me on edge, to make me ache for him even when he wasn’t there.
Now, just the sight of him was enough to make my breath feel heavy, my skin prickling with anticipation.
His chestnut-brown hair was still unruly, but longer now, brushing the edges of his temples.
Those storm-grey eyes, locked on to mine with an intensity that almost knocked me backward.
The faint scar on his right cheek, the one he’d gotten in high school and hated for years, no longer looked like something that marred him.
If anything, it sharpened him, aged him into someone more real and handsome.
He was broader now too. His shoulders filled out his shirt in a way they never used to. His arms, his stance, everything about him seemed heavier, steadier, like the years had carved beauty into him.
The boy I had loved had been beautiful.
The man standing in the Walker kitchen was devastating.
My throat tightened with something hot and unwelcome. A rush of memory, of teenage longing, of childish belief in impossible things. Of first love and first heartbreak and first everything.
I hated that my body remembered him. I hated even more that my heart did.
For one terrible moment, I felt tears threaten, sharp and sudden. Because there he was, alive and familiar in ways that hurt, different in ways that hurt worse and my heart twisted with the knowledge of everything we had been and everything we would never be.
I had missed him.
God help me, I had missed him.
And that realization felt like betrayal, to Brandon, to my growth, to the woman I’d fought so damn hard to become.
The young girl I had once been, the girl who had loved him with a blinding, reckless faith, rose for a heartbeat, starry-eyed and breathless.
But she disappeared just as quickly.
I exhaled slowly, letting the years settle back into my bones, the failure, the lessons carved into me through disappointment and healing, the steadiness I’d earned through sheer stubbornness.
I was not that girl anymore.
“I didn’t know you were still here,” Ethan said softly, almost cautiously.
His voice was deeper now. Rougher. Weathered by time in a way that sent an unwelcome shiver down my spine.
I straightened, shifting Lily to my hip. “I was just heading out.”
Lily twisted to look at him. “We bought snacks! Lots!”
Ethan managed a small smile. “We did.”
Our eyes met again over her shoulder, brief but enough to punch the air from my lungs. His gaze swept over me, slow and almost stunned. My dress, my cardigan, my braid, the freckles across my cheeks, details he used to know.
And for a moment, just one, fleeting moment, something flickered in his expression.
Recognition. Regret. Longing.
But I forced my shoulders back.
I refused to let old ghosts dictate the way I held myself.
“Lily,” I said gently, brushing a curl away from her forehead, “go tell your grandma I’m leaving, okay?”
She nodded, sliding down with a soft thump before dashing out of the kitchen. Silence settled in her wake, thick and stretched tight.
Ethan didn’t speak. Neither did I.
It felt strange, standing across from a man I had once known like the back of my hand. Stranger still that all I felt was a hurricane of contradiction inside me, wanting and resenting, remembering and resisting.
“You… look good, Claire,” he said finally.
I held his gaze. “I am good.”
He knew exactly what I meant.
I had built myself back up after the mess he had left. After betrayal and disillusionment. After every scar life had thrown at me.
I was not a girl shaped by fantasies anymore. I was a woman who lived in reality.
And Ethan Walker, this beautiful, complicated, destructive man, had no place in the person I had fought to become.
Even if some traitorous, buried part of me still clenched at the sight of him.
“You’re staying for a while?” I asked, keeping my voice level.
He ran a hand through his hair, exhaling. “Yeah. For now.”
“For Lily,” I said, not a question.
“For all of them,” he corrected.
A tiny warmth tugged at my chest, but I shut it down.
“Good,” I said. “She needs stability.”
Something like hurt flickered across his face, but he didn’t challenge me. He wouldn’t, not when I used that tone, the one that said a boundary was a boundary, no matter our history.
“I’m trying,” he murmured.
I nodded. Because despite everything, I believed him. Ethan had always tried. Just never hard enough when it came to us.
“I should get going,” I said, reaching for my bag.
He stepped aside automatically, giving me space. But when I walked past him, my arm brushed his lightly. Barely, just fabric on fabric.
And the contact shot through me like a spark. I hated that I felt it.
I hated that he did too, I could see it in the way his breath hitched, the way his eyes darkened for a fraction of a second.
But I kept moving. Because I was, older and hopefully wiser.
Even if my heart hadn’t quite remembered how to behave around him.
I stepped out into the hallway, closing the chapter of this moment with the quiet, certain click of my heels on the hardwood.
Whatever storm his presence brought with it…
I’d weather it.
I already had.