She went very still.
For one bare heartbeat everything she was feeling showed—hope cracking right down the middle, confusion rushing in behind it. Then her features rearranged themselves with brutal efficiency, expression smoothing out like she’d ironed it flat.
“Right.” She nodded once, eyes dropping to somewhere over my shoulder. “Obviously. It was just an idea.”
Her hand shoved in her pocket, then came out again like she needed something to do with her hands. A thin little smile tugged at her mouth, all edges and no heat.
“Forget I said anything,” she added, voice going bright in a way that made my chest hurt. “Blame the cider.”
I hated that I could hear the crack under the joke.
“Clara—” I started, reaching for something I couldn’t even name.
She was already pulling back, putting space between us one careful step at a time. “It’s fine, Wes,” she said, not quite looking at me. “Seriously. I’m going to go wash the bar off me and try not to die of humiliation.”
The laugh she tacked on was weightless and wrong.
She turned toward the stairs. The sway of her hair, the line of her shoulders, the stiff set of her spine—all of it pulled away from me. At the bottom step, she paused just long enough to toss “Good night, Wes” over her shoulder, like it cost her nothing.
“Good night,” I managed.
Her feet thudded softly on the stairs, that familiar rhythm climbing higher, then fading. A door clicked shut down the hall, quiet as a pin falling.
The silence that rushed in after her was vicious.
My body still ached with want, cock hard and heavy, skin buzzing with the memory of her pressed against me in the snow and again when we danced. Every cell I owned was screaming that I had just told the one woman I actually wanted that I did not want her.
Regret hit so fast I almost swayed.
You fucking idiot.
The words echoed in my skull, sharp and accurate. She had offered me trust and heat and a way back into a part of myself I missed so much it made me mean. I had thrown up a wall and told her no because the alternative scared the shit out of me.
Relief slid under the regret like oil—thin, ugly, and immediate. No pressure. No test I could fail. No chance of herwatching my leg buckle or my body short-circuit and realizing I was every worst-case scenario I already believed about myself.
Shame rose right on its heels.
She had heard exactly what I had not meant to say: notI am scared, notI do not deserve you, notyour brother trusts me with you and I am already hanging on by a thread.
Just no.
No to her. No to the plan. No to the possibility that any of this could be something other than pain.
Upstairs, the pipes creaked as water started in the bathroom. The sound crawled over my skin, a reminder that she was up there, stripping off that bar air, cheeks probably still pink from dancing, washing away a night I had just managed to make worse.
My hand clenched on the couch cushion until my knuckles ached.
Every part of me felt wrong.
Silence pressed in on me from all sides.
My pulse still hammered from the conversation, too fast and uneven, like my body was trying to outrun the words I’d already said.
No.
The look on her face replayed, over and over, like a bad highlight reel. That tiny flinch. The way her eyes had gone bright and flat at the same time. The brittle joke she’d wrapped around herself like armor because I’d been too much of a coward to wrap anything else around her.
With a shake of my head, I gripped the banister and hauled myself up the stairs without another thought. Her door was halfway down the hall, light leaking in a thin line at the bottom.