TWENTY-SEVEN
WES
By the timethe sky went dark enough to press against the windows, the house felt different.
Lighter. Or maybe that was just me.
My leg barely twinged as I moved around the kitchen, wallet and keys in one hand, the other braced on the counter more out of habit than necessity. Phantom pain that usually sat in the background like white noise had gone quiet, replaced by something else buzzing under my skin.
Every time my brain slipped, it went right back to last night.
Clara’s thighs trembling around my head. Her fingers in my hair, tight and desperate as she rode my face. The way her whole body had gone tight and then loose all at once when she came, my name broken open on her tongue. The dazed, stunned little smile afterward when I’d gently wiped her down with a towel.
Lesson two, my ass.It was a highlight reel I had no business replaying as many times as I had today.
I’d gotten hard twice just thinking about it.
The weirdest part was what didn’t come after. No crash into shame. No mental replay of every worst-case scenario. Just that one simple, stunned thought circling like a hawk.
I made her feel that good.
Clara’s footsteps sounded behind me as she crossed to the counter, bare feet, loose T-shirt, tiny shorts that should have been illegal inside my house. She popped open the fridge, grabbed the bowl of grapes, and used her hip to nudge the door shut. When she turned toward me, she’d already shoved two grapes into her mouth, cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk.
“Hi,” she managed around them, cheeks rounding, eyes going a little wide like she’d only just remembered exactly what my mouth had been doing the last time we were face-to-face like this.
Heat crawled up my neck. “Hey,” I said, and my voice came out low and dark.
She chewed quickly, hand cupped under her chin in case anything betrayed her. A blush rose in two pink flags on her cheeks, climbing toward her ears. It matched the one burning under my skin.
Her gaze flicked over me—the jeans, the hoodie, the keys in my hand. “Nerd Night?” she asked, like it was the most normal question in the world.
I huffed out a small laugh. “Yeah,” I said. “Figured I should remind them I’m not actually a ghost.”
Her mouth curved, soft and a little shy. “Tell Hayes I say hi,” she said. “And try not to let Brody bully you into a character death this time.”
“Unlikely,” I muttered. “He’s been trying to kill me since middle school. Dice just give him new ideas.”
She grinned around another grape, and something in my chest did an alarming, unfamiliar thing—lifted, instead of sinking.
We’d spent the whole day orbiting each other in this new, careful gravity—brushes in the hallway, shared coffee, a couple of “you good?” check-ins that carried about twelve more questions underneath. No awkward apologies. No pretendinglast night hadn’t happened. Just ... awareness. More heat under the surface.
For the first time in too long, the idea of leaving the house didn’t feel like work. It felt like proof. That I wasn’t sliding back into the cave. That things could shift in both directions.
“Don’t wait up,” I said, twisting the cap off my water.
She tilted her head, eyes bright. “Liar,” she said lightly.
She wasn’t wrong. I was already planning to text her when the game inevitably went off the rails.
I pocketed my keys, leg steady as I crossed to the door. The familiar weight of my prosthetic felt ... right tonight. Not like a warning label. Like a piece of me that had carried me through something hard and was still here.
The cold hit my face as I stepped onto the porch, breath fogging on the exhale. For once, the tightness in my chest had nothing to do with dread.
I locked the door behind me, glanced once at the warm rectangle of light where I knew she was still standing with that damn bowl of grapes, and headed for the truck.
The condoms wereon the back wall under a flickering strip of fluorescent lights that made everything look slightly more tragic than it needed to.
I stood there, hands on my hips, staring at three shelves’ worth of latex like they were an exam I hadn’t studied for.