You couldn’t even get up one flight without turning into a team project.
Clara’s face flashed up next. Her smile over the table at La Casita. The way her bedroom eyes had gone bright and proud when I’d told her I was going to the site.Look at you, boss man.
She deserved that guy. The one she thought she was looking at.
Not the one who sat on a half-built staircase while his crew disassembled him so he wouldn’t fall on his face.
My grip on the wheel tightened until my knuckles ached.
She walked away from a life where her entire job was propping up a man. She lost herself trying to hold someone else together. How could I hand her a fresh version of the same goddamn thing and call it love?
Love.
That was what this had started to feel like. Her in my bed. Her in my truck. Her hand in mine at the farm, in town. A day of errands and coffee and plans that had tasted suspiciously like a future.
You really believed it, didn’t you?whispered the cruelest part of my brain.One good day and you started thinking you were whole.
My throat closed up.
Tears burned and spilled over, hot and unwanted, blurring the view of the half-plowed lot and the skeletal frame of the building outside. I swiped at them again, angry at myself for not getting a lid on it faster.
Maybe you can fake it in the kitchen, on a chair, in bed with the lights low.
Out there? On stairs and plywood and steel?
You’re a liability. A hazard your own guys have to plan around.
Clara deserved a man who didn’t need to be peeled off plywood in front of his employees. The mere thought of it was a nail driven straight through my chest.
My vision narrowed to the arc of the dashboard, the curve of my hands, the faint tremor that wouldn’t stop. I took one more shuddering breath, tried to cram everything back into the box it had clawed its way out of. It didn’t fit. Not really. But I got it shut enough to function.
“Enough,” I muttered.
My fingers found the ignition, turned the key. The engine rumbled to life beneath me, familiar and grounding in a way my own body no longer was. I shoved the truck into gear and pulled out of the lot, my world narrowed to the line of the road and the tight, punishing band around my ribs.
I drove toward home with my jaw clenched and my vision tunneling and chest in a vise, clinging to the one clear thought that cut through the noise.
I had dared to believe I was whole again.
The universe had made damn sure I remembered exactly what I was instead.
The house waswarm when I walked in, heat licking at my cheeks in a way that felt undeserved.
I forced my gait into something that looked like normal as I crossed the threshold, my keys biting into my palm. The stump burned where the socket rubbed wrong, and every step sent a little shock up my spine.
I pretended like it was nothing.
Clara sat at the kitchen table, laptop open and a scatter of books and printed reference photos spread around her. Late light from the window caught the loose pieces of her hair, turning them copper at the edges. She looked up the second the door shut, that easy, instinctive smile blooming before she had any idea what she was about to walk into.
“Hey, you,” she said, voice warm enough to slide right under my ribs. Her gaze swept over me, soft and appreciative in a way that used to make me stand taller. “How was your day, handsome?”
The words landed like gravel in my throat.
Handsome.The guy who had sat on his ass on a half-built staircase while his crew untangled him from his own leg. The guy who broke down and cried in his truck because stairs were too much to ask.
My jaw clenched.
“Fine.” The word came out flat and sharp at the edges.