THIRTY-FIVE
WES
I staredat the door like it might crack open and rewind the last ten minutes if I glared hard enough.
It didn’t. Obviously.
The house was stupidly quiet. No Clara humming under her breath in the kitchen. No soft pad of her feet on the stairs. Just the tick of the heater, the faint rattle of the vent, and the echo of the door closing behind her playing on a loop in my skull.
It felt like she’d taken the center of the place with her. Like the walls were still here, the furniture still in the same spots, my boots still by the mat—but the gravity was gone.
I love you.
The words hit first. They always did.
I love you. I also love myself. I can’t stay in a house where you choose your fear over both of us.
My jaw clenched until it hurt. I could still see her, duffel strap biting into her shoulder, eyes bright and steady and so damn sure.
She told you exactly what she needed.
You picked fear anyway.
She asked you to show up. You ran.
I dragged a hand over my face, palm scraping against stubble. The living room blurred at the edges—same couch, same coffee table, same stack of mail on the console. Same life I’d been pacing circles around for months.
Except it wasn’t the same. Not really.
I could see myself in the reflection of the dark TV screen—broad shoulders, bad leg, haunted eyes. The guy who had slept on the couch because stairs felt like enemies. The guy who’d timed showers to when someone else was home, just in case. The guy who’d let the house go quiet and stale because the alternative was letting anybody see how far he’d fallen.
Then Clara had walked in with her boxes and her rules and her ridiculous optimism and, somehow, breathing hadn’t felt like a chore anymore.
And I’d still managed to drive her out.
My feet carried me to the kitchen without checking in with my brain. Habit. Muscle memory.
I opened the cabinet without thinking. The good bourbon sat where it always did, amber and patient, promising quiet in a glass. I curled my fingers around the neck of the bottle, thumb rubbing over the label.
I could pour some into my coffee.
Or skip the coffee and just go straight for the hard reset. A couple of big swallows, let everything fuzz at the edges until her voice didn’t sound so clear. Until my body stopped remembering the exact weight of her curled against me in my bed. Until my chest didn’t feel like someone had wedged a fist behind my ribs and just ... left it there.
My grip tightened.
I set the bottle back down and shut the cabinet hard enough that the door rattled.
The sound cracked through the quiet, sharp and ugly. It didn’t make me feel better. It didn’t do anything except prove, once again, that I could make noise and still be a coward.
If I was going to hurt, I was going to know exactly why. I didn’t want to drink her into a blur. I wanted every second of this to sting.
I leaned back against the counter, leg throbbing deep in the socket, and stared at nothing.
The old script kicked in, automatic as breathing.
You flew too close to the sun, Vaughn. Thought you were back. Thought you could be that guy again. The one who took stairs without thinking. The one who walked a jobsite without turning into a safety hazard. The one who could stand next to a woman like Clara and not drag her down with him.
Look how that turned out.