The guy—a local teacher, maybe, that I’d seen at the grocery store—stuck out his hand. “You do client work?”
“Depends on the client,” I said, then sharpened my mouth into something like a smile. “But yeah. I do.”
His grip was firm, respectful, not pitying. My leg was bare in shorts, carbon and metal catching the light. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t have the itch to pull fabric over it or find a table to sit behind.
The prosthetic was a steady and welcomed part of me, familiar now instead of foreign. I’d spent a lot of hours in my therapist’s office talking about exactly that—the difference between hiding and healing. It still pissed me off that he was usually right.
Across the room, Clara caught my eye.
She was in her element and completely out of her depth at the same time—laughing with Elodie; answering questions from the owner of the bakery, who wanted to book her services;keeping mental track of the food table and the sign-up sheet and the trash can without missing a beat.
The thing that wrecked me was that she looked steady. She wasn’t performing or pretending. She was simply herself. Clara had taken an engagement ring that used to feel like a shackle and turned it into walls and windows and a sign with her name on it.
And she’d done the same thing to me—taken all the jagged pieces and helped me build something out of them instead of just dodging the sharp edges.
Clara broke away from the little knot of people, weaving through the crowd toward me. Her dress skimmed her thighs, and I itched to feel her smooth skin.
She stopped in front of me, close enough that I could smell her perfume under the scent of coffee and sugar. Her smile tilted, soft and private at the edges.
“How’s it looking from the contractor’s perspective?” she asked. “Anything out of plumb?”
“That sign’s crooked,” I teased.
She bumped my shoulder, eyes laughing. “Such a shit stirrer.”
“Everything looks good,” I said quietly, taking a breath of her hair. “Especially you.”
Her throat moved as she swallowed. With all of Star Harbor pressing in around us, it felt like it was just the two of us in an empty shell of a building again—her with a wild idea, me with a toolbox and a dozen ideas I couldn’t wait to try.
Clara sighed and leaned her head on my shoulder. “I couldn’t have done it without you, ya know.”
I shook my head. “You’d have ripped up that carpet with your bare hands and charmed half this town to help if you needed to. You’d have been fine.”
She tipped her head, studying me. “Maybe.” Her smile widened. “But I’m really glad I didn’t have to.”
Winnie was spinning in a circle and talking about fairies. Elodie’s happy laugh floated across the air as she listened to Cal’s son Levi tell a story. Hayes stole another mini tart and popped it into his mouth in one bite. The studio filled up with voices and the scrape of shoes and the kind of easy, messy noise I’d once thought was gone from my life for good.
I slid my hand into Clara’s, just long enough to feel her fingers squeeze back before she turned to greet the next curious person.
It was a future I hadn’t dared to let myself picture.
And her. Always her.
The door swung open hard enough to rattle the bell, and Brody stepped in, arms wrapped around a massive vintage mirror, gilt frame and all, like he’d wrestled it away from an old lady or a haunted house.
“Delivery for Ms. Darling,” he grunted. “If I walk into one more door with this thing, I’m billing you hazard pay.”
“Careful,” Clara called, half laughing, half horrified. “If you break it, that’s seven years of bad luck on my insurance policy. What is this?”
He pivoted sideways, barely missing a hanging plant. He set it down and exhaled, placing his hands on his hips. He jerked his head toward Kit. “This one insisted on picking it up from the side of the road. She said, and I quote: ‘If you don’t do this for me, I am cutting off your balls.’”
Kit popped out from behind his frame with a grin. “Men are too easy.”
He adjusted his grip and shot her a lazy grin over the top of the frame. “Always a pleasure to serve you, Kitten.”
Kit visibly gagged at the ridiculous nickname. “Call me that again and I’m tilting this thing so it only reflects your receding hairline.”
Brody barked out a laugh, but his hand shot up to his hair anyway.