The room looked . . . tired.
Like I’d moved my whole life down here and let it shrink to the width of one piece of furniture.
Heat pulsed low in my gut, equal parts irritation and something close to shame. Clara hadn’t said a word about it, which was almost worse. She’d just looked toward the living room with that careful, too-gentle expression, then excused herself like sitting next to me on that couch would’ve been more dangerous than standing with me in the kitchen.
Dinner was really nice, Wes.
Nice.
I dragged a hand down my face and crossed the room in short, irritated strides, like I could outwork whatever was crawling under my skin.
The first thing I did was grab an empty wrapper off the coffee table and shove it into the trash. Then another. Then a stack of mail I’d been ignoring because opening it required feeling responsible for something again. I straightened a throw pillow that didn’t need straightening, folded the blanket with sharp, impatient snaps, and lined the pill bottles into a neater row like organization could erase what they represented.
My movements came in bursts, the way my brain did things lately—go until the energy ran out and stop before the thoughts caught up.
The quiet in the house pressed closer.
I stood in the center of the living room, staring at the couch like it was evidence of my fall from grace.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t go upstairs.
My body could climb stairs. It had climbed them plenty of times in PT, under fluorescent lights and other people’s eyes,with a therapist counting my steps like each one was a victory. I could do it.
My brain was a different story.
Upstairs meant distance. Upstairs meant being far from the front door, far from the exit, far from the ground level where I could get out if something went wrong. Upstairs meant that stupid fear I’d never told anyone about—the irrational, humiliating certainty that if there was a fire, if something happened, if I woke in the dark and couldn’t get my leg on fast enough, I’d be trapped.
It was ridiculous, but it was real and had taken root.
The couch had become my compromise. My surrender. My safety net.
Tonight, after almost kissing Clara in my kitchen like every rule we hadn’t said out loud didn’t exist, it felt like a spotlight.
My gaze drifted, uninvited, toward the staircase at the back of the house.
The banister caught the dim light. The steps rose clean and steep, the wood polished and beautiful—the kind of staircase I used to take pride in. I had designed it. Built it. Lived in it like a man who never thought his own home could become an obstacle course.
Clara had walked through this house and seen the way I lived now. Had stood in my kitchen and almost let me kiss her, even knowing all of it. She’d been quiet about what she thought, which only made it louder in my head.
He should be sleeping upstairs.
His bedroom is right there.
He’s choosing this.
A soft sound came from above—something settling, a floorboard giving under weight, a reminder that Clara was up there, alive and moving in the room across from mine. Thewoman I’d almost kissed. The woman I had absolutely no business wanting.
My lungs tightened.
This was what she’d moved into. A house where the upstairs belonged to a ghost, and the man downstairs pretended he didn’t notice.
I took a slow breath and walked to the bottom of the stairs.
My hand slid onto the banister. The wood was smooth under my palm, familiar in a way that should have steadied me. My prosthetic felt secure tonight, the liner fitted right, the subtle pressure at my residual limb a reminder that my body was doing what it could. Phantom pain fizzed in the background like static, never gone, but quieter than usual.
I stared up.
The hallway light upstairs was off. The landing was dim, lit only by the faint spill from Clara’s room.