SEVENTEEN
CLARA
I examinedthe half-mangled attempt at a scarf and the ball of yarn that had somehow developed a knotty, vengeful personality. My phone went on the armrest, a tutorial video already queued up and chirping in a soothing British voice about casting on like it was no big deal.
A few minutes in, I was ready to fight her.
The stitches on my needle looked nothing like the neat little row on the screen. Mine were crooked and tight in some places, sagging and loose in others, like I was drunk and had tried to build a fence out of spaghetti. The yarn snagged around my fingers, the strand cutting across my palm in a way that made my hand cramp. Every time I tried to fix one loop, three others went rogue.
Outside, the snow had brightened the whole room. Light bounced off the drifts and poured through the windows, crisp and cold. It made the pines at the edge of the property glow dark and sharp. It made the inside of Wes’s house feel like a snow globe—quiet, contained, full of things swirling that pretended to be still.
Across from me, Wes shifted on the couch.
He’d grabbed a book from the stack on the side table, stretched out, and angled himself toward the corner cushion—the same spot he always claimed, like his body didn’t know how to sit anywhere else.
I pretended not to notice as he settled deeper into the cushions—a long, solid line, ankle propped on his knee, one arm slung along the back like he had no idea what he was doing to the air molecules between us. The spine of the book was already worn, the cover catching a bit of the winter light.
He reached over, picked up a pair of glasses, and slid them on.
Something low and traitorous fluttered in my stomach.
They were plain black frames, nothing flashy, just practical and solid. On his face, they turned into a whole situation. They sharpened his eyes, framed his cheekbones, made his mouth look fuller when he frowned at the page. The whole effect screamed hot professor who growls across the desk and knows exactly what to do with his hands.
Slutty little glasses.
My stomach dipped like I’d missed a step on the stairs. Heat fluttered low in my belly, ridiculous and insistent.
I yanked my attention back to the yarn before he could look up and catch me ogling him like a creep. On my phone, the woman’s soothing voice chirped, “If your tension is uneven, don’t worry, that’s completely normal as you?—”
“Why is this so freaking hard?” I hissed at the yarn, stabbing the needle through a loop that might have been correct three steps ago.
A beat passed.
“You’re strangling it,” Wes said, voice low, without looking up from his book.
My head snapped toward him. “Excuse me?”
The corner of his mouth kicked, the closest thing I’d seen to a smile this early in the day. His gaze stayed on the page. “The yarn. You’re pulling it like it owes you money.”
“I am not,” I said automatically, glancing down and realizing he was one hundred percent correct. The yarn was pulled so tight between stitches it looked like a tiny, angry fence.
I glared at it. “Know-it-all.”
Wes made a quiet sound that might have been a laugh and finally lifted his eyes.
It was stupid how much that small shift affected me. One second, he was a guy on a couch. The next, his attention was on me—glasses catching a sliver of light, irises a deep, complicated blue behind them, amusement softening the usual hard line of his mouth.
His gaze dropped to my hands, taking in the needles, the uneven row, the loop of yarn tangled awkwardly around one finger.
“Newfound hobby?” he asked.
“Yes,” I gritted out. “I’m decompressing. Coming offline.Relaxing.”
His brows lifted. “How’s that working out for you?”
“Sorelaxed.” I huffed and nudged my phone with the back of my knuckles. “The tutorial says this is ‘an easy beginner pattern’ and that anyone can do it. Which is a lie, by the way.”
The corner of his mouth tugged again. “New hobbies take time. You’ll get there.”