TWENTY-TWO
CLARA
The back roomof the Crooked Spine bookstore looked like a cozy witch’s cottage.
Mismatched candles lined every flat surface. Teacups and saucers were scattered on end tables. There were books stacked in leaning towers, a basket in the middle of the room overflowing with yarn, and a cluster of women already half settled into armchairs and mismatched dining chairs, all of them with needles flashing in their hands like this was some kind of secret coven.
Which, maybe, it kind of was.
“Clara!” Mom waved me in with the bossy warmth of a woman who had run a household full of rowdy kids and never really stopped. “You’re late.”
“You’re early,” Kit countered, one leg slung over the arm of her chair, purple yarn tangling around her wrist. “Time is fake. Look at this thing, Mom. I’m knittingsin.”
Thethingin question was her eggplant.
Not a tasteful, abstract interpretation of one. A very large, aggressively anatomical knitted eggplant.
A laugh sputtered between my lips. “Oh my god.”
Mom groaned. “Katherine Elizabeth Darling, can you please make something that does not make me question my parenting choices?”
“It’s to adorn my smutty bookshelf,” Kit said, unbothered. “I’m providing joy and art. Also, the pattern called for worsted weight. I only had bulky. Now it’s ... delightfully large.”
Selene’s mouth curved as she lifted her own knitting, the picture of calm competence in black leggings and a cardigan the color of moss. Her stitches were even and perfect as a row of soldiers. “That is not bulky. That is a weapon.”
“It’s bigger than my forearm,” Elodie said from the corner, where she was attempting something cable-knit and already making it look annoyingly easy. “I’m not sure there’s a real-life man who can live up to whatever you’re manifesting there.”
Kit’s eyes slid to me, wicked and sharp. “A girl can dream.”
Heat slammed into my face so fast I nearly choked on my own tongue.
Mom’s gaze sharpened. “Kit.”
“What?” Kit blinked innocently, but failed.
“Come on, Kit. Stop giving Mom a heart attack.” Elodie’s voice held the warning of an older sister who had seen this shit show before.
I busied myself while images flashed across my brain with no respect for my sanity—Wes in the snow, Wes under me, Wes’s mouth on mine, Wes’s hand on my neck. Wes in the kitchen, damp hair, clean jaw, a whole lot of him I had absolutely no business remembering in such vivid detail.
I focused hard on my tote bag and pulled out my knitting.
The lumpy, half-mangled scarf sagged between my needles like it knew it was a disappointment.
“I genuinely don’t know what this is going to be yet,” I said, dropping into the empty chair between Selene and Elodie. “Could be a scarf. Could be a cry for help.”
Helen, the unofficial leader of the Keepers, snorted. She leaned forward to get a better look, her tight gray curls pinned back, readers perched on the end of her nose. “Oh, it’s not that bad,” she said kindly. “You only mangled ... this first half.”
“Encouraging,” I muttered.
Wes’s voice slid into my head, low and annoyingly sure, from earlier that morning on the couch.
You’re strangling it.
My fingers flexed around the yarn, remembering the way he’d adjusted my grip. I tried to remember I needed less of a death grip and more gentle guiding. The thought of his big hands unexpectedly careful as they’d brushed mine sent a tingle down my spine. He had sat there on his couch, glasses on, telling me his grandmother had taught him and Mary when they were kids, like it was nothing. Like mentioning his sister wasn’t opening a door he usually kept bolted shut.
It was a simple thing. A soft thing. A piece of himself he’d handed over without making a big deal about it.
My chest did that quiet, traitorous ache.