Clara’s arms tightened around him, her breath a steady rise and fall beneath his cheek. The silence stretched, warm and heavy, until it became something else entirely, a cocoon. The kind of quiet he’d never been able to hold with anyone else.
He realised with a jolt that his hands were clutching her too tightly, his fingers digging into her waist. He started to loosen his grip, to apologise, but she only smoothed her hand down his back and whispered, “Don’t. Just… stay.”
So, he stayed.
Minutes passed. His breathing evened out, though the storm in his chest still churned. Words pressed against his throat, words he’d never said out loud, not even to the team who trusted him with their lives. “I don’t… fit,” he said finally, the words raw, half-broken. “Not in rooms. Not in conversations. Even with them, my family. I know they love me, but I miss cues, or I go too deep, or I freeze. And then I watch them all laughing, easy, and I feel…” His voice cracked. “Wrong. Like I’m defective.”
Clara shifted beneath him until her chin rested lightly on his head. “Jonas,” she murmured, and the way she said his name, soft, sure, made his chest ache. “You’re not defective,” she said. “You’re… you. And I think the world’s better for it.”
His throat closed. He clung tighter, burying his face against her, hoping she didn’t notice the dampness at the corner of his eyes.
“I hated school,” he admitted in a rush, like pulling thorns from his skin. “I was bored. Too fast for the lessons, too slow with the kids. My mum tried. God, she tried, but I always felt outside. Computers made sense. Code made sense. People…” He gave a low, bitter laugh. “People are chaos. I can predict a system down to its last line, but I can’t predict what someone will say when they look me in the eye.”
Clara’s fingers carded through his hair again, gentle, soothing. “Maybe that’s why you see people so clearly, even when you think you don’t. You notice the details the rest of us miss. You notice pain because you’ve carried it. That doesn’t make you wrong, Jonas. It makes you rare.”
Her words settled in him like a balm, but he shook his head, still tangled in the net of his own doubts. “And yet I let them take me. I let them hurt me. I wasn’t strong enough.”
Clara pulled back slightly, just enough to tilt his face up so he had to meet her eyes. “You survived them,” she said, fierce now. “That’s strength. That’s everything.”
His chest heaved. He searched her face for any flicker of pity, of disgust, but all he saw was fire. Fire for him.
Something loosened inside him, something he hadn’t realised was clenched so tight. His arms wound around her waist again, holding on like he’d come apart without her. Their legs tangled together, her warmth seeping into him, their bodies fitted as if they’d always been meant to lie this way.
For a while, neither spoke, just breathed. Then Clara’s voice broke the silence, low and steady. “Do you know what it feels like,” she whispered, “to live your whole life as a disappointment? To smile, to nod, to accept their rules even as they squeeze the air out of you. I’m marrying a man I don’t love to keep my parents happy. To keep their house. Their reputation. Like I’m a bargaining chip, not a person.”
He lifted his head a fraction, staring at her. Her eyes glistened, but she wasn’t crying. She was burning, the way he’d just seen in the mirror of her gaze.
“I hate it,” she admitted. “I hate myself for being too weak to walk away. For letting them do this to me.”
Jonas reached up, cupped her cheek, his thumb brushing the dampness there. “You’re not weak,” he said, the words torn from the core of him. “You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met. You look them in the eye, and you endure. You survive them.”
Her breath shivered out. She closed her eyes, pressed her cheek into his palm.
“And you’re not fucking marrying him.”
The room seemed to shrink around them. Nothing existed but the press of her body against his, the thrum of her heartbeat under his ear, the shared rhythm of confessions they’d never dared speak.
“Jonas,” she whispered, fingers curling in his hair, “you make me feel… seen. For the first time.”
His chest constricted. He tucked his head back against her, resisting the urge to kiss her because he knew he wouldn’t stop there, instead wrapping himself tighter around her, as if he could fuse them together and never let go. “Stay with me,” he murmured, the words slipping out before he could stop them. “Just stay.”
Her answer was simple. A soft “Always,” breathed into his hair.
And for the first time in years, Jonas Mason let himself drift into sleep in someone else’s arms.
Chapter 29
Clara woke to warmth.Not sunlight, but the furnace heat of Jonas pressed behind her, his chest hard at her back, one muscled arm banded tightly around her waist. His breath feathered against her neck in slow, even drags, stirring her hair. For a moment, she lay perfectly still, cocooned in his hold, daring to believe she could stay here forever.
Then she felt it.
Thick. Insistent. The unmistakable ridge of his arousal pressed against her ass.
Her heart stuttered as heat flooded low in her belly. She shifted, just slightly, just enough to test, and his hips rolled instinctively, grinding into her. Pleasure pulsed through her, tightening her lower belly. An ache in her breasts rippled through her body to her swollen clit, making her roll her hips back toward his hardness.
A guttural sound broke from his chest. “Clara…”
The sound unravelled the tight spool of heat inside her, as his big palm stroked a path over her hip, up her ribcage until his hand brushed her lower breast. God, she wanted his hands on her, his touch on every part of her. She turned in his arms, pulsehammering, and found his eyes open, dark and dilated, staring at her as if she’d set fire to his soul.
