I eased the ring out of her fingers and set it gently on the nightstand, not in the drawer, not flung away. Just there. A fact. Something that had existed and ended.
“You lost a map,” I said. “Doesn’t mean you’re lost.”
She made a small, choked noise that might have been a laugh if there hadn’t been that much grief under it. “Some days I feel pretty lost,” she whispered. “Everybody else seems to have their lives at least directionally correct. Marriage, kids, jobs that make sense. I had ... this whole thing drawn out in my head. Where I’d live an exciting career.” Her fingers curled into me. “Now I’m back in my hometown, living in my brother’s best friend’s spare room, starting over.”
My chest tightened.
She hummed. “I just can’t shake this ridiculous feeling that maybe I can do it on my own. Maybe I never needed him or his money in the first place.”
“It’s not ridiculous.” I slid my thumb over her knuckles, slow and steady. “And for the record,” I said, “your brother’s best friend’s spare room has been significantly improved by your presence.”
She let out a breath. “I just thought I had a plan.”
“I know what it’s like,” I said. “When your plans get shot to hell in one afternoon.”
The ceiling suddenly felt very close. I stared up at it anyway, because looking at her while I said this felt like too much and not enough at the same time.
“I thought I had everything figured out.” My jaw clenched. “Then I woke up in a hospital bed with half a leg and a brain that couldn’t make sense of anything.”
Her grip on me tightened.
“I gave up on myself,” I said, voice flattening on the edges of the words. “Told myself I was ‘adjusting.’ What I was really doing was hiding. Let the couch downstairs become home base. I told myself it was because it was easier, closer to the door, better for the leg. Some nights that was true.” I swallowed. “Some nights it wasn’t.”
She went very still against me. “What do you mean?”
I drew in a breath and let it out slowly.
“I crashed on the couch because the idea of being up here made my chest lock up. It’s too far from exits. Too far from help. Too many steps between me and getting out if something went wrong. I didn’t trust my body not to betray me. Leg fail, phantom pain hit, smoke alarm going off for some bullshit reason—whatever it was, my brain ran a highlight reel of me stuck up here like a turtle on its back.”
Silence pressed in, thick and listening.
“I hated that feeling,” I admitted. “Hated that I could barely handle my own damn staircase. So I told myself the couch was more comfortable. Anything except saying out loud that the second floor of my own house felt like a trap.”
The words sat there, ugly and true.
Clara’s hand moved up, slow and sure, until her palm rested warm and flat over my heart.
“You’re not trapped up here,” she said softly. “Not with me.”
It was such a small sentence. It slid under my ribs like a blade.
I covered her hand with mine, pressing it there a little harder than I meant to. “I know,” I said, and the thing was, I did. “That’s the messed-up part. Ever since you moved in, the upstairs has felt less like enemy territory.”
My mouth twisted. “It’s easier to come up here when I know I’m not alone with it. With all of it.” I cleared my throat. “I feel safer knowing you’re down the hall.”
Her breath caught.
She shifted, turning her face enough to look up at me. Her eyes were glossy, lashes wet, but there was steel under it. The good kind. The kind she turned on herself and everyone she loved when she decided something mattered.
“So I’m your emotional support person now,” she said, voice wobbling just a little. “Your human security blanket.”
“You’re a very loud security blanket,” I muttered.
She huffed out a watery laugh and pressed closer, sliding her bare hand up until it curved against my jaw. I leaned into it without meaning to.
“That’s me,” she said. “Cozy, bossy, great hair.”
“That is accurate,” I said.
