“You’re not a monster, Wes,” I went on, because I needed him to hear that part too. “You’re just scared. All the time. Of getting hurt. Of hurting me. Of not being enough.”
I saw the flinch in his eyes even though his shoulders stayed rigid.
“I understand that more than you know,” I said. “I have built my life around someone who struggled to accept himself before.”
Greg’s face flashed in my mind—the tight, brittle smile, the way his shoulders had always looked like they were carrying something heavy he couldn’t put down. The realization at the altar that I was signing up to carry it with him forever.
I shook my head, eyes stinging, but I didn’t let the tears fall. Not yet.
“I can’t do it again,” I whispered. My voice cracked. “I can’t fix this for you.”
Silence settled over the kitchen. The coffee machine gurgled in the background, oblivious.
He took another breath, like he might try again. “Clara?—”
I shifted my grip on the duffel and took a step back, toward the door.
“You don’t have to earn anything with me, Wes,” I said, gentler now. “You just have to show up as you. For us. Until you can do that, I have to go.”
His eyes were wet, and he looked like he’d been hollowed out and didn’t know what to do with the space.
“Clara, wait—please,” he tried, the words breaking halfway out.
I held his gaze for one last second, letting him see it all—the love, the hurt, the line I was drawing in permanent marker.
“Goodbye, Wes,” I said.
Then I opened the door before I could lose my nerve, stepped into the slap of cold air, and pulled it shut behind me.
The chill hit my cheeks, sharp enough to feel like punishment. I blinked hard, the duffel strap weighing down my shoulder as I descended the front steps and across the shoveled path to my car. My knuckles were white on the keys by the time I slid behind the wheel.
I didn’t cry on the drive to Kit’s. I kept my hands at ten and two, breathing in and out, in and out, counting stop signs like they were the only thing keeping me from turning around.
By the time I climbed the stairs to her apartment, my eyes burned and my chest felt hollow. I shifted the duffel higher, lifted my fist, and knocked.
My knuckles stung. My eyes did too.
The further I drove away from Wes, the more broken I felt.
Kit yankedthe door open on the second knock, took one long look at me, and blew out a low whistle.
“You look like shit,” she said, eyeing me. “Who are we murdering?”
A laugh scraped out of my throat, raw around the edges. “Hi to you too.”
Her gaze dropped to the duffel clutched in my hand, then back up to my face. The joke slid off her expression like water. Protective little-sister mode slammed into place.
“What happened?” she asked, already stepping aside. “You know what, save it. Get in here. Shoes off, emotional baggage on.”
The hallway behind her smelled like fried onions from the diner downstairs and someone’s laundry detergent. Inside was all Kit: plants on every surface, a leaning gallery wall of thrift-store frames, a couch that had seen better decades. A mug with drying paintbrushes sat on the coffee table beside an empty ramen bowl and three different kinds of lip balm. My mind flipped back to all the houseplants I’d killed.
Poor dead Phil would have thrived here.
I toed my boots off, and my grip tightened on the duffel.
“Can I stay for a little while?” The words came out small and stilted.
Kit’s eyebrows shot up, then pulled together. “Obviously,” she said. She hooked two fingers in the duffel strap and dragged it inside, kicking the door shut behind me. “Couch. Now.”
