Page 48 of Clara Knows Best

“I didn’t care if you apologized,” Dr. Wilder said softly. “I just wanted to see you. Make sure you were doing okay.”

He felt like there was a fist wrapped around his heart. His lungs weren’t working so good, either.

“I didn’t write those emails,” he told her. “I didn’t tell Hart to pound sand, and I never called the cops or mentioned a restraining order. My crazy ex-girlfriend took that upon herself.”

“Brittany,” Clara whispered.

“Oh,” Dr. Wilder said lightly, wiping her eye with a trembling hand. She cleared her throat briskly. “I see.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. He had to get away to process all of this, so he said, “Gonna shower,” and left the room, purposefully shoving Hart out of his way with his shoulder as he passed him. More sign language.

For once, Hart didn’t react.

Jesse took the stairs two at a time, and didn’t slow down until he had reached his childhood bedroom, where he locked the door and leaned against it.

It was kind of a lot; he’d felt tricked into falling in love with the Wilder family only to be horribly abandoned by them upon reaching adulthood, but now he knew that they had felt the same way about him. To make matters worse—or at least, more confusing—it was his own fault for introducing the unstable Brittany into the mix and ignoring her serious mental health issues until she’d destroyed almost every aspect of his life.

It sucked that he’d wasted the last six years feeling like so much trash the Wilders had put out on the curb; a charity case who no longer needed their charity and had therefore been discarded. Only now did he realize that the whole theory had come from Brittany, who’d sought to separate him from his family, and his own vulnerabilities and fear of abandonment had made it easy for her.

But leave it to Dr. Wilder to swoop in like a fairy godmother and fix things for him again, just like she had when he was a kid. At fifteen, his problems had been pretty straightforward: he’d needed parents and somewhere safe to sleep. It was impossible for a kid to feel unsafe when the Colonel was around, or to feel unloved around the Doc and her four clamoring monsters.

And now she’d rescued him again. First she’d given him space and time to come to his senses, and when he hadn’t done that, she’d used her shepherd’s crook—that is, a mother’s watertight guilt trip—to bring him back into the fold.

He exhaled slowly, letting that sink in: he was back.

14

Clara waited fifteen minutes before she slipped out of the kitchen and went up the stairs. Jesse’s room was empty, so she knocked on the door of the adjacent bathroom.

“Ocupado,” came his voice over the sound of the fan.

“Are you dressed? Let me in.”

The door opened and steam engulfed her. Jesse was bare above the waist and shaving over the sink.

“Wow, you’re not wearing a shirt,” she said, hopping up onto the counter beside him. “Look at your abs! That’s crazy.”

He sighed. “What do you want, Clara?”

“I thought you might want someone to doctor your war injury.”

He turned his head to show her the red mark on his jaw. “I already did it myself. Was that it?”

“Yeah, but I’m not leaving while this is going on,” she said frankly.

He glanced at her again, reluctantly amused.

Focus, Clara. “Mom said we’re letting bygones be bygones.”

“Yeah?”

“Which means no one’s allowed to talk about it at her birthday lunch. Act natural.”

“Fine with me. Guess we both need some time to decide what we believe.”

Clara didn’t think that was her mother’s reasoning, but she could understand that he might have one or two lingering trust issues. “As long as you don’t hate her anymore.”

“I didn’t hate her.”

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