Zero Power (Book 2): Trying To Survive

by Lockwood, Max

  "I'd missed our meet-ups," Dante murmured.

  She glanced at him out the corner of her eye. He was lying on his back, and arm under his head, eyes closed and a small, satisfied smile on his lips.

  Clara rolled her eyes but thought to herself that it felt good to get lost in something other than reality. Even better, they weren’t sneaking around behind Michelle's back. It was a much better distraction, safer too than volunteering to leave town even knowing it was dangerous, and now she couldn’t even do that anymore.

  Not that she was ready to restart their affair. The thought that he might mistake this as her way of saying she wanted to resume their former relationship washed away some of the afterglow. As much as she appreciated the short escape, she wasn’t ready to make it long term. It just wasn’t healthy for the long-term. She had already proven it to herself before when she grew dissatisfied with the affair but too dependent on it to just stop. She wasn’t in a position that would allow her to be in such a relationship again.

  Dante reached over to kiss Clara's lips, and she reluctantly returned it.

  With the moment over, rational thinking starting to reassert itself, she realized that she was not interested in being with him. Hell, they never did this before. There was always the probability of getting caught. Which meant after their meetings, Clara left once they were done. It sounded so clinical when she thought about it that way, but that was how it had been. She had never spent this long in a bed with Dante when they were not doing anything but just lying there.

  He pulled away, and Clara was almost disappointed. Not that he wasn’t kissing her anymore, but that the moment was really was over.

  It was back to feeling just like before. A moment of euphoria followed by a lot of regrets. And she must have been kidding herself if she thought she would be exempt from the guilt now that Michelle knew and she and Dante already had their argument. It was still there. Because she was giving Dante the wrong message which he really didn’t need it right then. There was also Michelle, who wasn’t really out of the picture.

  Clara should have it more thought, she should have been stronger. After everything she had survived, she should have been beyond making such stupid decisions. There was a reason she had wanted to stop sleeping with Dante before. The greater bit was because of his wife—now ex-wife? —but she had been unsatisfied with the affair. Instead of helping anything, all it did was make her feel bad afterward.

  How had she let herself forget?

  That was an easy question with an easy answer, though. So much had happened since then. Clara couldn’t even count the number of near-death experiences she had since the last time they were together. They were too many, and thinking of them only made her heart sink further. There were the other problems going on around town, too. The aftermath of Michelle's anger, dealing with her own problems and watching her sister and her grandmother slowly unravel.

  She had been through more in the past few weeks than she had been in the past ten years. She was holding up surprisingly well, but of course, it all had an effect on her. All of it, even when she pushed it aside, took a toll on her. Even now, she could feel it. Sleeping with Dante had pushed it all out of her mind, but now that the moment was over, it wasn’t like everything else suddenly went away. Escape was nice, but not when you had to return to reality so quickly. She could not deny it had been pleasurable, but all those nice things she had been feeling were definitely gone now.

  Dante ran the tips of his fingers down her arm, from her shoulder, where she wasn’t hidden under the covers. She let the touch happen but had to swallow back bile.

  What had she done?

  The very thing she had told herself countlessly she never would again. She had done something stupid.

  Then, Clara felt angry. It only lasted for two seconds, but it was so strong her whole body shivered with it. She wanted to blame Dante for this like she had mostly blamed him for the affair. But the anger burned out because she realized quickly she couldn’t. She had stopped Dante to ask him if he was sure of what he was doing. Why hadn't she asked herself that? The first time she had thought to about someone other than herself, and it was backfiring on her.

  If she had assessed the situation instead of losing herself in the moment, none of this would have happened. She wouldn’t be lying there, regret pooling in her stomach, the aches in her body growing uncomfortable to the point she felt she needed to take a shower in the next minute to wash it away. Because temporary fun was usually proceeded by consequences, and Clara didn’t think she was up to facing any right then.

  Because he was still touching her, even though it was just with the tips of his fingers, Dante must have felt her shiver. He must have mistaken what it was for, though. He let loose a low chuckle, filled with masculine satisfaction, and Clara had to bite her tongue so she wouldn’t snap at him. He thought she was reacting pleasantly to his touch.

  It couldn’t be further from the truth.

  "You know, I thought we'd had our last night together. I told you last time it had been an escape for me. It was a bit more than that, though."

  He ducked his head to kiss where his fingers had just left her shoulder. Clara had to hold herself still so she wouldn’t flinch away from him. She would have to reject him if he was looking for more. She bit her lip, a little worried about how she would do that. She didn’t want to make him feel even worse than he had when he decided to approach her. Her mood swings weren’t his fault, and he didn’t need to be subjected to them. She was going to have to break it to him gently, in a way that he understood so he wouldn’t search her out again.

  Something else she hadn't thought about. She could just be hurting him more, all because she was selfish and one track minded. She hadn't considered it because all he wanted was sex, but what if he really expected more from her? She was throwing him back into the old frame she'd thought of him in, the old stereotype, even though he'd shown her in their moments of true interaction outside that he was so much more than that. Clara felt ashamed for compartmentalizing him for her own purposes.

  Dante seemed to misinterpret her body language again. His hand moved so he could touch her lip with his thumb. She reached for his hand, removing her lip from behind her teeth, but he just caught her hand and squeezed lightly.

  Dammit! I keep doing everything wrong!

  No matter what she did, lost in her thoughts, Dante seemed intent on reading it the wrong way. How was she supposed to push him away gently after she'd gone along with him so eagerly?

  "I don’t think I ever told you how much I enjoyed our time together. Do you know that Michelle kept herself so busy, we didn’t even have a sex life for a while? Nearly a whole year. There were a few months, around when the baby was conceived, but even months after she gave birth, nothing."

  He sighed, rising up on his elbow, lying on his side with his chin braced on his fist. He didn’t seem to mind that he was having a one-sided conversation. Even if she could have, what would Clara have said? Definitely, nothing that he would want to hear. The things that Tessa said about her rose in her mind and Clara had to swallow around the sudden lump in her throat.

  Could she really say that her sister had been completely in the wrong now?

  "I'm glad that we're starting back up again."

  Clara let her eyes close at those words. Clara didn’t have the heart to tell him right then that she didn’t want it to happen again.

  She cursed herself in her head. Like Michelle and Dante breaking up wasn’t enough, she just had to keep messing things up. It was an easy assumption for Dante to make. Clara had gone along eagerly without a thought to the consequences, as usual, and now it was time to pay the price. There was no way she could endure Dante thinking they were together now because they could never be. She should have left this in the past like she had intended to.

  And as if things couldn’t get any worse, Clara heard Cooper's voice out in the hall.

  "I'm back from running an errand in town. Where
is everybody?"

  Dammit!

  She hadn't thought about Cooper at all. She didn’t even know he had left the house. Why hadn't she heard the front door open, or heard his footsteps on the stairs? He was right in the hallway…

  Clara panicked, knowing he was about to walk in on her and Dante. There was no time to do more than bolt upright and hold the sheets up over her chest, so he wouldn’t see her naked. Dante didn’t seem to have a problem with it, lying on his side with the covers pooled at his waist, his legs were even bare from above the knees. Dante must have heard him like she did, but he remained lounging on his side, head turned toward the door.

  She wished she could run and hide. Maybe jump right out her window, but it was too late to move and not be seen.

  The door swung open and Cooper's face fell completely when he saw the pair of them in bed together. There was only one way to interpret what they could have been doing, and Clara wanted to curse herself again, seeing that look on his face.

  Cooper mumbled something, an excuse that Clara wasn’t sure was entirely verbal because she didn’t hear any actual words in the sound. He was stumbling back from the door, and she had to clench her fists in the sheet she held over her chest so she wouldn’t reach for him, knowing it would expose her. For the first time in so long, she felt her face burn. If she had a mirror, she would have seen the blush warming her face as she burned with shame. Cooper left the room in a hurry, not even completely closing the door.

  Dante laughed it off, but Clara for some unknown reason felt guilty.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  She didn’t want to, but Clara knew she had to talk to Cooper about what he saw. She got dressed and left Dante on her bed. Hopefully, when she came back, he would have gotten a clue, dressed and moved to someplace else. She looked around for Cooper and found him sitting out back.

  He was seated on the back porch, shoulders slumped, head ducked down, his whole form looking dejected. Clara saw him, read his body language and hesitated. He probably didn’t want to talk to her, but she just had the urge to explain.

  Why did she even have to do this? Why was this affecting Cooper like this? Before, he had hated her affair with Dante. She knew he was happy when she told him it was over between them. But for him to see them like that, it should have been hard. Only, he wasn’t angry like she had expected. She hadn't thought he wouldn’t show how hurt he was by it so visibly.

  After some more hesitation, she stepped closer and carefully sat down beside Cooper. He didn’t move, or in any way acknowledge she was even there, and that hurt. He didn’t usually ignore her like that, and she was at a loss for what to do.

  What was she even going to say? This was one of those situations where a planned speech would probably go over better. But even if she had the time, Clara didn’t think she could do that, give Cooper a pre-planned speech, especially when she wasn’t even sure what was wrong. He deserved better than that from her.

  "It was just a one-time thing," she said quietly, for lack of something better to say.

  Cooper was still for a moment, and she wasn’t sure he had heard, or if he had any intention of listening to her. Then he huffed out a laugh and leaned back on his hands.

  "Why do you feel the need to justify yourself to me—we're not a couple."

  Clara bit her lip on the words that wanted to come out. She looked down at her hands, twisting and untwisting her fingers together. When had she been this awkward around Cooper? The last she could remember was back when they first met and she was trying to figure out why he kept talking to her. She'd never really had friends, so when she heard Cooper considered her one, she hadn't known how to act.

  Even when he confronted her about the affair with Dante, she hadn't felt like this.

  "Maybe," he murmured, his voice soft, making Clara look up, "it's because you know how much I love you."

  Clara went still. Her breath caught in her throat. She thought back to when she'd been considering a relationship with Cooper -- before everything started going wrong—she met that woman, then Tessa was out on the streets. She had put it out of her mind, thinking Cooper would never feel that way about her. It was why she had never considered him as a romantic partner before her grandmother mentioned something, so she couldn’t help but think about it. But he had just confirmed it.

  And when she thought about it, it wasn’t exactly impossible. Clara knew they acted like more than just really close friends. They slept in the same bed every night since the lights went off, they ended up cuddling more often than not. Cooper was somehow always touching her. She liked it, it was comforting. But when she thought of it, he was always the one to initiate the closeness, she just never moved away from it.

  But love? She knew Cooper cared for her but did Clara even believe in love? As maudlin, and dramatic, as that sounded, she had given up on her dream of marriage and building a family of her own for that reason. But this was Cooper. He wouldn’t say anything he didn’t mean. If he said he loved her… even though it was in a roundabout way and not direct, then he meant it.

  Clara… wasn’t sure how to feel about it. Especially after what he had just seen. She clenched her fingers together until her palms hurt and felt the sting of tears in her eyes. Her regret at what she'd done just tripled.

  She wanted to apologize, but would he take it well? She didn’t think it was the best idea, but what could she say to about this after she had hurt him in the worst way possible without knowing what she was doing? If he truly felt about her the way he just said, then Clara had been hurting him for a long time without realizing it, and his walking in on her and Dante was the worst part of it all. Hell, she might as well have been leading him on.

  "I don’t know what to tell you, Cooper, but it's probably not anything you want to hear. I don’t know my feelings at the moment, with my life seemingly in turbulence. I swear I wasn’t trying to hurt you, Cooper. If I had known, I would have made so many choices differently."

  He shook his head, but he turned his head away so he couldn’t look at her, and that hurt her.

  "Let me know once you've figured out your feelings."

  "It's not so easy a thing, Cooper. There's so much going on I don’t even get enough time to think. I'm spending time at home now, but I still have community work I'm supposed to be doing. Not to mention watching Tessa and Viola's condition. My life isn’t easy, Cooper, I'm not sure I can handle even more stress on top of everything else I need to worry about."

  She bit her lip to stop herself from talking. She was going too far, making excuses that Cooper would take seriously. She just wanted the guilt to go away, even knowing it wouldn’t be that easy. And it wasn’t like Cooper didn’t know the situation. Considering he spent more time at her home now than she did, he had probably seen it more than she had, even if he hadn't been around it long enough to realize just how bad things were getting.

  Cooper sighed, but he still wouldn’t look at her. "It's not like I don’t know, Clara. I've always known; it's why I've never tried to tell you before. I didn’t know how you would react if you knew. But with things as they are, maybe I should move back to my flat."

  Clara felt her breath hitch again, and she snapped her head in his direction. But he was still looking away so he couldn’t even see her in his peripheral vision. His statement sounded like a threat, and Clara wasn’t sure if she should take him seriously, or if he was just trying to hurt her by saying it. She couldn’t see his face so there was no way to know.

  She wouldn’t mind if that was all it was. But if he really meant he would leave, Clara might just cry and beg him to stay.

  "You don’t have to do that," she said urgently.

  "But you don’t really need me here, do you? I was just staying here to look after your family while you went out, right? So now you have someone else—"

  "Just stay," she insisted. "Cooper, I'm not going to replace you with Dante. I'm pretty sure he would rather stay away from my sister and my grandmother. I'm onl
y letting him stay because he has nowhere else to go. What happened… just now wasn’t meant to happen. And I'm sorry that it did, more than you can know."

  Cooper still didn’t look at her, and Clara felt her heart clench in her chest.

  "Look, I'll sort myself out and let you know what's happening. Just please don’t leave."

  He didn’t say anything, and they spent some time in silence. Clara wasn’t sure what there still was to say. She didn’t think Cooper was ready to speak with her. She stayed until she couldn’t stand it anymore and got up to head back inside.

  Clara was shaken. So much more so than she had been recently with all the crap that had been happening to her. She couldn’t lose Cooper. Through everything that had gone wrong in her life recently, from hating her job to hating herself in the affair with Dante, to everything that had come since the crash, having Cooper was what got her through all of it. If he left, Clara wasn’t sure she could take it anymore.

  Cooper always knew what to do, what to say, to calm her down. If he was gone, she would lose that, and Clara wasn’t sure it was something she could survive.

  Clara realized she needed to speak to Dante. He was probably getting the wrong idea as well, and instead of running away, she had to face it head on. She headed back upstairs and found him still in her room. He was partially dressed, and when he saw her walk in he smiled.

  "Hey—"

  "We need to talk," she said blandly, cutting him off.

  The smile dropped, and he frowned. "Clara? What's wrong?"

  "I'm not interested in carrying on our fling—I just wanted some comfort before. Don’t even try and tell me you didn’t want the same thing because I'll know that you're lying. But that is all it can ever be."

  "Does this decision have anything to do with Cooper?"

  Clara stilled in surprise. Even Dante had seen something, where she hadn't? She wasn’t sure how that made her feel. But that he had done what he did, knowing… Clara sighed. She wanted to be angry at him, but would it be fair? She was partly at fault, a big part.