Page 12 of Ignition Rites

“So that’s the problem?”

“That’s one of them.”

I wait for the rest, and he doesn’t give it to me.

“Right,” I say. “You made the rule, Ash, and I followed the part you actually said out loud.”

“You told her alone.”

So that’s it. I push off the neighboring bay. “You wanted to be there?”

“I wanted to know before you dumped this on her.”

“She handled it.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Then what is?”

His jaw jumps, and I know him well enough to see the answer before he decides whether to give it to me.

“You wanted her protected,” I say. “Fine, I get that. But you also didn’t want anyone close enough to matter until you’d figured out whether you wanted to be the one she chose.”

“This isn’t about me wanting her.”

“Isn’t it?”

He looks away, and I let the silence sit long enough to answer for him.

“I want to keep the wolves off her,” I say after a moment. “Not because I own her. Because somebody should be able to care what happens to her without turning it into another move.”

Ash grips the edge of the workbench, the anger in him thinning into something harder to read. “Is that what you really want?”

“Yeah.”

“You gonna keep breaking the rules to have your way?”

I think about Lo in the garden, the thread unraveling between her fingers while she argued with every word I gave her.

“Every chance I get.”

Ash turns back to the Camaro. For a few seconds there’s nothing but the click of his meter against a connector, then the ring of a ruined bolt hitting the scrap tray beside him, and neither of us says anything about it.

Chapter six

If You Want Me

Ash

I’ve replayed the whole conversation with Rafe about forty times since he walked out of here tonight, and I still haven’t decided if I’m mad at him.

That’s the problem. I want to be. I wanted him to tell me before he dropped the whole thing in her lap, wanted to be there when she heard it, wanted some say in how much landed at once.

Except that wasn’t the condition I gave him. I said hands off until she knew what this place was, until she could make a real choice, and now she knows, and apparently I’m still pissed.

I bend back over the Camaro and trace the same electrical fault I’ve been chasing for over a week.

The shop door creaks behind me, but I keep my eyes on the meter. “If that’s you coming back to apologize, save it.”