Page 25 of Ignition Rites

“Don’t get used to it.”

“Too late.” He swings back onto the bike and offers me a hand up like the conversation didn’t just grow teeth. “Come on. I’ll get you back before anyone notices how long we’ve been gone.”

I take his hand and climb on behind him, settling my arms around his waist again. This time I know exactly why my pulse jumps, and I know better than to blame the bike for it.

He starts the engine, and I hold on.

Chapter ten

No Brakes

Lorelei

Rafe orders for both of us without asking, which should annoy me and somehow doesn’t.

“You’re gonna like this,” he says, sliding a plate across the table between us like he’s presenting evidence. “Trust the process.”

“You said that about the motorcycle too.”

“And was I wrong?”

“I nearly drove us into a hedge.”

“Nearly.” He grins, chopsticks already working. “That’s the whole brand, Lo. Nearly surviving things. It’s very on-theme for you lately.”

We’re wedged into a booth in the back of a sushi place two towns over, somewhere small enough that nobody from the house would think to look for us, dim enough that the candle between us is doing more work than the actual lighting. He picked it. I didn’t ask why he knew exactly which booth to request, and I’m choosing not to think too hard about how many other people he’s brought here.

“Okay, but for real,” I say, poking at something I can’t identify. “What is this?”

“Life-changing, is what it is.”

“That’s not food.”

“It’s an experience.” He watches me take the first bite with the focused intensity of someone watching a jury deliberate. “Well?”

It’s good. It’s actually genuinely good, and the way his whole face relaxes when I tell him so is stupidly, embarrassingly satisfying.

“See,” he says. “Trust the process.”

“You’ve said that twice now like it means something.”

“It’s my whole personality. Keep up.”

We talk for an hour that feels like fifteen minutes — nothing important, nothing about the house or the circuit. He tells me a genuinely unhinged story about the time he broke his collarbone trying to impress Ash’s ex-girlfriend, which I’m fairly sure is only sixty percent true, mostly because every time he gets to the good part, the detail he remembers most clearly is whether Ash was watching, and I file that away with the growing collection of things about the two of them that probably mean more than either one ever says.

I tell him about the time I got suspended in ninth grade for a fight I didn’t start and definitely didn’t win.

Rafe points his chopsticks at me. “There she is.”

“There who is?”

“The rebel. Knew you were in there somewhere.”

“It was one fight.”

“You got suspended.”

“I said I didn’t win. I never said I lacked commitment.”