Page 7 of Redline Communion

My hands curl at my sides.

Rafe never had to build a rule to survive wanting her. That’s the ugly center of it, simple enough now that I’ve finally stopped looking around it.

Lorelei leaves for class an hour later. She doesn’t look at me on her way out, just says something low to Rafe and presses her mouth to the corner of his jaw. The sound she makes when he answers, quiet and meant only for her, catches under my ribs and stays there while the garage door swings shut.

Rafe doesn’t turn around right away. He keeps working the bolt he’s been fighting since before she sat down, and I stand there another minute doing nothing useful with my hands, my mouth, any part of me.

“You gonna say it,” he asks without looking up, “or just stand there radiating?”

“Say what.”

“Whatever’s got your jaw locked up like that.”

My jaw locks harder just from him naming it, molars aching enough that I’ll probably still feel it tomorrow.

“You’re using it.”

The words come out before I decide to say them, which is exactly the problem with me lately.

He goes still. “Using what.”

“The claim. Don’t make me spell it out.”

“I think you’d better spell it out.” He sets the wrench down slowly, deliberately, the kind of careful movement a man makes when he’s genuinely trying not to throw something. “Because it sounds like you’re about to say something you can’t take back.”

“Before you kissed her at the circuit, you were still pretending none of this was happening.” My voice climbs, and I can’t pull it back down. “Now you’re tucking her shirt down like you’ve done it a hundred times.”

“Because I have.”

“That’s not—” I stop and start again. “That’s not what I mean.”

“Then say what you mean instead of circling it, because I’ve got about four more seconds of patience for whatever this is.”

The truth is sitting right at the base of my throat. I open my mouth expecting the rehearsed version and get the one I haven’t said even alone.

“You get to have it,” I say. “Out loud. In front of people. No permission required. And I built that rule. Hands off, mine to enforce, because I didn’t trust what I’d do to her if I let go of it for one second, and you just walked past it like it was never there.”

Rafe goes still. The anger doesn’t come clean.

“You think I don’t know what this costs you?” he says, low. “Standing there watching me get the easy version of a thing you decided you’re not allowed to want.”

“I don’t want the easy version.”

“Bullshit.”

“I want—”

Nothing comes out. My stomach drops slow and sour, and the rest of the sentence simply isn’t there.

“Say it.” He’s closer now. I didn’t see him move. “For once, say the actual thing. Not the version you rehearsed until it sounded like it was about the house, or the rule, or protecting her. Just the thing.”

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what.”

“Make it sound like I’m giving a sermon because I’m trying to be careful how I say something that matters to me.”

“You’re not being careful. You’re scared, and you’ve gotten good enough at dressing scared up nice that nobody can tell it isn’t something else.” He shakes his head, the anger in his face giving way to something worn-out. “Six years, man. Six years of you deciding what we are based on what you think you’re allowed to survive wanting. I’m tired of doing the math for both of us.”