Page 10 of Igniting Her

“You think she spends that kind of energy on everybody?”

“She assigned me six ladder drills in front of the entire company.”

“She assigned me to watch you do six ladder drills,” he corrected. “If it were punishment, you’d be polishing hydrant caps until Christmas. She was making sure you could do slow what you already know how to do fast.”

“I can do both.”

“Now she knows.” The answer irritated Ellie enough that she turned away. In the mirror over the dumbbell rack, her face was flushed, her braid coming loose, her shirt dark with sweat. Mo stood behind her with the patience of someone who had no need to win.

“You don’t know what she thinks,” Ellie said.

“I know she watched all three of your timed runs herself.”

“She was running the drill.”

“Jamie ran it twice before you came. Captain was doing reports.”

Ellie reached for the water bottle. “You’re an extremely irritating person.”

“I cook. People forgive a lot.”

“I haven’t.”

“Drink the water.” He left before she could refuse it on principle. Ellie drank half the bottle in one pull and hated that his words remained. The captain was hardest on the ones with real talent. It sounded too much like praise when Mo said it. It sounded like a warning in Cassie’s voice. Ellie could not decide which version bothered her more.

Most supervisors had noticed Ellie after she broke something: a rule, an expectation, the clean version of events they preferred in reports. Cassie had watched even before, but closer now. She had seen the raised shoulder, the halyard across Ellie’s palm, the exact moment that speed turned careless. Being studied that closely should have felt like suspicion. Some part of Ellie, one she didn’t intend to encourage, had felt concern instead.

The day room filled after dinner with the low, untidy peace of a crew temporarily free from alarms. Jamie called her daughter from the kitchen and allowed herself to be instructed on the proper storage of a newly lost tooth. Priya stretched on the rug while reading a medical journal. Mo and Teak argued over a cribbage score with the solemnity of treaty negotiations.

Ellie took the end of the couch with an ice pack balanced across one shoulder. She had a book open on her lap. She had attempted to read the same paragraph four times.

Cassie sat across the room at the long table, inspecting rescue hardware from the cliff kit. Carabiners, pulleys, webbing, and descent devices lay in neat rows before her. She worked each gate with her thumb, checked the action, then placed it either in the open bag or beside her left hand for maintenance. The movements were exact but not cold. She handled every piece as if its reliability were a private agreement between them.

Teak abandoned the cribbage game and dropped into the chair beside her. “You know Jamie checks those every Thursday.”

“Jamie also burned toast this morning.”

“Those skills aren’t related.” Teak smiled.

Cassie’s mouth shifted at one corner. There it was again. That almost smile.

Ellie looked back down at her book.

Across the room, a carabiner clicked shut. Then another. Ellie made it through half a sentence before her attention moved back on its own. Teak had a thin cut along the heel of one hand from the ladder halyard. She held it up only after Cassie noticed blood on a piece of webbing. Cassie reached across the table and took Teak’s wrist. Her hands changed when they touched another person. The precision stayed, but the severity went out of it. She turned Teak’s palm toward the lamp, careful of the raw skin, and called Priya over for antiseptic and tape. Teak complained that the injury was beneath medical attention. Cassie ignored her and held the hand steady while Priya cleaned it.

Ellie watched Cassie’s thumb rest against the pulse in Teak’s wrist.

Attraction was supposed to be simpler than this. A face across a bar. A mouth curving over a private joke. A woman who laughed easily and left without turning every silence into an evaluation of Ellie’s character. Not her captain. Not a woman who could dismantle Ellie’s best argument before lunch and hold an injured hand as though gentleness required the same attention as command.

Cassie looked up. Their eyes met across the day room. Ellie’s body reacted first, a small tightening low in her stomach that felt like betrayal. Cassie went still. Her hand remained around Teak’s wrist. Then Priya asked for the tape, and Cassie looked away.

She resented Cassie’s mouth and the quiet strength in her forearms. Most of all, she resented that the captain’s care appeared only in fragments, forcing Ellie to keep noticing her in order to find it.

She closed the book.

“Couldn’t get into it?” Mo asked from the card table.

“Terrible writing.”