“Come on,” I hear myself say, because I’m a menace to restraint. I grab two sweatshirts and a blanket and shove them at his chest. “Walk with me.”
“Where?”
“The ridge.” I nudge his hoodie with my chin when he doesn’t take the clothes. “You said I’m gasoline. Let’s go somewhere that can handle the fire.”
He huffs out a laugh he tries to smother. He doesn’t succeed. “You’re going to be the death of me.”
“Unlikely,” I say, tugging on the sweatshirt I keep by the door for bad ideas. “You’re too stubborn.”
He takes the blanket. “Fine,” he mutters. “Fifteen minutes.”
We end up staying out for an hour.
The sky over Copper Mountain is clear enough tonight to make a person believe in foolish things. The town looks small from the ridge—porch lights glimmering and stars shining overhead. We sit on the flat rock, shoulder to shoulder, blanket over our knees.
We don’t talk at first. We listen. The cold does that—it strips language down to whatever will keep you honest.
“You were good today,” he says eventually. “Wilton looked for a loose wire and you didn’t give him one.”
I pick at the fringe on the blanket. “You were… better.”
“Better how?”
“The hand.” I nudge his thigh with mine. “That thumb trick. You patent that?”
His mouth softens. “Someone taught me once.”
“Teach me,” I say before my dignity can tackle me. “I could use a portable Clay.”
“I’m not portable.”
“You’re right. Industrial grade.” I turn my head to look at him. Even in moonlight, he’s carved. “You’re getting good at this.”
“At what?”
I let the word hang, then say, deliberately: “Wanting me.”
His breath leaves like I hit him. He turns his face away, jaw tight and beautiful, then back again. “That’s not pretending,” he says, the exact same cadence as before, and it lands inside me like a match on tinder.
I lean. He doesn’t. We’re both so careful and so stupid.
“Okay,” I whisper. “Then what do we do with it?”
“We wait,” he says, voice wrecked and rude. “We do the job. We get you paid. We end it clean.”
The words feel like cold water. I hate that I understand. “And if clean hurts.”
“Then we take turns holding the bucket,” he says. He stares straight ahead, hands flexing against his knees. “Because if I… once I—” He breaks off. “I don’t do halves.”
I know. God, I know. He would love like a blaze line—no way around, only through.
We sit there until my toes go numb and the mountain eats some of the pressure inside us. When we head back down, he takes my wrist without thinking on the steep part; I take his sleeve when the gravel slides. We drop our hands at the bottom like they’re guilty.
He sees me to my door. He always does. His body makes a wall between me and nothing.
“Goodnight, firecracker,” he says, rough.
“Night, Fireman,” I whisper.
