Page 23 of Ignition Rites

Cassian’s hand around my jaw flashes through my head without permission — silver ring, gold light, the weight of knowing exactly who was behind the mask — followed too quickly by Ash standing close enough in the shop that one more inch would’ve changed everything.

Rafe’s touch is different. Easier. Warmer. Somehow that doesn’t make it simpler.

“There,” he says, letting go. “Now you look dangerous.”

“I look like a bobblehead.”

“A dangerous bobblehead.” He pats the seat behind him. “Get on. We’ll do the first lap together before I let you kill yourself solo.”

I should say no. I’m aware, in the part of my brain that still functions like a normal, cautious person, that getting on a motorcycle behind a boy I’ve spent two years learning to read — Ash’s best friend, a fixture at every family dinner, someone I know better than I know most of this family and still don’t fully trust — is exactly the kind of decision that ends up as a cautionary anecdote.

I get on anyway.

“Hands here,” he says, guiding them to his waist without making it weird. “Hold on for real. I’m not going easy just because you’re new.”

“You better not.”

The engine comes alive under us, and for one second before we move, I feel it in my teeth — a vibration that isn’t quite sound, low and constant, like the bike is breathing. Then Rafe eases the throttle, and we’re moving, and every thought I had about being careful evaporates somewhere in the first ten feet.

He’s not lying about not going easy. We take the first curve fast enough that I feel my own weight shift, feel the unfamiliar thrill of trusting my body to someone else’s instincts instead of my own, and my arms tighten around him without my permission.

“There it is,” he calls back, voice half-eaten by wind. “That’s the part people get addicted to.”

“What part?”

“Not being in control.”

I don’t have an answer for that. I’m too busy noticing the heat of him under my hands, the easy strength in how he holds the bike steady through the turn, and the fact that my heart is working harder than the speed alone can explain.

We loop the lot twice before he slows, stops, and turns enough to look at me over his shoulder.

“Your turn.”

“Absolutely not.”

“You said that already. Get up front.”

The switch takes some maneuvering, both of us laughing when I nearly catch my foot on the seat. Once I’m settled at the controls, Rafe stays close enough behind me to reach around when he needs to, one boot planted for balance while I get used to the weight of the bike beneath me.

“Clutch in your left hand,” he says, voice lower now, right at my ear. “Throttle’s the right. Don’t grip it like you’re strangling something. It’s not fighting you.”

“Everything about this is fighting me.”

“That’s you fighting yourself. The bike’s fine.”

His hand covers mine on the throttle — not taking over, just steadying, the way you’d hold someone’s hand through the first cold plunge into water.

My pulse jumps before I can blame the bike for it.

His hand is broad and warm over mine. No silver ring, no careful hover an inch from my face, just Rafe, pressed close enough to guide me and apparently completely unaware that my brain has decided to inventory every man who has come near me this week.

“Ease it,” he says. “Don’t yank.”

I ease it. The bike rolls forward, wobbly and uncertain, and I overcorrect twice before something clicks and it just — works, for three whole seconds, my body finally listening to instructions instead of arguing with them.

“There,” Rafe says, close enough that I feel the word more than hear it. “See?”

I see, and I also feel his hand resting over mine a little longer than the lesson requires, and neither of us rushes to move it.