Page 4 of Ignition Rites

“Wednesday.”

“And?”

“And what?”

He grins, wolfish and easy. “And nothing. Just asking.”

“You’re not just asking anything, ever, in your life.”

“Fair.” He sets the bike down, crosses the bay, and leans against my workbench. His hand disappears behind him and comes back with the socket he wants without him looking for it. “I’m asking because you’ve got that look.”

“What look?”

“The one where you’re already deciding how this goes before it’s happened.”

He’s not wrong, which is exactly why I go back to the wiring instead of giving him the satisfaction of seeing that land.

Alistair doesn’t do anything by accident. Not the marriage, not the timing, not bringing a girl into this house right before the season opens. If there’s a reason she’s arriving now instead of six months from now, I don’t know it yet, and not knowing scares me more than knowing something bad would.

Somebody has to be careful. It’s not going to be Cassian — Cassian doesn’t do careful, Cassian does inevitable, walks into rooms like the floor already agreed to hold him. And it sure as hell isn’t going to be Alistair.

“I need you to hear me on something,” I say, and something in my voice must land differently than usual because Rafe’s grin drops a degree.

“Okay.”

“Whatever she is to this family — stepsister, houseguest, whatever we’re calling it — she didn’t ask for any of this. She doesn’t know what this house is. What we are.”

“Neither did you, at first.”

“I had years to catch up slowly. She’s getting thrown in at full speed with no warning, and I need her to have one person in this house who isn’t — “ I stop because I don’t actually know how to finish that sentence without saying something about Alistair I’m not ready to say out loud, even to Rafe in an empty shop.

“One person who isn’t what?” Rafe asks, quiet now, actually listening instead of performing someone who’s listening.

“Circling.”

The word hangs there longer than I want it to.

“So what, hands off?” Rafe says it lightly, like it’s nothing, like he’s already planning the joke that comes after it. Normally I’d let him have it, let the tension bleed out into something easier, but not this time.

“Hands off,” I say. “I mean it. Not until she knows what this place actually is. Not until she gets a real choice, and not before.”

Rafe studies me before deciding not to make it a joke after all.

“You know that’s not really about her,” he says, careful in a way that’s rare for him.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean I’ve known you for six years, and this is the most serious I’ve ever heard you about a girl you haven’t even met.”

I don’t have an answer for that, or I have one and I’m not saying it, which amounts to the same thing standing in a shop at eleven at night with grease under my nails and my chest doing something I don’t have a name for.

“Just — hands off, Rafe. Please.”

He holds his hands up in mock surrender, but there’s something honest underneath the joke of it. “Hands off. Scout’s honor. I was never even a scout, but sure.”

I should feel better. I don’t, because the thing I didn’t say — the thing I’m not sure I could say even if I tried — is that some ugly, unexamined part of me already wants to be the one who gets to decide who’s allowed near her.

I leave that thought alone and go back to the Camaro, hands in the engine, something I can actually fix.