2. Ignition
Chapter two
Ignition
Ash
The Camaro’s been sitting in bay two for three days, and it still won’t turn over clean, and that’s the only thing in my life right now that makes sense — a problem with a wiring diagram, something I can actually fix with my hands instead of just staring at.
“You’re gonna strip that bolt,” Rafe says from somewhere behind me, half-buried in the frame of a bike that isn’t his yet. “Third time you’ve gone back at it like it owes you money.”
“It does owe me money. In labor.”
“Cute.” He drops the wrench and wipes his hands on a rag that’s already too greasy to do anything but move the dirt around. “You hear back from your dad about the season opener?”
“Alistair’s already got it locked. Two weeks.”
I stopped calling him Dad years ago. Rafe gave up correcting me long ago too.
He goes quiet, the kind he gets when he’s deciding whether to say the thing or swallow it. He swallows it, wheeling the bike upright instead and checking the throttle like it’s more interesting than whatever he almost said.
The shop smells like it always does — oil and rubber and the ghost of my mother’s cafecito, which doesn’t make sense because she hasn’t set foot in here in years, but some memories just live in a building whether the person does or not.
I keep half-expecting to look up and see her in the doorway with a thermos, telling both of us you’re going to lose fingers being careless, mi amor, and neither of us listening.
I don’t look up, because she’s not there, and she’s never there.
“So,” Rafe says, too casual, the tone he uses right before he says something he already knows I won’t like. “Your stepsister. She’s moving in this week, yeah?”
“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.
Alistair’s already decided what this season is going to be, same as he decides everything. All I can do is get to Lorelei before the rest of this family does and hope that counts for something.
Rafe’s back on the bike, humming something under his breath, some old song his mom used to play. For a minute I let myself believe the two of us are just two guys in the shop on an ordinary Tuesday.
Then the bolt strips, because of course it does.