6. If You Want Me
Chapter six
If You Want Me
Ash
I’ve replayed the whole conversation with Rafe about forty times since he walked out of here tonight, and I still haven’t decided if I’m mad at him.
That’s the problem. I want to be. I wanted him to tell me before he dropped the whole thing in her lap, wanted to be there when she heard it, wanted some say in how much landed at once.
Except that wasn’t the condition I gave him. I said hands off until she knew what this place was, until she could make a real choice, and now she knows, and apparently I’m still pissed.
I bend back over the Camaro and trace the same electrical fault I’ve been chasing for over a week.
The shop door creaks behind me, but I keep my eyes on the meter. “If that’s you coming back to apologize, save it.”
“Uh… hi.”
Lorelei’s voice gets my head up immediately.
She’s standing just inside the door in an old hoodie two sizes too big — probably Rafe’s, which does something ugly and immediate in my chest — with her hair pulled back and her bare feet on the concrete like she walked out here without thinking about it too hard.
“Should I leave?”
“No.” It comes too fast, so I try again. “No. It’s fine.”
She comes farther in, hands buried in the hoodie pocket, looking around the bay like it’s a foreign country. “This is where you live, huh?”
“Pretty much.” I wipe my hands on a rag. “You okay? It’s kind of late for a walk.”
“Couldn’t sleep.” She runs a finger just above the Camaro’s fender without quite touching it. “Rafe told me something tonight.”
“I know.”
Her eyes flick up to mine. “Right. Of course you know.” She looks back at the car. “I don’t know what to do with it yet. Part of me still thinks he has to be exaggerating.”
“He isn’t.”
Her attention comes back to me. “You believe all of it?”
“I believe enough.”
Her mouth tightens. “That’s comforting.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be.”
“No, apparently that’s Rafe’s job.”
A smile almost gets out before I catch it, and she notices anyway.
“Why’d you come here instead of going back to bed?” I ask.
She shrugs too quickly. “You said I could come to the shop if I needed anything. I just…”
“I remember.”
“Did you actually mean that?”
“I don’t say things I don’t mean.” The words land heavier than I intended.
She tilts her head. “You disappear a lot.”
“What?”
“At dinner. Family stuff. Anything that starts feeling remotely intimate, you suddenly have somewhere else to be.” She glances around the shop. “Usually here.”
I wasn’t ready for the question to turn on me, so I give her the easy answer. “I’m not good in rooms with too many people watching.”
“That’s not the only answer.”
“It’s a true one.”
She doesn’t push, just lets me keep it, and the quiet that follows makes me reach for something else to say before I think better of it.
“There was a condition,” I tell her. “With Rafe.”
Her expression shifts. “What kind of condition?”
“I told him to keep his hands off until you knew what this place actually was and had enough information to decide what you wanted for yourself.”
“And now?”
“Now you know more than you did this morning.”
She watches me for a second. “That wasn’t the whole reason, was it?”
No point lying. She’d hear it.
“No.”
“What was the rest?”
I look down into the Camaro because engines have never once asked me what I want.
“I didn’t want to be one more guy deciding what you were worth before you’d had a chance to decide anything for yourself.”
The shop goes quiet except for the refrigerator humming in the corner. When I look at her again, she seems a little stunned.
“That’s not what I expected.”
“No?”
“No.” Her eyes drop briefly to the rag in my hand. “You sound nervous.”
A laugh gets out before I can stop it. “I’m not nervous.”
“You’ve been twisting that rag for five minutes.”
I look down at it and set it on the workbench. “Okay. Maybe a little nervous.”
That smile comes back, small but real, and she takes a step closer, close enough that I can see flecks of grass from the lawn she must have crossed still clinging to one bare foot and catch the smell of her hair through the oil and rubber.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Yeah.”
“If Rafe hadn’t told me — if I found out later some other way — would you ever have said any of this?”
I think about giving her something easier, but she deserves better than easier.
“Probably not.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
“Would you prefer a lie?”
“No.” She looks toward the Camaro. “I still don’t know if I believe everything Rafe said.
But then I think about my mom.” Her fingers disappear farther into the sleeves of the hoodie.
“This afternoon I would’ve sworn she couldn’t know any of it.
Now I keep replaying every time she’s changed the subject, every weird answer since the wedding, every time she’s looked at me like she wanted to say something and didn’t. ”
“You think she knew?”
“I don’t know.” She shakes her head. “That’s the problem. I don’t know whether she lied to me or whether somebody lied to her too.”
There’s nothing useful I can give her there.
“You don’t have to figure it out tonight.”
“I know.”
I hesitate because the sensible thing is obvious: give her space, let her go back to school tomorrow, let this family become something she visits instead of something that closes around her.
“You still have your apartment,” I say. “You have school. You don’t have to let this place swallow everything else just because you know it’s here now.”
She watches me. “That’s very reasonable of you.”
“I’m a reasonable guy.”
“Not really.”
Her laugh is soft, and neither of us moves.
My hand comes up before I decide what I’m doing with it, stopping just short of her jaw. I should put it down, and she could step back if she wanted to, but she doesn’t.
“Ash.”
My name is barely more than breath.
I lean in an inch. Her gaze drops to my mouth before returning to my eyes, and suddenly there’s so little space between us that either one of us could make this something else. I hold still, and for one stupid second I want her to be the one who closes it.
She doesn’t.
Instead, she steps back first, putting enough space between us that the moment has somewhere to go besides forward. I let her have it, even though every part of me wants to close the distance and find out what happens next instead of standing here guessing.
“You should probably head to bed,” I say.
“Yeah.” She stays where she is. “Probably.”
A few seconds pass before she pulls the hoodie sleeves down over her hands and turns toward the door.
“Night, Ash.”
“Night.”
She reaches the doorway, then looks back. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re just another guy deciding my fate.”
She’s gone before I can figure out what to do with that.
I stay beside the Camaro, staring at the open door long after her footsteps disappear.
Circling.
That was the word I used with Rafe. I wanted her to have one person in this house who wasn’t doing it.
I look at the space where she stood, close enough that one more inch would’ve put my mouth on hers.