10. No Brakes
Chapter ten
No Brakes
Lorelei
Rafe orders for both of us without asking, which should annoy me and somehow doesn’t.
“You’re gonna like this,” he says, sliding a plate across the table between us like he’s presenting evidence. “Trust the process.”
“You said that about the motorcycle too.”
“And was I wrong?”
“I nearly drove us into a hedge.”
“Nearly.” He grins, chopsticks already working. “That’s the whole brand, Lo. Nearly surviving things. It’s very on-theme for you lately.”
We’re wedged into a booth in the back of a sushi place two towns over, somewhere small enough that nobody from the house would think to look for us, dim enough that the candle between us is doing more work than the actual lighting.
He picked it. I didn’t ask why he knew exactly which booth to request, and I’m choosing not to think too hard about how many other people he’s brought here.
“Okay, but for real,” I say, poking at something I can’t identify. “What is this?”
“Life-changing, is what it is.”
“That’s not food.”
“It’s an experience.” He watches me take the first bite with the focused intensity of someone watching a jury deliberate. “Well?”
It’s good. It’s actually genuinely good, and the way his whole face relaxes when I tell him so is stupidly, embarrassingly satisfying.
“See,” he says. “Trust the process.”
“You’ve said that twice now like it means something.”
“It’s my whole personality. Keep up.”
We talk for an hour that feels like fifteen minutes — nothing important, nothing about the house or the circuit.
He tells me a genuinely unhinged story about the time he broke his collarbone trying to impress Ash’s ex-girlfriend, which I’m fairly sure is only sixty percent true, mostly because every time he gets to the good part, the detail he remembers most clearly is whether Ash was watching, and I file that away with the growing collection of things about the two of them that probably mean more than either one ever says.
I tell him about the time I got suspended in ninth grade for a fight I didn’t start and definitely didn’t win.
Rafe points his chopsticks at me. “There she is.”
“There who is?”
“The rebel. Knew you were in there somewhere.”
“It was one fight.”
“You got suspended.”
“I said I didn’t win. I never said I lacked commitment.”
“That’s my girl.”
The words are casual enough that I decide not to look directly at them.
“What are you even studying,” he asks, “at this mysterious college nobody in the house ever mentions?”
“Music. Voice, technically. I do musicals when the department lets me, and choir when they don’t.”
“You sing?”
“Don’t sound so shocked.”
“I’m not shocked. I’m recalculating everything I thought I knew about you.” He grins, genuine. “Sing something.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Come on. One line.”
“I will end this date early.”
“Fine, fine.” He holds his hands up, still grinning. “For the record, though — that’s the first actually normal thing you’ve told me about yourself. Everything else has been survival skills. This is just something you like.”
He’s right, and something about him noticing that out of everything I could have said warms something in me before I can guard against it.
I don’t tell him the part that would ruin the moment — that half my performances happen in Alistair’s church, choir robes and all, because it’s the one place he lets me be good at something without asking what it costs him.
That even the thing I love the most, I’m technically borrowing space for, inside a building with his name on the cornerstone.
I don’t say any of that. Tonight, it’s just a thing I like, and I let it stay that simple for as long as he’ll let me have it.
Somewhere in the middle of dinner, I stop performing being fine long enough to actually have a good time.
“You’re doing the thing again,” he says, watching me over his glass.
“What thing?”
“The thing where you look surprised you’re having a good time. Like it’s not allowed.”
“I don’t do that.”
“You absolutely do.” He leans back, easy, unbothered. “It’s kind of your tell. You get this look like you’re waiting for the bill to come.”
I don’t have a good comeback for that, mostly because it’s true, and he doesn’t push it. He just lets the observation sit there between us like he’s not trying to win anything by saying it.
By the time we leave, it’s fully dark, and the walk back to the bike feels longer than it should, both of us in no particular hurry to end it.
“Best decision I’ve made all week,” I say, meaning it.
“High bar. Your week’s been rough.”
“You’d know. You’re the one who wrecked it.”
“In my defense, I stand by it.” He stops beside the bike and doesn’t immediately reach for the helmets. “You mad at me? For telling you. Actually mad, not just processing-mad.”
I think about it honestly instead of giving him the easy answer.
“No. I don’t think I am.”
Something shifts in his face, relief he’s not quite hiding fast enough.
“Good,” he says. “Because I wasn’t going to apologize for it, and that was going to make things awkward.”
“You’re unbelievable.”
“I contain multitudes. You’ve heard this.”
We’re standing closer than the conversation requires, close enough that I notice, close enough that he notices me noticing. The parking lot is empty except for us and the bike and a streetlight buzzing overhead like it’s trying to decide whether to work tonight.
“Lo.” My name, quieter than I’ve heard him say anything all night.
“Yeah?”
“Tell me if I’m reading this wrong.”
I don’t tell him he is.
His hand rises toward my face, then pauses before touching me, close enough to echo Ash’s palm hovering beside my jaw in the shop, close enough that Cassian’s silver ring flashes through my memory too. Three men, three different kinds of waiting.
Then Rafe touches my cheek and kisses me, and the comparison disappears under the taste of ginger from dinner and something warmer that’s just him. My hands catch the front of his jacket like I need something to hold onto that isn’t the ground.
“We should stop,” I say, except I don’t stop, and neither does he.
“Probably.” His mouth moves along my jaw, slower than I expected. “You want to?”
I don’t, and I tell him so, and something in his whole body changes when I do — less careful, more certain, like he’d been holding some part of himself back until he knew for sure and now doesn’t have to anymore.
“Not here,” he says, glancing around the empty parking lot. “Come on.”
The ride back doesn’t feel real. I wrap my arms tighter around him than the speed requires, palms flat against his chest, feeling the engine’s vibration travel through his body until it seems to come from him instead of the machine underneath us.
He takes the first turn slowly, deliberate enough that I know exactly what he’s doing, which is giving me time, and I don’t use it.
My hands slip beneath the hem of his shirt where it’s ridden up, finding warm skin, and his breath catches as the bike drifts half an inch before he corrects.
“You’re gonna get us killed,” he calls back.
“You’re the one who taught me not to overthink things.”
When the next light catches us at red, I lean forward and put my mouth against the skin below his ear. The shudder that runs through him is immediate, one hand leaving the handlebar just long enough to grip my thigh.
“Lo.” My name comes out rough. “I need both hands on this thing if you want us to actually make it home.”
“Do I?”
“You’re killing me.”
The light changes, his hand goes back where it belongs, and he gets us home noticeably faster.
We come back through the estate after most of the main house has gone dark, and Rafe takes me to the room he keeps here because Dominic has spent most of Rafe’s life working at Alistair’s side.
I barely register the space beyond an unmade bed, low light, a pair of sneakers kicked beneath a chair, and Rafe turning on me the second the door closes, his mouth finding mine again like the parking lot was only the opening argument.
I don’t remember deciding to stop thinking. I only know that somewhere between the door and his bed, I do.
His fingers work at the button of my jeans while mine fight his belt, and the buckle catches.
“Hold on.”
“You’re losing a fight with pants.”
“Shut up.”
“I’m just saying, for a man with this much confidence—”
He gets the belt loose and kisses me hard enough to kill the rest of the sentence, and I laugh against his mouth.
“Cheater.”
“Still won.”
We stumble out of the rest of our clothes until shirts and jeans are scattered across his floor, and then we stop.
He’s standing there in his boxers, chest rising a little too fast, looking at me like he’s forgotten whatever smart thing he was about to say.
I’m in my red bralette and matching panties, suddenly far more aware of my body than I was when I picked them this morning, and when his gaze moves down me slowly, my nerves spark.
I know he wants me. It’s wanting all of me that suddenly feels terrifying.
Then Rafe smiles, not the cocky one, not the grin he gives me right before a bad idea, but something softer.
“You are so fucking beautiful, Lo.”
The compliment lands warm, but soft isn’t what I want from him right now.
I want the Rafe who took me around a curve too fast and laughed when I yelled at him afterward, the one who told me the truth everyone else had decided I couldn’t handle, the one who keeps looking at me like he’s waiting to see whether I’ll run toward the bad idea with him.
So I give him an answer. I slide the straps of my bralette down my shoulders without breaking eye contact and pull it over my head.
“Fuck.” His gaze drops immediately. “Lo.”
My confidence comes back all at once, and I hook my fingers into the sides of my panties and push them slowly over my hips and down my thighs until I step out of them.
Rafe looks between me and the last piece of clothing he still has on. “That’s disrespectful.”
I laugh. “You planning to fix it?”
“Was hoping you would.”
“Well, that’s not fair now, is it?” I point at his boxers. “Can I?”