11. Kill the Lights #2
“Get it out of your system,” I say, pulling off my helmet. “Whatever speech you practiced while I was gone.”
“You kissed her in front of the entire crowd.”
“Good opening. Strong use of facts.”
“Rafe.”
“Sorry.”
I am not sorry.
“In front of everyone,” he says. “You didn’t tell me. You didn’t even give me a heads-up. I had to hear it from three different people before I made it back from the stands.”
“Would you have wanted a heads-up?”
“Yes.”
The answer comes fast enough to stop me.
Ash pushes away from the bike. “Not so I could stop you. So I could know before half the circuit did.”
That lands differently.
I set my helmet down more carefully than I was planning to.
“Ash—”
“Do you understand what you did out there?”
“I kissed her.”
“At the circuit.”
“I noticed.”
“During Reaping season.”
There it is.
“I know.”
“Do you?” His voice drops. “Because everybody who saw that knows what it looks like here. Alistair knows. Cassian knows, if he was watching. And if either one of them decides that was a claim instead of you making out with a girl you like, she’s the one who gets folded deeper into whatever they’re building. ”
I look toward the upper boxes.
“I know what it looks like.”
“And you did it anyway.”
“Yeah.”
Ash stares at me.
I could defend myself by telling him Lo chose the kiss. She did. I could tell him I didn’t force anything onto her. I didn’t.
Neither fact erases what I knew about the audience.
“She wanted me to kiss her,” I say.
“I’m not saying she didn’t.”
That shuts down the argument I was halfway prepared to have.
Ash rubs both hands over his face.
“I’m saying you know this place doesn’t leave things alone. Neither does Alistair.”
“I know.”
“And you know what happens when she starts pulling at the wrong threads.”
“I know.”
“Then why?”
There are too many answers: I wanted her and she wanted me; everybody had been whispering about her like she wasn’t standing there; for once I wanted them whispering about something she actually chose; and somewhere underneath all of that, I knew Ash would hear.
Nico likes to say I’d rather set the evidence on fire than explain why it exists, and he’s irritatingly right often enough that I hate giving him the satisfaction.
“Because I’m a coward.”
Ash blinks.
“Well.” He looks almost offended by the ease of that admission. “That really ruins the next five minutes of my argument.”
Despite everything, I laugh.
His mouth almost moves.
Almost.
“I should’ve told you before I made you hear it from somebody else,” I say.
“Yes.”
“I know.”
“And stop acting like this is still about the condition.”
“I’m not.”
“You keep joking about it like you won on a technicality.”
“That’s because I did win on a technicality.”
His stare could peel paint.
“Sorry. Bad timing.”
“Spectacular.”
I lean against the bike.
“The condition was hands off until she knew enough to choose. She knows. She chose. I’m not arguing that part with you anymore.”
Ash’s jaw tightens.
“What I don’t know,” I say, “is what you want me to do with the fact that you couldn’t answer me in the shop when I asked if it was really about wanting her.”
His eyes snap to mine.
“That doesn’t mean I know what I want.”
“No. But it means you know this isn’t only about me.”
His expression changes, small but enough.
“You don’t get to use what happened with her to force this conversation.”
“I’m not forcing anything.”
“You’re standing between me and my bike.”
He glances down, then steps six inches to the side.
“There. Freedom.”
I almost smile.
He doesn’t.
“You think this is simple,” he says.
“I think absolutely none of this is simple.”
“You’re with her now.”
The sentence sounds like it hurts him.
“That’s a thing. That’s real. Everybody out there saw it be real.” His voice catches, barely, and the fact that he lets me hear it costs more than yelling would. “And you’re still…”
He stops.
When he starts again, his voice is quieter.
“What does that make us, Rafe? What am I supposed to call whatever we still are if you’re out there kissing her in front of God and everybody?”
For six years we’ve been experts at answering that question without answering it: best friends when anybody asks, brothers when it’s useful, idiots according to Nico, nothing when somebody gets too close, and everything when there’s nobody around to name it.
“I don’t know what to call us,” I say. “Never have.”
His eyes drop.
“But I’m not trying to erase you to have her.”
“That’s easy for you to say.”
“Probably.”
“You’re not the one standing here feeling like an afterthought.”
“You’re not an afterthought.”
I step closer.
Ash doesn’t move.
“You have never been an afterthought. I just didn’t know how to do both out loud, so I did the easier one first.”
“That’s not fair to either of us.”
“No.”
The pits are emptying around us. Engines cool. Another heat starts somewhere beyond the barriers.
Ash looks tired now instead of angry.
Somehow that gets under my skin more.
“I’m not asking you to fix it tonight,” he says. “I just needed you to know it’s not nothing. What you did out there. What you’re doing with her.”
His eyes hold mine.
“And whatever the fuck this is with us.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
I could make a joke.
For once, I don’t.
“Yeah.”
Ash studies me another second, then turns and walks back toward the crowd.