“Yeah.” His eyes drag over my mouth again, hotter this time, and I swear the paint peels a little off the doorframe. “I noticed.”
A car glides by outside, tires on grit. Somewhere a dog complains. In here, we stand too close for too long.
“Do you need to get back to the station?” I ask, because my hands are shaking and if they move they’ll climb him.
“In an hour.” He scrubs a hand over his jaw, gaze still snagged on me. “You good if I check your breaker panel before I go?”
“Yes.” The word drops hollow between us. “Do that.”
He does. He moves through my little rental like he owns it, careful with my mugs and careless with my resolve. He fixes a loose plate on an outlet, frowns at the janky porch latch, tightens three cabinet screws that never did anything to deserve his hands. And when he’s done, he stands in my doorway and looks at me like I am a house he’s not ready to enter and also one he’s been building his whole life.
“Text me if the heat blinks,” he says gruffly.
“It won’t,” I say. “But I will.”
He nods. Hesitates. Steps in again, hand finding my waist like he forgot to put it down, mouth threatening every rule we made and broke and pretended to keep. Then he exhales, shakes his head once, and presses his forehead to mine for a single, devastating second.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he rasps.
“Like what,” I whisper.
“Like you’d forgive me for wanting you.” He steps back before I can reply, opens the door, and leaves me with a room full of heat and no instructions.
The town keeps calling us cute. That afternoon, Winter drags me to the general store and “accidentally” buys a bridal magazine at the register. A group of teenagers see me in the canned goods aisle and whisper,that’s her, like I’m a folklore creature. A littleboy points at me from his mom’s cart and says, “Fire lady!” and I nearly cry into the baked beans.
I make it home on halfway-stable legs. I try to throw myself into something that isn’t Clay: I pull out the tote of unbroken bisque I salvaged, run my fingertips over the chalky rims, and tell myself they’re not ghosts. I sketch glaze ideas. I drink tea. I don’t text him. I absolutely do not text him.
When twilight spills over the ridge and paints the living room blue, I light two candles and let their small stubborn flames make the night less empty.
The door knocks once. Notknock-knock-knock, it’s Winteror the way Bella drums like a woodpecker. One solid knock that saysman who doesn’t ask for what he needs. My heart sprints into the hallway before I can stop it.
I don’t open the door. Not right away. I make myself breathe, smooth my hair, wipe glaze pencil off my thumb, remind my lips not to do anything stupid.
When I let him in, the night climbs in with him. He brought the mountain on his jacket—woodsmoke, cold, a wild edge like he wrestled a weather system for sport. He’s changed into a black hoodie that makes his eyes darker and his mouth worse.
“Panel’s fine,” I blurt, then wince. “That’s not why you’re here. Obviously. Sorry.”
He shuts the door with his boot and looks at me like he’s already halfway to lost. “Tell me to go,” he says.
“No,” I say, and I don’t even pretend to think first.
The breath he takes is rough enough to scrape sound. He steps closer like he doesn’t remember deciding to, hands half-fisted at his sides like it’s killing him not to touch me. It’s killing me that he isn’t.
“I keep trying to do this right,” he says. The words are a rasp. “Stay on the line. Keep it clean. But you—” His mouth twitcheslike it can’t find a smile and would hate it if it did. “You’re gasoline.”
I swallow. “That sounds dangerous.”
“It is.”
“You should probably go,” I whisper.
“I should,” he agrees, not moving.
“Clay.”
“Ember.”
We hover there on the edge of something violent and kind. I feel its shape. I want it anyway.
