Ash’s chosen word sounds like it survived three rounds of internal compliance review, and I don’t know why that’s still working. Fuck me, he’s making it endearing.
“Didn’t you kiss some guy at a holiday party?”
“That was a screwup, and it cost me years of freedom.” His misery flickers across his face as he stares into a cobwebbed corner. “Guess we’re after the same thing.”
“Peas in a dusty, haunted pod.”
His lips twitch.
We fall into a hush, firelight dancing, ouralmoststill echoing between us until the room settles into the strange lullaby of his typing and the crackle of the flames.
“What are you working on?” I finally ask.
“Since I can’t ask you for Alistair’s endorsement, I’m updating my résumé.”
There it is. Clarity without the sex.
I scoff and roll back over, smell be damned. “No sympathy for the two-million-dollar man.”
Stubbornness holds until I drift off, mouth-breathing my way into a sleep deep enough that nothing could wake me.
Until a horrible banging and a jolt of adrenaline do.
CHAPTER 16
ASH
I stay up way too late pretendingmy laptop can outpace reality, but no magic spreadsheet can hold off the future waiting back home. It comes into the shadows once Kael’s asleep: making less money, grinding years longer, learning a new job, transitioning my old team, telling my parents, answering questions…
Anxiety keeps handing out third and fourth winds, and the bill comes due only when I finally crash.
I jolt awake at the banging.
The air’s wrong. Heat soaks the room. Sweat glues my shirt to my skin. My eyes sting when I open them, and it’s like I’m looking through a dirty lens. Light leaks through the boarded windows, a sickly orange haloed in smoke.
Kael bolts upright on the couch, blinking. The air tastes acrid, and no amount of wishful thinking can blame it on the long-cold furnace.
My phone is dead, which means no alarm and no way for Jenny to reach us.
I know, with sickening certainty, that this is my fault.
“ASH? KAEL?” A muffled voice shouts from outside.
“Hello! We’re here!” Kael yells back, raising his voice over a low, distant roar I recognize even though I’ve never heard it before. He scrambles to his feet, turning to me with a relieved grin. “We’re saved!”
No we’re not.
“In here!” I shout.
“Get out of there, boys!” a second voice, a woman’s, calls out.
I yank my dead phone’s cord from the still-glowing laptop, shove both into my backpack, and sling it over one shoulder.
Kael is fussing with his sleeve without realizing we don’t have time, and I grab his arm to haul him toward the pried-open doorway. He stumbles, still half asleep, sweatshirt riding up over his waist.
A woman appears in the gap of a doorway with a towel pressed to her face.
“Walt!” she coughs. “’Round back! In here!”
