Chapter 13 · The Rider

"Don't move." Calder's forearm pins my collarbone flat against the steel bunk, and the cold bites through my shirt like it wants a piece of me too.

"I'm not the one who jammed the crank," I say. My voice comes out thinner than I want it to. The red light overhead pulses on his jaw, off, on, like a heartbeat that isn't mine.

"No." His mouth drags along my jaw, one slow inch, and I hate that my breath catches for it. "You're the one who's going to sit here and watch me fix it."

"Fix it how?" I twist under his arm. He doesn't budge. His weight is a wall, cedar and gun oil and something under that — sweat, copper, the smell of a man who hasn't slept since the crank seized. It gets into my nose, my mouth, until I can't get a clean breath that isn't him.

"You want air." He says it flat, like a fact he's reading off a clipboard. His hand finds the hem of my shirt and doesn't ask. Cloth tears at the seam — one clean rip, cheap thread giving up before I do —