Page 49 of Red Flag, Green Light

And she will always be mine.

Collapsing in on herself, she says, “I have no idea how to go back there and tell that guy about the bikeathon now. I know his childhood trauma.” Her trembling fingers sink into her hair. “Why does this always happen to me?”

Probably because you are too loveable for words. “What’s his childhood trauma?”

She blinks at me. “His parents wanted him to be a lawyer or a doctor. He hated school, though, just wanted to be outside. The pressure was unbearable, and after never being enough for them for too long, he cut things off. It was brutal. A never-look-back sort of situation. That man—” She points, presumably toward Tristan. “—passed thebarand still said, ‘You know what I’ll do instead?Sell things without boxes.’”

I glance toward where she’s pointing, then back at her, feeling my own heart rate climb in response to having no idea what I’m supposed to say here. All I can think of is: “I hardly see what limiting the waste that might end up in the ocean has to do with anything.”

Her lips part. Her eyes calculate. Her forehead wrinkles anyway. “Okay, fine. I’ll let the sheer lack of packaging slide,butI will not forgive him for not having a hundredths place on his receipts. That is animal.”

My brows rise, and I take my receipt out of my pocket. “Oh. Wow. Look at that.”

“You are joking.”

“About what?”

“You did not just notice this. You didn’t. You ‘just noticed’this about as much as I ‘just noticed’ you have a bike.”

Fine. Yes. I’ve known. It bothers me. With Jove practicallythrowingmoney at people, it’s my job to make sure we don’t go “won the lottery and spent it all in one day” broke. I track all the expenses religiously and do my absolute darndest to keep Jove from seeing just about anything with a dollar sign on it.

But, well, you know. Tracking expenses down to the penny is hard when my purchases from Dream Cycles don’t always stop at the tenths place.

Stuffing the receipt back in my pocket, I lift my attention to Ceres’s judging glare. “I bet if you’d opened your conversation withwhy doesn’t your machine print a stupid hundredths place on your receipts?, you wouldn’t have been subjected to tales of trauma.”

“I also, likely, would not have gotten the establishment’s help with your bikeathon.”

“Or a bike. So. You know. It really depends on what’s most important to you, I think.”

Her eyes roll, first full circle, then to her new bike, which I have lovingly settled under her front porch roof. “What am I going to do with a stupid bike?”

“Ride it?” With me. Maybe. I dunno. If you want to. I guess.

“Ontheseroads? You held up half the town just now, and if the first guy had been coming around the wrong blind curve at the wrong moment, he wouldn’t have seen you, and you’d be a tarmac pancake.”

“Excuse me for caring about my carbon footprint.”

“Pick a less dangerous way of contributing to the good of the planet. Like recycling or a plant-based diet.”

My eye twitches, because she didnotjust suggest I make carrot cakevegan. Buttercream frosting contains a few rather important non-plant-based things. The verynameitself is an offense to vegans everywhere. And. Yet.

Vegan carrot cake.

What an idea.

What a challenge.

“Shopping,” I say.

Ceres, slightly, melts. “I’m tired.”

“I need to get some things.” Vegan butter, possibly. I’m not sure I trust it to cream correctly, but disasters are proof that you’re trying. “You need eggs and bread.” Smiling, I shuffle a deck of cards in the pocket that doesn’t have an inner tube hanging out of it. “And juice.”

“I’ll survive on water.” She heads toward her front door, as though she’s not spent the past two weeks surviving onwater. In twelve days, I have seen her eat ten times. That isn’t even once a day. The only reason I’ve not stomped into her kitchen before now is because she took her spare key in. That little gesture was loud, and painful, to watch a modest seventeen times on replay. I’m still recovering from the overthinking it caused, and consoling myself with videos on lock picking was…likely not ideal husband behavior…but I got past the pain.

I got past the pain and marched myself to her front door today because I realized that she’s literally no more healthy without me than she is with me. And my single concern with her isn’t whether or not I’m exhibiting the correct behavior for a man intent on courting a woman; it’s whether or not she hates me.

Since I can’t give Ceres a single chapter from this nonsense story I’m apparently “writing” without her giving me fifty options on how the male lead could beworse, I think I’m safe from her hatred, at least for right now.

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