Every step toward the garage drags the morning down with it. All that stupid hope inside me starts looking for cover because it knows the world he belongs to. The world I once belonged to.
My eyes flick to the garage.
Has Griff been inside?
Did he walk into the only place that has given me a chance and bring the stink of that old life with him?
Griff shifts, still watching me, and says something low into the phone. I can’t hear the words, but I don’t need to hear them.
The thought hits harder than seeing Griff. Not because Rainer cannot handle himself. The old bastard is built of gristle, engine oil, and pure refusal. But this is not his mess.
This is mine. My debt. My bad choices stacked high enough to cast shadows over people who had nothing to do with making them.
I should stop and ask him what the fuck he is doing here. Tell him to get his bullshit away from Rainer’s door before I rearrange his face.
But I don’t. I just walk straight past him.
His gaze follows me. The phone lowers a fraction. “Morning, Rivera.”
I walk into the garage and cross the threshold like I‘m not dragging half a storm in behind me.
The smell hits me first. Under any other circumstances, it would settle me the way it always does, the way this place has always settled me, completely and without requiring anything from me in return.
Right now, it feels invaded.
Rainer is at the workbench near the back, one hand wrapped around a mug, the other sorting through a pile of receipts he definitely plans to complain about later and at length. He looks up when I step inside.
His eyes narrow immediately. “Where have you been?”
The question is rough, but there is no bite to it.
I shrug out of my jacket and hang it over the back of the chair in the corner. I grab a rag from the bench and wipe my hands, even though there is nothing on them yet. Habit I guess. Something to do with my hands, keeping me from turning around to check whether Griff is still standing on the pavement outside, like a problem I have not worked out how to solve yet.
Rainer watches me over the rim of his mug. “You seem different.”
I keep my eyes on the rag. “Do I?”
“Don’t play dumb with me, son. You’re terrible at it and it’s a waste of both our time.”
The word son hits me in the ribs the way it always does when he says it without thinking. That quiet, entirely accidental impact of a word that means something neither of us has ever sat down to discuss formally. I have no idea if he’s aware of what it does to me. Maybe he does. Rainer pretends not to notice things because noticing them out loud would require feelings and feelings make him itch in ways he has never found a satisfying solution to.
I toss the rag onto the bench.
Rainer snorts. “You look like you haven’t slept.”
I glance at him.
A big mistake.
His eyebrows lift. “Well, shit.”
“What?”
“She finally put you out of your misery.”
I turn my gaze away fast, but it is already too late. My mouth betrays me, that useless, traitorous bastard pulling sideways before I can get it under control.
I should tell him to mind his own business. Instead, I say nothing, which tells him everything he needs to know.
