“I’m pleased for you, Zane,” he says, taking a slow sip of his coffee. “Really, I am. Just don’t fuck it up.”
I huff out a breath that almost turns into a laugh. “That your official advice?”
“That’s my polite advice.”
Then Griff’s laugh drifts in from outside, low and easy.
Rainer’s eyes shift toward the roller door. “He came in here looking for you.”
He sets the mug down on the bench as the words land exactly where I don’t want them to.
Rainer leans back against the bench and folds his arms across his chest. “I told him to get out. He said a guy named Ricky was looking for you.”
My stomach drops.
Rainer watches my face. “Who is Ricky, Zane?”
My mouth is dry. “Ricky is the one Griff went to. The one who organized the fights. Matched the fighters. Handled the money.”
Rainer goes very still.
I force myself to keep looking at him because looking away right now would be the coward’s move and I have already been the coward in this workshop too many times.
“And he is looking for you because?” Rainer asks.
My chest aches with something that is too much like shame to call it anything else. I think about this man standing in this workshop, handing me a wrench when most people would have handed me directions to the nearest gutter and walked away.
I drag a hand over my jaw.
The warm, fuzzy sensation I had when I left Skylar’s apartment now feels like a thousand miles away.
“He’s looking to collect for the fight I missed the night I got arrested.”
“How much?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
His eyes narrow. “That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I’ve got.”
“Bullshit.”
I avert my gaze away because I cannot stand him looking at me right now. Not like this. Not in this place he built with his own hands while my old life stands outside, trying to get its filth on the walls.
Rainer goes quiet. The particular quiet that has weight to it, that lets the distant sound of a car outside come through and lets Griff’s voice float in through the open roller door.
“You thinking about doing something stupid?”
“No.” I stare down at the concrete. There is a dark oil stain near my boot shaped almost like a map of somewhere nobody wants to go. It's fitting.
This is what I do. I bring trouble with me. I carry it behind me like mud on my boots and call it history, pretending it is not still alive.
For a second, I see what this looks like from where Rainer is standing.
A kid he took in when nobody else wanted him, who is no longer a kid but still somehow feels like one when the past shows up at the door. A kid with blood in his history and too many people coming to collect pieces of him. Trouble in a clean shirt.
I hate that I brought this here. To this place. To him.
