I stop at the bottom step because his voice has changed.
“Don’t do anything stupid.”
I stand here for a moment with my hand on the railing before climbing.
When I walk through the door, my eyes go straight to the shelf against the far wall.
I cross the room and run my hand along the underside of the middle board until my fingers find the panel. It pops free and the tin waits inside.
I pull it out and carry it to the bed. The mattress dips under me as I sit. For a second, I just hold it, the metal cool against my palms, and stare at it.
I open the lid. The cash sits inside, tightly rolled and secured with rubber bands.
Nine thousand two hundred and forty dollars.
It looks pathetic against the one hundred and three thousand dollars Rainer has agreed to pay. A drop of water thrown at a raging fire. Still, it is everything I have and that means it’s where I start.
I put the lid back on and stand.
By the time I get downstairs, Rainer is in his office, hunched over the desk with the invoice folder open in front of him. The old calculator sits near his right hand. A pen rests between his fingers, unmoving.
He looks up when I stop in the doorway.
I cross to the desk and set the tin down in front of him. It makes a dull thud against the wood.
“There is just over nine thousand in there,” I say, keeping my eyes on the tin because I can’t look at him right now. “From fighting. It’s every cent I held onto. It is everything I have.”
Rainer looks at it but doesn’t touch it.
“I am going to pay back every cent you give him,” I say, compelling myself to gaze at him. “Every dollar. I don’t care how long it takes. Extra shifts. Weekends. Nights. Whatever you need from me. I mean it.”
He reaches out and rests one hand on the tin. For half a second, I think he is going to open it. Instead, he pushes it back across the desk toward me. The scrape of metal on wood is loud in the quiet office.
“Keep it.”
“No.”
“Keep it, Zane.”
“Rainer.”
His eyes lift to meet mine. They contain a warning, and something else resides under that warning. Something harder to read.
“I know you are good for it,” he says. “That’s enough.”
“It isn’t enough.”
“It is for me.”
I stare at him. People have taken from me my whole life. Time. Blood. Money. Choices. Nobody has ever pushed anything back.
I glance down at the tin, then raise my eyes back to him. “I cannot let you lose this place because of me.”
“You won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes,” he says. “I do.”
