That isn’t new.
Sleep and I have never been on good terms. At best, we are two assholes who nod at each other from across a room and agree not to make direct contact unless one of us is genuinely desperate.
Tonight I’m not desperate.
Tonight I’m full of rage and shame and of the specific, grinding weight of Rainer’s money, sitting somewhere beneath this roof, waiting to be handed over tomorrow to the man who used to make his living off my fists.
Every ugly instinct I have is lined up and ready. Move to the door. Run. Fight. Break something. Make someone bleed before feeling finds a place to land in me, because feeling withoutsomewhere to put it has always been the thing that gets me into the worst kind of trouble.
Despite every single one of those instincts, I do none of it.
I stand under the harsh workshop lights, grease up my arms, the hood of the old Chevy open in front of me—the one Rainer gave me—and I put my hands where they belong. On bolts and wires. On metal that asks nothing of me except patience and pressure applied in the right place at the right time.
I was supposed to call Skylar tonight.
What the fuck do I even say to her?
Hey, it’s the asshole here, operating at peak capacity again, doing what he does best, which is dragging everyone he loves down into the particular brand of shit he cannot seem to stop generating. Hey, by the way, the man who is the closest thing I have ever had to a father just agreed to hand over a hundred and three thousand dollars to a prick in a suit because I am fundamentally, structurally, possibly permanently broken, and the people who love me keep paying the price for it.
My phone rests face down on the bench.
Every time I reach for the phone, shame clamps its hand around my throat and squeezes. I put it back down, go back to the engine, and pretend that it’s discipline rather than cowardice.
I am aware I have been short with her today. Not cruel. Just distant and I understand that is worse because I know exactly what silence does to Skylar. I have always known. I grasp the exact way it lands in her, the old wound of it, and I am doing it anyway because every time I try to form the words, they come out wrong, stupid, and not enough.
I told myself I would explain when it was done. I would wait until Ricky was paid and fucks off before I call her and tell her everything.
That sounded sensible for about ten seconds.
Then it started tasting too much like the old lie. The one I have told myself before. I will hurt her less if she doesn’t know. I will protect her by keeping the ugly parts away and make the decision for both of us because I am the one who can see how bad it is. And she deserves to be spared that.
Ricky comes back tomorrow and until that debt is dead and buried, I am a live wire wearing skin. One wrong touch and everything goes up in flames. If I hear Skylar’s voice right now, I will go to her instead of staying here where I need to be. I will let her love talk me out of the part where Rainer is about to hand over more money than any decent man should ever have to pay for someone else’s mistakes. I cannot let that happen. I will not let that happen.
So I work.
I tighten the last bracket near the intake. Check the line. Run my hand over the block the way I always do at the end of a session, slowly and carefully, as if the metal might tell me where it hurts if I’m quiet enough to listen.
I know that’s stupid but I do it anyway.
Some things are easier to understand when they are broken down into pieces. When you can see every component laid out in front of you and trace the fault back to its source without anything getting in the way of the truth.
Engines don’t lie. They don’t look you in the eye and say they are fine while they leak all over the floor. They do not dress up damage as nobility or wrap abandonment in good intentions and wait for someone to applaud the performance. They do not decide what you need to know and keep the rest from you for your own good.
They fail. They cough. They refuse to start. And then you find the problem.
You fix it and you try again.
By three in the morning, my shoulders are screaming and my eyes burn with every blink.
By four, I have taken the same part off twice because my head keeps drifting to the same place it always drifts to when I’m too tired to keep it in line.
How much I cost everyone. How long that list has been, and how it never seems to get shorter no matter how hard I try to stop adding to it. How Rainer is going to hand over that money for a debt that has my name written all over it. And once Skylar finds out, once she sees the full shape of what I dragged in behind me…
I don’t want to think about what she will find when she looks at me. I’m not sure I can stand to see it on her face. The recognition. The slow, quiet realization that the man she said she loved is the same man he has always been.
The debt is mine. The fighting ring is mine. Ricky and Griff are my problem. Every stupid choice and every consequence that grew out of it is mine. And the fact that two people who never asked to be anywhere near any of it are now standing in the blast radius of it is the thing I cannot make comfortable no matter which way I turn it.
Neither of them should have to pay for what mistakes I made.
