“Cassie.”
“No.” Her voice firms up again, that familiar steel sliding in. “You don’t get to ask me to hand you pieces of her, Zane. Not after what you said to her.”
I take the hit and say nothing, but I can see it. Something moving behind her eyes that she’s trying to keep back.
“Can you just tell me she’s happy? That’s all I want to know, Cass. That’s all I need to know.”
Cassie looks down at the can in her hands.
The silence answers for her.
Fuck.
She shifts onto her feet, and I watch her realize she’s already said too much without saying a single word. She straightens and reclaims whatever ground she just lost.
“I have to go.” She sets the can on the edge of Rainer’s desk before she looks at me. Something crosses her face that I can’t name. She opens her mouth, closes it, and tries again. “I came here to say I’m sorry for—” She stops. Shakes her head. “It’s good to see you, Zane. I mean that.”
“You too, Cass.”
She turns and walks away.
I stand in the office doorway watching her move toward the door. She says something to Rainer on her way out.
After a while, I walk back to the car, pick up the wrench, and lean back over the engine, trying to put my hands somewhere useful. But my head won’t follow. It stays back with Cassie’s words, turning them over. She’s alive. That’s what she gave me. Not happy. Not good. Not fine. Not even okay.
Alive.
What the fuck does that mean?
I don’t hear the footsteps behind me until they stop.
“Rivera.”
My fingers curl slowly around the edge of the car frame. I straighten up.
Griff stands with his hands shoved into his pockets, that same restless energy radiating off him that I remember from the foster home. Same lean jaw. Same eyes that were always calculating something, always working an angle, even when we were kids with nothing worth calculating. He’s older now. Harder around the edges. But still the same Griff who used to flick his lighter open and shut in that twitchy rhythm when he was thinking. The same one who pulled me into a room full of men with cash and told me not to lose.
He tips his chin toward me. “Heard you were out.”
And just like that, the past slithers in behind him and coils around my throat.
“You owe us,” he says.
My jaw locks. “No.”
Griff tilts his head. “That fight you bailed on lost us a shit ton of money.”
“I was in prison, you piece of shit.”
“And now you’re not.” He steps closer, his voice dropping lower. “So it’s time to settle up.”
“It’s not my problem.”
“It became my problem for seven years.” His eyes move over me, slow and assessing. “So I’d say it’s your problem now.”
“I don’t fight anymore,” I say.
That ugly smile of his returns.
