Grief does not rise; instead, it is relief, which means the unhappiness was there long before tonight. It means my bodyknew the truth and carried it quietly for months while my mind kept insisting everything was fine.
I start the engine and pull out into the street.
One mile. That is all the distance between Damien’s apartment and my old apartment building on Havemeyer. One mile, and somehow I managed to get lost in it for two years.
The building comes into view.
Four stories, brick, a buzzer panel that has never fully worked. This is the apartment Rainer helped me find after Zane was committed. I lived here from nineteen to twenty-three, the longest I had ever stayed anywhere in my life, longer than any place that had ever asked me to call it home.
When I moved out to live in Damien’s apartment, I stood on the sidewalk with my green duffel and cried, telling myself it was about change. About growing up. About moving forward. I believed it because it was easier than the truth, and some part of me already knew I was making a mistake. And when Cassie turned eighteen and her last foster home was done with her, I stood on the street waiting for her, a key in my hand. She looked at it for a long moment without speaking, and I watched something move across her face that she would never, in a thousand years, call what it was.
She looked up at me and said, “I’m not crying. I just have something in both eyes.”
Then she hugged me, and we walked inside together.
We lived in that apartment together for almost four years. We painted the kitchen yellow one weekend without telling the landlord, then spent the following Monday in the hallway, badly apologizing to him. We threw parties too loud for the building. We ate cereal for dinner when money was tight and takeout on the floor when it wasn’t. We took turns falling apart. Took turns pretending we weren’t. We built something in those rooms that had nothing to do with lease agreements and everythingto do with choosing each other, over and over, in all the small, unglamorous ways that actually count. She is the closest thing to a sister I have ever had. And I have missed her more than I care to admit.
I find a park outside my old apartment building, grab the bags from the back seat, and walk to the front door.
For a second, I just stand here with my finger hovering over the buzzer. Then I press 2B.
Static crackles through the speaker before Cassie’s voice comes through. “Yeah?”
“It’s me.”
The door buzzes open.
I take the stairs because the elevator in this building has always been slow, and I don’t have the patience to stand in a metal box with my whole life packed into two bags.
By the time I reach the second floor, the door to 2B is already open. Cassie stands in the doorway, wearing an oversized flannel shirt and shorts, her hair shoved into a messy bun. She holds a mug of something hot in one hand, and her eyes flick over me.
The expensive bag on my shoulder. The duffel in my other hand. My face, which clearly says more than I would like.
Her expression shifts for half a second before she lifts her mug in a ceremonial toast.
“Well,” she says, “it fucking took you long enough.”
Chapter 7
Zane
The engine should make sense. That’s the whole fucking problem. It should sit in front of me, with its wires, belts, hoses, bolts, and worn-down parts, and be the easiest thing in the room to understand. Engines don’t lie. They don’t perform. They break in ways that have names, in ways you can put your hands on and trace back to a source.
The wrench slips, and my knuckles crack against the alternator housing hard enough to split the skin.
I pull my hand back, stare at the blood welling across two of my knuckles, and feel absolutely nothing. That is probably the most honest thing I can say about where I am right now. I press the back of my hand against my jeans and go back to work.
Cars break. You fix them. Fucking simple. Except nothing is simple anymore.
I stand bent over under the hood, a wrench in one hand and a rag in the other, with no idea what the fuck I am doing. Not with the car but with myself.
The workshop is quiet.
Rainer is in his office, the door half open, going through invoices. He does that when he wants to pretend he isn’t watching me. He’s always had that habit. Quiet as a judge. Sharp as one, too.
I shift the wrench in my hand and stare into the engine bay. I changed the spark plugs this morning. Checked the hoses. Looked over the wiring. Cleaned the terminals. I have done all the things a man does when he needs his hands to appear busy because his head has become unsafe ground. And yet, I keep ending up right here, staring, lost. The wrench seems heavier than it should.
My phone sits face down on the workbench behind me. I haven’t bothered to look at it for two hours. That doesn’t mean I have forgotten it. Earlier, it buzzed while I was under the hood. One text.
