That almost gets a smile out of him. Almost.
I grip the edge of the car again. “Now I’m clueless.”
The admission scrapes through my chest as it leaves. I hate it. I hate how young it sounds, how raw, like something that belongs to the version of me who stood in this exact workshop at eighteen, with his whole life in a backpack and no fucking idea what to do with any of it.
I shouldn’t feel like that kid again. I have been through too much and lost too much to still feel that way. And yet here I am. Gripping the edge of a car in the one place that used to make sense to me, feeling like I am standing at the beginning of something I don’t know how to start.
Rainer lowers his voice. “You’re not locked up anymore, son.”
My jaw tightens. I stare at a crack in the concrete between my boots, running from under the car toward the drain in the center of the floor.
“Just because they opened the gate, it doesn’t mean I’m free,” I say, the words more honest than I meant them to be.
A car rolls past outside, its bass thudding low through the roller door, then fading down the street and dragging the silence back in behind it.
“Griff texted me,” I say.
Rainer goes still beside me. “When?”
“Earlier.”
“What did he say?”
“That I’m running out of time.”
Rainer’s eyes turn cold. Not exactly angry. Just stripped of everything warm. “Did you answer?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“I’m letting him think it’s not my number anymore.”
“Griff isn’t stupid.” Rainer’s voice is flat and certain. “You need to be careful.”
“I’m being careful.”
“You’re ignoring him and hoping he goes away. That’s not the same thing.”
I don’t argue with that because he’s not wrong.
“He wants money,” I say. “Or a fight. Or both.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Nothing.”
Rainer studies me. “That’s your plan?”
“It’s better than my old plans.” The words come out harsher than I intend, with an edge that has nothing to do with Rainer but everything to do with the image that flashes through my head the second I say them. The one I can’t seem to keep from being dragged out at the worst possible moment. The girl Ithought I could keep safe. The one I told myself I was protecting, even though the truth was I was already pulling her into the current with me without even knowing it. I wanted to save her, and instead I fucked everything up so thoroughly that saving her eventually meant removing myself entirely.
My shoulders sag before I can catch them.
Rainer sees it. “You don’t owe him.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
