Rainer says nothing which just pisses me off.
“Ask me what I’d even say,” I mutter, turning back to the car just to have somewhere to look.
“What would you say?”
I lift my head and glare at him. “That wasn’t an invitation.”
His face stays completely blank. “I’m still asking.”
I run a hand through my hair. “I’m not sure. She might have a great life now. A home. Someone who didn’t need a prison sentence to learn not to destroy everything he touches.”
I pause as the words sit in my mouth like something I’ve been chewing on for years without swallowing. “I don’t want to walk back into that and fuck it up because I still love her.”
There it is. The truth. Ugly and bare, standing in the middle of the workshop with grease on its hands and nowhere left to hide.
Rainer’s eyes lift to mine.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
“You were aware?”
“I’m old,” he says. “Not blind.”
My laugh breaks. It’s short and hollow. “Are you always this comforting?”
“No.”
“Good. Because you’re terrible at it.”
I pace away from the car, my body unable to hold still with her name loose in the room.
“I had her number typed out the other night,” I say, stopping with my back to him. “I almost sent her a message.”
“What did it say?”
“Sorry. But I deleted it.”
“Why?”
“Because sorry is bullshit.” I turn and look at him. “Sorry doesn’t make up for what I said. What I did. Sending it would have been for me, not for her, and she has had enough of my shit landing in her life without asking for it.”
Rainer nods.
“Sorry is a start,” he says. After a beat, he adds, “She may not want to hear it. She may tell you to go to hell.”
“I know.”
“And that’s her right.”
“I know that too.”
He goes quiet again.
“Cassie told me Skylar has a life,” I say. “That was all she’d give me. Said it like a warning.”
“Cassie’s loyal,” Rainer says. “Always has been.”
