Chapter Eleven
Rein's Ultimatum
Rein summoned Colt to the office three days later, and Colt knew before he'd crossed the yard that the conversation would define the shape of everything that came after.
The office was small, cluttered with paperwork that had nothing to do with anything legal, a space heater ticking uselessly against the November cold seeping through the depot's corrugated walls.
Rein sat behind the desk with the unhurried authority he wore like a second skin, gesturing Colt into the chair opposite without looking up from whatever he was reading.
"Sergeant at Arms," Rein said finally, setting the papers aside.
"Position's open again since Halden stepped back.
It's yours if you want it. Better pay, more say in how this club runs, exactly what your father would have wanted for you.
" He folded his hands on the desk. "One condition.
You cut it off with the audio director. Publicly, cleanly, no more sitting in the rain outside her studio like a lovesick fool the whole yard's talking about behind your back. "
Colt sat very still, feeling the old familiar pull of the offer, the promotion he'd worked toward for years, the approval of a man who'd been the closest thing to a father he'd had since his own died. Six months ago he would have said yes without hesitation.
"No," he said.
Something shifted in Rein's face, surprise giving way fast to something colder. "Say that again."
"No. I'm not cutting anything off, and I'm not taking the position if that's the price of it." Colt kept his voice level, though his pulse was hammering. "I know what I did to my marriage. I'm not going to compound it by letting you dictate who I'm allowed to care about."
"You're choosing a woman who's divorcing you over your own family."
"She's not my family in the way you mean it.
She's the only family I've ever had that didn't require me to bleed for approval.
" The words came out steadier than he felt, and he watched them land on Rein's face like a slap.
"I've given this club fifteen years. I've done things for you I'm not proud of and I did them because I thought loyalty meant not asking questions. I'm done not asking questions."
The room had gone quiet enough that Colt could hear the space heater's tick, hear the distant murmur of the yard outside, hear, underneath all of it, his own pulse loud in his ears. Rein studied him for a long moment, something calculating moving behind his eyes.
"You'll regret this," Rein said finally, standing, the conversation apparently over. "This club is the only thing that's ever actually stayed, Colt. Women leave. Family dies. The patch stays."
"Maybe. Or maybe the patch just costs more than I'm willing to keep paying." Colt stood as well, meeting Rein's gaze without flinching, and walked out of the office before either of them could say anything further.
? ? ?
Ledger caught up with him in the yard, falling into step beside him with the easy familiarity of eight years of friendship. "That went about how I expected."
"You heard."
"Whole depot probably heard. Rein doesn't exactly modulate when he's angry.
" Ledger glanced sideways at him, something unusually serious in his expression.
"You know refusing him publicly like that isn't going to just blow over.
He's going to make an example eventually, one way or another.
Might not be today, might not be this month, but he's not going to let this go. "
"I know."
"And you're doing it anyway."
Colt stopped walking, turning to face his friend fully.
"I spent fifteen years believing this place was the only thing that would ever actually want me.
I'm starting to think that was never true.
I think I just never let myself test it.
" He exhaled hard, the cold air visible between them. "You ever think about getting out?"
Ledger was quiet for a long moment, his expression unreadable. "More than you'd guess," he said finally, low, like the admission cost him something. "Don't say anything to anyone. Not yet. But yeah. More than you'd guess."
Something passed between them then, an understanding neither of them fully voiced, and Colt clapped a hand on his friend's shoulder before continuing toward the gate, toward his bike, toward the one place in the city he actually wanted to be.
? ? ?
He arrived at the studio later than usual that night, and Senna, waiting behind the front desk with a session file open she wasn't actually reading, looked up the moment the door opened, reading something in his face before he'd said a word.
"What happened."
"Rein offered me Sergeant at Arms. Better position, more money, everything I spent years working toward." Colt crossed the room slowly, stopping a careful distance away, giving her space to close it or not as she chose. "Only condition was I cut you off. Publicly. Stop coming here."
Senna's breath caught. "What did you say."
"I said no." He said it simply, without performance, without any apparent expectation of credit.
"I'm not telling you this because I want something for it.
I'm telling you because you deserve to know, and because I'm done letting you find things out sideways, from a phone or a bruise or anyone but me. "
Senna stood very still behind the desk, absorbing what he'd just handed her: a promotion refused, a fifteen-year loyalty publicly severed, all of it done without asking anything of her in return.
She thought of Rein's cold amusement the day she'd delivered the papers, of the men in her studio making threats, of every small, quiet cruelty this world had shown her, and understood, standing there, exactly what it had cost him to walk away from the only structure that had ever told him he mattered.
She came around the desk without deciding to, crossed the room, and for the first time since the night at the kitchen table, she reached for the door to the sound booth, the one room in the building she had never once let him enter, the fortress she'd built specifically to keep the outside world from getting through unnoticed.
She unlocked it, pushed the door open, and stepped back to let him in.
"You don't have to say anything," she said, her voice unsteady. "Just come in out of the cold."
Colt looked at the open door for a long moment, something moving through his face that looked, in the studio's dim evening light, almost like disbelief, and then he stepped past the threshold, into the small glassed-in space that had held nothing but her grief and her fury for three weeks, and stood there quietly while she closed the door behind them both, sealing the two of them inside the one room built to let nothing false get through.