Chapter 3 #2
She looks at me for a long moment, before taking the can from my hand and moving to sit on the old chair near the office door.
I drag the chair from the far corner into the middle of the office and drop into it.
For a moment, neither of us says anything.
“I’ve blamed myself for you going to prison,” she says quietly. “For years.”
“Don’t.”
Her eyes lift to meet mine. “I watched what happened to Sky after you left.”
Every muscle in my body tightens.
There it is. The question that has been clawing its way up the inside of my throat every waking hour since I told Skylar to go and never come back. Was she better off without me? Did she get the life she deserved?
I drag in a breath, hold it, before forcing it out slowly.
She looks back down at the can. “I’m sorry, Zane.”
“You already said that.” I scrub a hand down my face. “Cass, listen to me. I was already headed somewhere bad before that day, and you know it. I was fighting against everything that looked at me wrong. Something was going to happen eventually. You didn’t cause that.”
“Can I ask you something, Zane?”
“Depends.”
“Why did you say what you said to Skylar?” She pauses. “At the prison, when she visited.”
Everything in me goes still in a way that has nothing to do with being calm.
I never loved you. You were just a fuck.
I stare at the floor as Cassie waits for an answer.
“I didn’t want her to waste her life on me,” I say, my voice coming out flat.
“I got seven years, Cass. She was eighteen. She’d already lost enough without losing the years she had left to visiting hours, phone calls, and some inmate number on a form.
She would have waited.” I look up. “You know she would have. Because she’s stubborn enough to confuse loyalty with self-destruction.
She would have called it love, and she would have waited every single day. And I couldn’t let her do that.”
There is a moment of silence between us before Cassie speaks again.
“She loved you, Zane.”
I pick up the past tense—loved. My chest caves in around that single syllable as if something structural just gave way.
“I know she did.”
“Do you still love her?”
The office grows quiet in a way that has nothing to do with sound.
I could say yes.
The word is right there, at the front of my mouth, where it has lived all this time.
I could hand it to Cassie and watch her carry it straight back to Skylar without even meaning to.
Not because she would betray me. But because love has a pulse.
It gets heard even when nobody speaks. It moves through people, whether they intend it or not.
I could lie again and say no. Pretend seven years killed what seven years only starved for.
I stare at Cassie and she stares back.
“How is she?” The question tears out of me before pride can clamp a hand over its mouth.
Cassie’s entire face shifts. “She’s alive.”
That answer hits wrong. It’s too vague, too careful. The kind of answer you give when the real one would do damage.
“That’s not what I asked.”
“It’s the answer I’m giving you.”
“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.
“You sure about that? Because from where I’m standing,” he says, “you look ready. Bigger, too. Men would pay good money to watch what seven years did to you.”
A dark pulse moves through my blood. Violence answers before thought does. For one clean second I see my fist driving into his mouth. See that slow ugly smile split open. See blood on his teeth and that particular smugness finally wiped off his face for good.
Then I see the gate, the bars, and the cell.
“No.”
Griff steps closer. “That wasn’t a fucking request.”
Rainer comes through the workshop, eyes locked on Griff.
“Out,” Rainer says. “Get the fuck out of here before I throw you into the street myself.”
Griff turns his head slowly, taking Rainer in. Then he looks back at me as if Rainer isn’t worth a full turn of his neck. He backs toward the door, but his eyes stay on me the whole way. At the threshold, he stops. His finger lifts and points straight at me.
Then he is gone.
“Zane," Rainer says.
“I’m not going back.” The words come out certain because I mean them and I need him to know I mean them.
Rainer looks at me. His eyes move over my face and I let him look because I’ve got nothing to hide from this man. Not anymore.
He nods once. I can see he is worried about me. I catch it before he turns away. That small tightening around his mouth. The weight that settles into his shoulders as he goes back to the far side of the workshop.
Fuck me. I only got out yesterday and trouble was already waiting for me on the other side.