Chapter 15
Zane
It’s been three fucking days.
Three days since her car pulled away from the curb and I stood on the concrete outside the workshop, watching it go.
She hasn’t called.
She hasn’t come back either.
I told myself I wouldn’t read too much into it because she needs time, space, and room to figure out what she wants without me standing there, making it harder for her. That is the ugly part of me trying to become a better man.
Rainer told me to give her space, that I owed her that. But fuck, space is overrated. No matter how much it kills me, it’s the first thing I can give her without screwing it up.
Doesn’t mean it feels noble about it.
It just means I stand here in this workshop with a wrench in my hand and her face in my head, pretending I am thinking about engines.
Let me be clear.
I am not thinking about engines.
My mind keeps drifting back to Skylar in my bed. My shirt on her body. Her face soft in the morning light. The way she looked at me when she left, that particular expression as she told me she understood why I thought I had to do it, that she was still mad and needed to protect herself.
The wrench slips and my knuckles hit the metal hard.
“Fuck.”
The pain is sharp through my hand. Pain is useful that way. It shows up, does its job, leaves proof of its existence, and moves on. Women who still own your heart after all these years are considerably less efficient.
“Are you going to fix that car or keep fighting it?”
Rainer’s voice sounds from behind me, coffee in hand, expression settled in that permanent state of mild disappointment he wears when I am doing something wrong. Which, by his standards, covers a broad range of human behavior, including, but not limited to, breathing incorrectly.
He comes to stand beside the bay and looks at me. “What’s wrong with you today?”
“Nothing.”
“You might want to tell your face that.”
I pick the wrench back up.
He leans forward and examines my hand. A thin red line gapes across my knuckle, bright against the grease.
“Bleeding?”
“No.”
He gives me the flat look. The one that hasn’t changed since I have known him and will probably never change as I continue to know him.
“Clean it,” he says.
“It’s just a scratch.”
“Clean it, Zane.”
I stare at him.
He stares back.
I wipe the blood with the rag hanging from my back pocket.
Rainer’s eyes narrow. “That was not cleaning it.”
He doesn’t move.
Which means he has decided to stand exactly where he is until I crack, a strategy that has worked on me more times than I will ever admit out loud.
It takes twenty-eight seconds.
“You gonna hover all day?” I ask.
He sets his coffee on the bench beside me and crosses his arms.
“I get that you’re pissed, Zane. Sometimes it takes time. But you should know that an apology is not a receipt, kid. You don’t hand it over and get something back.”
“I know that.”
“Then act like it.”
I glare at him.
The old phone on the wall rings. That ancient landline, mounted near the office door, has been there since before I arrived. Rainer heads into the office.
“Rainer’s Auto,” he says into the receiver, voice all business mode now. “Where are you?”
His gaze flicks toward me through the office window.
Mine narrows.
He writes something down on a scrap of paper, then hangs up and steps back out into the workshop, already reaching for his jacket on the hook.
“Breakdown off Kent. Woman with two kids in the car, transmission gone.” He picks up the tow truck keys and heads toward the roller door. “I’ll be back.”
A minute later, the tow truck engine turns over outside. He pulls out of the lot, swings onto the street, and the sound fades down the block until the workshop swallows it.
I stand there with the wrench in my hand, the radio doing its thing in the background, and I go back to the Mustang and try to think about the engine.
I get four minutes of productive work done before I hear footsteps at the roller door.
I slowly straighten up.
Griff ducks under the roller door and straightens inside the workshop.
Shitty leather jacket. Dark hoodie underneath.
A cut near his temple that wasn’t there the last time I saw him.
Bloodshot eyes that suggest either a rough night or a rough life—knowing Griff it’s probably both.
That permanent twitch in his jaw that makes him seem one bad comment away from biting through his own teeth.
In his right hand is his Zippo. He opens it, then shuts it and does it again.
The sound crawls straight up my spine.
I remember that sound from when we were kids. Bunks too close together. Air too stale. Him on the other side of the dark, flicking that lighter the way people do when they need to feel like they have control over at least one small thing. I used to lie awake, listening to it.
His eyes find me and a smile creeps across his face. Crooked teeth at first, then a smug smirk.
Rainer’s truck is barely off the street and he is already in here. That means he’s been outside eyeing the workshop.
“Rivera,” he says.
I set the wrench down.
He moves a few more steps into the workshop, looking at the Mustang the way he looks at everything, assessing rather than admiring.
“Ricky is losing patience,” he says.
“I don’t owe Ricky anything.”
“Ricky sees it differently.” The Zippo flicks open, the flame catches for half a second, then snaps shut again in that rhythm he has always had—that restless, twitchy habit of a man who needs his hands doing something. “He had money on that fight. Lost a lot of it.”
“Not my problem.”
“You had a fight booked. Bets were placed. Money was moved.”
“Still not my problem.”
“You don’t get to walk away from men like Ricky,” Griff says. “You know that.”
A thought comes to me as I wonder if Griff is running his own private shake-down, squeezing me before anyone else gets the chance.
Maybe Ricky has no idea I am even out yet and Griff is playing both sides.
Either way, dealing with Ricky directly is the only way to find out where I actually stand, instead of letting this prick keep standing between us, collecting whatever he can.
“Tell Ricky to come see me if he has a problem,” I say. “Now get the fuck out.”
I know it is stupid to invite Ricky to the workshop.
The last thing I want is that man standing in Rainer’s space, but if Ricky shows up himself, at least I know it’s real.
At least I know this isn’t just Griff running his own show and using Ricky’s name like a weapon he borrowed without permission.
Griff’s gaze drifts toward the roller door and out onto the street, the way a man looks when he already knows what is out there because he has been standing in it.
Something pricks at the back of my neck. He was watching the workshop, waiting for Rainer to leave before he walked in.
His gaze slides back to me.
“So where’s the blonde?”
The workshop goes silent as every molecule of air rearranges itself. Griff’s smile turns sharp at the edges, the smile of a man who has just found what he came looking for.
“You know. That hot little thing you walked to her car the other day,” he says.
My body moves before the better version of me can intervene.
One second, he’s standing there with his Zippo and his smug mouth. The next, my hand is around his throat and I have him backed against the shelving unit, tools rattling on the wall behind him. My face is close enough to his that I can see the exact moment he realizes he has miscalculated.
“You’ve been watching this place,” I say.
He wheezes, one hand coming up to grab my wrist. He doesn’t look frightened. That’s the worst part. He looks satisfied.
I tighten my grip.
Not enough to cause real damage, but enough to make a point.
“Fucking answer me.”
“I think I touched a nerve,” he manages, his voice strained under the pressure.
I slam him back against the shelving unit again, hard enough that half the tools on the wall shift, and some of them fall onto the floor.
His throat works under my hand.
That old heat rises fast. Red and completely familiar. The part of me that prison sharpened rather than killed. The part that knows exactly how much pressure it takes to push a man from defiant to desperate.
My heart hammers as I glare at him and then Rainer’s voice cuts through it, clear as anything, pulled up from years past in this same workshop.
You’re not some lost fucking kid anymore, Zane. You don’t have to keep fighting.
I drag in a breath through my nose and loosen my grip. Not because Griff deserves it, but because of Rainer and the trust he keeps extending to me, no matter how many times I have tested its edges.
I keep my hand at his throat because he opened his mouth about Skylar and he needs to clearly understand exactly what that costs him before he walks out of here.
“You want to come in here and run your mouth about Ricky, money, and whatever debt keeps you feeling important,” I say, my voice steady and entirely serious.
“Fine. But if you mention her again, watch her again, or even breathe in her direction, whatever you think I owe won’t matter, because I will become the kind of problem even Ricky cannot cash out. ”
Griff’s eyes water from lack of air, but the bastard still tries to smile.
I let go of him, not because he deserves mercy. I do it because of Rainer and every piece of trust that man has extended to me and I have no intention of burning it all down in my own hands.
He coughs, one hand going up to his throat, face flushed.
His eyes are bright with spite and something that looks uncomfortably like victory.
The look of a man who came here to find out one specific thing and has just found it out completely.
I handed it to him without hesitation, like the same stupid prick I have always been.
He finds the Zippo on the floor, picks it up, and wipes it on his jeans. He flicks it open again. The flame catches and holds and he looks at me over it for a long moment.
His hand shakes. Only slightly. But I still see it.
He slips the Zippo back into his pocket and backs toward the roller door, taking his time with it as he does with everything, making sure I watch him leave on his terms.
Then he ducks beneath the door and disappears.
I stand in the middle of the workshop, my fists clenched, my chest heaving, every muscle in my body wound tight for a fight that has already walked away.
I pick up the wrench and head back to the Mustang.