Chapter 19
Zane
Ileave Skylar’s apartment with her taste still on my tongue and the kind of stupid smile on my face that should probably get a man like me punched on principle.
It is not even a full smile. More of a smirk.
But something is sitting in my chest this morning that will not shut the fuck up.
And for once it’s not dread or guilt or that usual restless, ugly thing that wakes up before I do and starts listing all the ways I have fucked up my own life and dragged everyone else’s down with it.
It is Skylar. She fucking loves me.
I don’t know how a thought that small can still take up an entire fucking body, but there it is, sitting in the center of my chest like it owns the place and has decided to start making changes.
I step out onto the street and the cold morning air hits me in the face with the enthusiasm of something that has been waiting to do exactly that.
It still does nothing to knock sense back into me.
I should feel exhausted. My body is heavy, my eyes are gritty, and I slept like absolute shit because sleeping was not exactly high on the list of things we managed to get around to last night.
We talked. Then we touched. Then we talked again, with her head on my chest and my fingers in her hair, both of us saying things that would have killed us to say out loud a week ago.
Things that had been locked away in both of us for so long they came out half-blinking in the light.
Then I fucked her again because apparently getting the woman I have always wanted back into my arms has done nothing whatsoever for my discipline.
Last night felt like coming back into my own skin after years of walking around as the worst, most hollowed-out version of myself, haunting the edges of a life that never quite fit because she was not in it.
I shove my hands into my jacket pockets and keep walking, because if I stop now, I will turn around and go straight back upstairs.
I will find her still asleep or half awake, hair a mess, face soft, mouth swollen from mine, and I will crawl back into that bed and lose the entire day with her without a single regret.
Plus, facing Cassie in the cold light of morning is not something I am emotionally prepared for, not after she came home and found us last night.
Jesus Christ. I scrub a hand over my jaw and the almost-smile gets even worse.
The front door had opened sometime after midnight. Skylar and I were on the couch because after we had showered together after fucking in the kitchen, we had every intention of talking, when we sat down on the couch. Then somehow we ended up fucking again instead.
We were naked, tangled together, half covered in nothing but sweat and bad judgment, when Cassie’s keys rattled in the lock.
Skylar froze.
I froze.
Then the door opened.
I moved fast, grabbing the yellow blanket from the back of the couch and dragging it over both of us in about one second flat.
Cassie stepped inside with a takeout bag in one hand and her eyebrows already halfway up her forehead, taking in the scene with the slow, comprehensive gaze of a woman whose suspicions have just been confirmed beyond any reasonable doubt.
Skylar made a sound I will keep somewhere private until the day I die. A strangled little gasp, horrified and so fucking cute, before she shoved her face into my shoulder as if that would make either of us any less naked.
Cassie stopped in the doorway. She glanced at the blanket, then at my bare shoulder, before looking at Skylar, who was attempting to become part of my chest.
Cassie blinked once before looking at the takeout bag in her hand.
“Well,” she said, looking back at us. “I sent him over here to talk and apparently you two heard fuck on my couch.”
Skylar made a dying sound against my chest. “Cassie.”
“No, no. That’s on me.” Cassie lifted one hand, as if accepting responsibility before a jury. “I should have been more specific. Use your words, Skylar. Not your thighs. Rookie mistake on my part.”
“Cassie,” Skylar groaned.
“I’m going to my room,” Cassie said, stepping farther inside like a woman entering a crime scene. “I do not want details. I do not want eye contact. And I absolutely do not want to know why my yellow blanket is now involved.”
She stopped just before she reached the hallway and turned back. Her eyes found mine over the top of Skylar’s head.
“Zane,” she said.
“Yeah, Cass.”
The real Cassie looked at me for a long moment. The one beneath it all.
“If you hurt her again,” she said, with absolute seriousness, “I will make sure they never find enough of you to identify. Are we clear?”
I held her gaze. “Crystal.”
She held mine for another second, then turned and walked to her room.
Just before the bedroom door closed, she said, loud enough to carry down the hall, “And for the record, I am happy for you both. Disgusted, obviously. But happy.”
The door clicked shut.
She loves Skylar. Loudly. Fiercely. In that nosy, intrusive, nobody-asked-you-but-you-are-right kind of way that should annoy the shit out of me, but somehow doesn’t even come close.
I like her. That is probably a sign that I have suffered a head injury and should seek medical attention immediately. But it’s the truth.
Skylar spent the next five minutes hiding under the blanket while I kissed the side of her head and tried not to laugh, because I enjoy having all my organs where they are and Skylar has always had excellent aim when she is embarrassed.
The memory follows me down the street, warm as sunlight on concrete, which is not the kind of thought a man like me should be having at eight in the morning on a public sidewalk. Yet here we are.
I feel cracked open in the stupidest, most inconvenient way.
Like something slipped in overnight, rearranged the furniture, and now I can’t find my way back to the version of myself that ran entirely on damage and low expectations.
Like some light snuck in through a gap I forgot to guard and now I don’t know how to pretend I am still made only of dark places, bad decisions, and the particular brand of self-destruction I spent years perfecting.
It should scare me how good this feels. It does. A little. Somewhere in the back of my chest, where the old habits live and die hard.
The garage comes into view at the end of the block, its roller door half up.
For a moment, the sight settles me.
Then I see Griff standing out front, near the edge of the driveway, his phone pressed to his ear. His eyes are already on me as I come down the street.
The warmth in my chest goes cold. Just like that.
My hands curl into my jacket pockets. No. Not today. I keep walking.
Every step toward the garage drags the morning down with it. All that stupid hope inside me starts looking for cover because it knows the world he belongs to. The world I once belonged to.
My eyes flick to the garage.
Has Griff been inside?
Did he walk into the only place that has given me a chance and bring the stink of that old life with him?
Griff shifts, still watching me, and says something low into the phone. I can’t hear the words, but I don’t need to hear them.
The thought hits harder than seeing Griff. Not because Rainer cannot handle himself. The old bastard is built of gristle, engine oil, and pure refusal. But this is not his mess.
This is mine. My debt. My bad choices stacked high enough to cast shadows over people who had nothing to do with making them.
I should stop and ask him what the fuck he is doing here. Tell him to get his bullshit away from Rainer’s door before I rearrange his face.
But I don’t. I just walk straight past him.
His gaze follows me. The phone lowers a fraction. “Morning, Rivera.”
I walk into the garage and cross the threshold like I‘m not dragging half a storm in behind me.
The smell hits me first. Under any other circumstances, it would settle me the way it always does, the way this place has always settled me, completely and without requiring anything from me in return.
Right now, it feels invaded.
Rainer is at the workbench near the back, one hand wrapped around a mug, the other sorting through a pile of receipts he definitely plans to complain about later and at length. He looks up when I step inside.
His eyes narrow immediately. “Where have you been?”
The question is rough, but there is no bite to it.
I shrug out of my jacket and hang it over the back of the chair in the corner.
I grab a rag from the bench and wipe my hands, even though there is nothing on them yet.
Habit I guess. Something to do with my hands, keeping me from turning around to check whether Griff is still standing on the pavement outside, like a problem I have not worked out how to solve yet.
Rainer watches me over the rim of his mug. “You seem different.”
I keep my eyes on the rag. “Do I?”
“Don’t play dumb with me, son. You’re terrible at it and it’s a waste of both our time.”
The word son hits me in the ribs the way it always does when he says it without thinking.
That quiet, entirely accidental impact of a word that means something neither of us has ever sat down to discuss formally.
I have no idea if he’s aware of what it does to me.
Maybe he does. Rainer pretends not to notice things because noticing them out loud would require feelings and feelings make him itch in ways he has never found a satisfying solution to.
I toss the rag onto the bench.
Rainer snorts. “You look like you haven’t slept.”
I glance at him.
A big mistake.
His eyebrows lift. “Well, shit.”
“What?”
“She finally put you out of your misery.”
I turn my gaze away fast, but it is already too late. My mouth betrays me, that useless, traitorous bastard pulling sideways before I can get it under control.
I should tell him to mind his own business. Instead, I say nothing, which tells him everything he needs to know.
“I’m pleased for you, Zane,” he says, taking a slow sip of his coffee. “Really, I am. Just don’t fuck it up.”