Bullies Choke New Girl — Unaware She's A Deadly MMA Fighter
Chapter 26
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Somewhere around 3:00 in the morning, he pulled his phone out and typed a message to Ren he never sent. Deleted it. Typed it again. Deleted it again. He didn't know yet how to apologize for something this size; didn't know if an apology this late was worth anything at all. But something in him—small and unfamiliar—had started wanting to try anyway.At sunrise, Silas stood in the wreckage of his garage with a cup of black coffee going cold in his hand, staring at the dented tank of his daughter's motorcycle like a man visiting a grave. Ren came out around 6:00, dressed already for the fair, dark circles under her eyes from a night neither of them had slept through."You look like you've been standing here all night," she said."Some of it," Silas admitted."What are we going to do about the ring?"Silas set his coffee down on the workbench next to the class ring still sitting where he'd left it. "I've been thinking on that," he said. "Wrong way to do this is march into that fair and shove this ring in Grady's face in front of everybody. That's Voss's way of doing things—humiliation as a weapon. I won't stoop to it, even with good reason.""So what's the right way?""Give the boy a chance to come to it himself," Silas said. "Truth has a way of finding daylight on its own when you don't force it. I intend to let today do some of that work, and see what he does with the room I give him."Ren studied her grandfather a long moment, a mixture of respect and disbelief crossing her face. "After what he did to your garage? To Mom's bike?""I'm angrier about that than I know how to say out loud," Silas admitted, voice rough. "But anger's a poor architect—builds ugly things fast, and none of them last." He wrapped an arm around his granddaughter's shoulders, both of them looking at the wrecked motorcycle together in the pale early light. "Today's going to ask a lot of both of us," Silas said. "You standing on that stage with everybody watching, me standing beside a debt I only just learned I was owed. Let's go meet it together."Ren nodded slowly, the tiredness in her eyes hardening into something steadier. "Together," she echoed.They drove into town an hour later, the wrecked motorcycle left behind under its torn cover, the ring sitting wrapped carefully in Silas's jacket pocket—evidence and offering both, waiting for the moment it would matter most.The banner at the school still read Fall Trade Fair, the countdown finally reaching its last number, the marker crossing out the final box on the wall calendar with nobody left to notice the small ceremony of it.