Bullies Choke New Girl — Unaware She's A Deadly MMA Fighter
Chapter 38
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Dean Whitfield resigned from his position two weeks after the fair—not in disgrace, but by his own quiet choice. He told the school board he'd let politics decide too many things that should have been decided by conscience instead, and that he didn't trust himself to lead fairly until he'd spent some time relearning where that line actually sat. He took a smaller job teaching shop class at a school two towns over—closer, he said, to why he'd gotten into education in the first place.Ren finished the semester at Marian County Technical College with the best marks in her Diesel Systems class—Grady sitting two stations down from her most days now, quieter, steadier, working through his own slow repair alongside the literal one happening in Silas's garage every weekend.The first weekend, Grady hadn't said much, working silently under Silas's direction, flinching every time he made a mistake, waiting for the old man to finally lose patience with him the way his father always eventually did. Silas never did."Mistakes are just information," Silas told him the third weekend, watching Grady sand a scratch too hard and gouge the metal further. "Slow down. Feel the grain before you push against it.""Why are you even letting me do this?" Grady asked eventually, sanding block still in his hand. "After everything?"Silas considered the question the way he considered every question that actually mattered. "Because your father taught you that mistakes get buried," Silas said. "I'd rather teach you that mistakes get repaired. Different lesson. Better one, I think."Grady hadn't had much of an answer for that; he just kept sanding slower this time, feeling the grain the way he'd been told to.By the fifth weekend, something had shifted between them that neither one commented on directly: Grady started arriving early, before Silas had even finished his coffee, letting himself into the garage the way family does, not the way a guest does."You're here early," Silas said one Saturday, finding Grady already laying out tools."Figured the sooner we start, the sooner it's done, right?" Grady said. "Didn't want to rush it, though. You said rushing's how the scratch happened last time."Silas allowed himself a small, private smile at that, watching the boy who'd once broken this very motorcycle out of rage now handling it with something close to reverence."Your father know you've been coming out here every weekend?" Silas asked."He does now," Grady said. "Wasn't easy telling him, but I figured if I'm done hiding things, I should probably start with him.""How'd he take it?""Better than I expected," Grady admitted. "Think he's trying to figure out how to do this, too—the honest part. Neither of us are very good at it yet."