Rain hit the loft windows like buckshot by the time she started yelling.

"You're doing what?"

"Keep your voice down."

"Don't tell me to keep my voice down, Axel, you're literally modifying getaway cars for—for who, exactly? Who are these people?"

He set the wrench down harder than he meant to. Metal on metal, sharp in the quiet under the storm. "Clients. That's it. Doesn't matter who."

"It matters if you're going to prison over it."

"I'm not going to prison."

"You don't know that."

"I know exactly that." His jaw was already tight, that old familiar heat crawling up the back of his neck, the one that showed up whenever someone tried to tell him how to run his life. Didn't matter that she wasn't wrong. Didn't matter that some nights he lay awake running the same math she was running right now. He wasn't about to hand her that.

Careful. Watch it.

His father's voice, unhelpfully, riding shotgun in his skull. You think you're smarter than the consequences, Axel. Robert Horcoff's disappointed-calm voice, the one that used to land worse than yelling ever could.

He shoved it down. Didn't need it. Not tonight.

"You said you were trying to be better," she said, quieter now, which somehow landed worse than the yelling. "You said—"

"I said I was trying. Trying isn't the same as done."

"So what, this is just—forever? Illegal work forever, and I just get used to it?"

"Nobody's asking you to get used to anything."

"Then what am I doing here?"

That one landed somewhere low in his chest, sharp enough that he had to look away from her for a second. Rain slammed the windows harder. Thunder rolled somewhere close, close enough to rattle the old warehouse glass.

"You wanna leave, door's right there," he said, low. Ugly. Not what he meant, exactly, but his mouth got there before the rest of him could catch up, the way it always did when he felt something cornering him.

Her face did something complicated—hurt, then furious at herself for being hurt, then furious at him for causing it. "Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Push me out the second it gets hard. That's your whole thing, isn't it? Somebody gets close, somebody says something real, and you—"

The lights went out.

Whole loft, dead black in half a second, thunder cracking directly overhead like the sky had decided to underline her point. The hum of the fridge cut off. Rain got louder in the sudden absence of anything electric.

"Perfect," he muttered into the dark. "Very dramatic. Well done."

"I didn't do that."

"I know you didn't do that."

Neither of them moved for a second. He could hear her breathing, closer than he expected—she hadn't backed away during the fight, he realized, hadn't put distance between them even mid-argument. Still standing right there, a few feet off, invisible now except for the faint gray outline the lightning kept throwing across her.

His eyes adjusted slow. Enough to see the shape of her, arms crossed, chest still rising too fast from the yelling.

Say something. Fix it. You know how.

He didn't move.

"I'm not trying to push you out," he said finally, voice rougher than he wanted it. Quieter than the fight had been. Something about the dark made it easier, somehow—not having to watch her face catch every word, not having to perform steady when he didn't feel it.

"Feels like it."

"Yeah, well. I'm bad at this." A short, humorless breath. "You know that already."

"I know you're scared."

"I'm not scared."

"Axel."

"I'm not—" He stopped. Lightning cracked white through the windows, and for half a second he saw her clearly—jaw set, eyes wet but furious, refusing to look away from him even now. Something about that undid a knot in his chest that had been sitting there since the word prison left her mouth.

"I don't know how to do this and not fuck it up," he said, quiet, the words coming out before he could stop them or dress them up nicer. "That's it. That's the whole thing. Not that I don't want—" He cut himself off, jaw working.