Of course, Rex could have chosen not to give him a single cent more. The one-dollar copyright transfer yesterday was already enough to secure the script legally. He could've walked away after that, sat back, and watched if Aren somehow managed to scrape the film together with duct tape, expired ramen, and sheer stubbornness.
But that would've been idiotic. Rex wasn't some miser counting pennies. People needed money to survive, to breathe, to keep their heads above water. And Aren… he was hanging on by threads already. Rex could see it in the exhaustion under his eyes, in the cracks at the corners of his mouth, in the way his shoulders carried hunger and fatigue as if they'd been permanent fixtures for years.
