It felt like the world stopped breathing.
The sound of my own pulse was louder than the engines cooling beside us. The track lights hummed faintly, catching the edges of his face — familiar yet impossibly different. Adrian stood there, helmet dangling at his side, eyes shadowed and raw like something sacred had just been shattered.
He wasn’t Rogue.
He was Rogue.
And my brain refused to pick which version to believe.
“Say something,” I whispered, my voice too small for the space between us.
He looked at me — really looked at me — and I saw it: fear. Not the kind that runs. The kind that hides because it has too much to lose. “You weren’t supposed to find out this way.”
I let out a sharp laugh, breathless and uneven. “You mean crashing through an ambush and saving my life twice? Yeah,
