The car ride had been silent.
Not the comfortable kind. Not even the angry kind.
It was the kind of silence that pulsed, like something alive.
Watching. Waiting.
I sat still, hands folded tightly in my lap, knuckles bone-white. I didn't dare look at him. I knew he was mad at me for walking out on him.
The windows blurred with city lights,but I couldn't focus on anything. Just his presence. Just the way the air in the car felt too thin with him in it.
I shouldn't have walked ahead of him back at the apartment. That much was obvious now.
He hadn't said anything when I did it - Just followed, quiet. But the moment the car door shut behind me, I felt it.
That shift.
Like he was letting me sit with the mistake before he decided what to do with it.
"We'll arrive in seven minutes," he
