The ride home felt colder than the walk out of the restaurant, not because of the weather outside or a faulty heater, but because even breath felt dangerous between us. The silence carried edges, sharp enough to cut if either of us moved the wrong way, and speaking would have required acknowledging the distance that had opened between us like a fault line neither of us was prepared to cross.
Adrian drove with both hands steady on the wheel, posture impeccable, expression carved into something unreadable. To anyone passing by, he would have looked like a man simply focused on the road, calm and controlled and unaffected by the evening behind us. But his jaw was clenched so tightly that a muscle pulsed along its edge, and the streetlights caught the hard angles of his hands gripping the ste
