Dane's POV:
The fingers of light pass through the morning mist, thin and pale , reaching through the pines in broken slants.
I watch them through the windshield as the car climbs the hill, the engine groaning low beneath me like it too is reluctant to arrive. The warmth does absolutely nothing.
It catches the glass and bounces off somewhere I can't follow, leaving the cold exactly where it was, inside my chest, right behind my sternum, where last night's argument has made its home and refuses to leave.
My hands are wrong on the wheel. Too tight. I can feel the leather beginning to crease under my grip, the seams protesting, and I make a conscious effort to ease off—once, twice—before my knuckles whiten again without my permission.
Nico.
The name arrives in my head the same way it did last night: uninvited, and with the particular sting of something I shouldn't have to be thinking about at all.
