The drive to the second hospital felt less like movement and more like something breaking in slow motion, the silence inside the car thick and suffocating, pressing against all of them without mercy as no one found the words to speak.
Vivian sat beside Sebastian, her hand still locked around his, not out of comfort but out of control, the only thing she could still hold onto while everything else slipped, yet deep inside her something had already shifted, something quiet and final that she refused to let show.
Because in her heart—she had already walked away. Not physically. Not yet.
But the thought had crossed. And it stayed.
Sebastian sat still, his gaze forward, unreadable, but his mind was no longer in shock. It was working. Fast. Cold. Connecting pieces that didn't belong together but somehow formed a pattern too deliberate to ignore.
