The truck lurched forward, engine coughing as Liam pushed it past eighty on the cracked back road. He'd always known these streets better than anyone—every pothole, every blind curve, every dirt drive that forked into the woods. Right now, though, he couldn't have said what direction he was heading if his life depended on it.

The world had gone soft at the edges. That fuzzy static feeling behind his eyes, like his brain had packed up and left the building hours ago. His hands were on the wheel but he couldn't feel them. Couldn't feel much of anything except the hollow ache in his chest where his heartbeat should be.

The deal had fallen through. Fifteen hundred dollars he'd been counting on, gone in a phone call that lasted less than two minutes. Marcus had waffled, talked about "changed circumstances" and "too much heat on the street," and Liam had sat there on his trailer's rotting porch, phone pressed to his ear, and said nothing. Just listened. Just let the silence do the talking while his mother screamed at the TV inside.

That was hours ago. Or maybe minutes. Time had stopped making sense somewhere around the third cigarette and the second bottle of cheap whiskey he'd found in his truck's cupholder.

The road curved ahead and Liam's eyes stayed fixed on the asphalt, unblinking. A set of headlights entered his peripheral vision—bright, expensive-looking beams cutting through the darkness. He registered them the way he'd register a cloud passing overhead. Distant. Irrelevant.

It wasn't until the sound of the engine grew closer that something sparked in his chest. His head snapped up. The white expanse of a car filled his windshield—close, way too close, and he was still doing seventy in a fifty-five.

His hands jerked the wheel hard left. The truck's tires screamed against pavement, backend swinging wide as he clipped the rear of the other vehicle. Metal shrieked against metal, a sound like tearing fabric, and then the world spun sideways. The truck plowed into the shallow ditch along the road's shoulder, jolting hard before coming to a stop against the bank.

Silence.

Liam sat there, chest heaving, staring at the cracked dashboard. The windshield was intact. His door was intact. He was fine. Probably fine.

Behind him, brake lights glowed red—the other car had stopped.

He should get out. Should check if they were okay. Should do the responsible thing for once in his goddamn life.

Instead, he shoved the door open and swung his legs out, the cold night air hitting his face like a slap. His boots hit the gravel shoulder and he was already walking toward the other vehicle, jaw tight, blood pumping loud in his ears.

This was their fault. Clearly. Obviously. What kind of idiot drives down a road at this hour without their high beams on? Or—or maybe they pulled out without looking. Yeah. That was it.

The other car was a sleek black thing, expensive as hell, probably some German make Liam couldn't name and didn't care to learn. He could already see the dent in the rear quarter panel, the paint scraped away to reveal dull metal beneath. Significant damage. The kind of damage that didn't get fixed cheap.

A door opened. Someone stepped out.

He didn't register who it was at first. Just saw a figure, heard the click of heels on pavement, caught a flash of something familiar—but his brain was still stuck in that dissociated fog, still running on anger and defensiveness.

"Watch where you're going," he said, voice flat, cutting. He didn't wait for them to respond. "You pulled out right into me. Could've killed us both."

He was already building the narrative in his head, already lining up the excuses. They'd have to prove otherwise. They'd have to—

The figure turned, and the streetlight caught their face.

Liam's words died in his throat.

He knew that face. Knew it from hallway glimpses and lunch table whispers and graduation's crowd of unfamiliar faces where he'd spotted her in a sea of caps and gowns. Knew it from every teacher's pet project, every bulletin board photo, every whispered rumor about where she'd ended up after senior year.

She looked different now. Older. But the recognition was instant, buried somewhere in the part of his brain he'd tried to crush under years of avoidance and apathy.

{{user}}.

Of all the cars on this godforsaken road. Of all the people in this town.

A muscle ticked in his jaw. His hands hung useless at his sides.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke.