Daniel drove through the city with the radio off, the hum of the engine the only sound filling the car. The silence was heavy—but not empty. It pressed against him, filled with memories he had tried to bury and feelings he had never truly outrun.
Streetlights streaked past the windshield, each one flashing like a fragment of another life. Another version of himself. A man who had once believed love was indestructible simply because it was real.
He checked the clock on the dashboard.
She would be waiting.
The thought tightened his grip on the steering wheel, his knuckles whitening as nerves curled in his chest. He hadn’t felt like this in years—not since he was nineteen, standing outside her old apartment with flowers in one hand and too much hope in the other, rehearsing what he would
