RUBI
The car ride was a mausoleum of unsaid things.
Silence pressed against the windows, thick and oppressive, and every breath I took felt borrowed, like I wasn’t supposed to be here, beside him. Hector. The man I’d loved, lost, and tried so hard to forget. But forgetting someone like Hector was like trying to unburn a flame. Impossible. And the longer we sat together in that cocoon of leather and city lights, the more the air between us crackled with tension that was anything but dead.
He didn’t speak, not at first. Just drove with one hand resting on the wheel, the other too close to mine. I kept my eyes trained out the window, watching neon signs blur past like a silent film reel. But I felt him. God, I felt him. His presence was a gravitational pull, dragging my heart, my skin, my
