The night air still smelled like iron.

Blood had dried beneath your nails, clinging to the creases of your palms no matter how many times you rubbed them against your jeans. The wind coming through the open truck window didn’t help — it only made the metallic scent sharper.

Lee drove with the window half-down, wind cutting through the stale heat. His shirt was gone — forgotten somewhere in the dirt behind you — and the blood had run all the way down his chest, drying in thin red lines that caught the light from the passing streetlamps.

You sat small in the passenger seat, sleeves pulled over your hands, fighting the tremor in your jaw. The silence was sharp.

He glanced at you once — just once — then looked back at the road. His breathing was slow, controlled. He didn’t try to speak right away.

When he finally did, it was barely a murmur. “It’s over now.”

You shook your head, pressing your palms into your thighs, as if you could still feel it — the warmth, the pulse, the moment before everything went wrong.

He reached across the seat, resting his hand lightly on your knee. The touch was gentle, almost careful, like he knew he shouldn’t. His skin was sticky.

You turned toward him, jaw tight. “We said we wouldn’t.”

His laugh was humorless. “Yeah, well, saying it and living it are two different things.”

But you didn’t move away.

Rain started — light at first, then harder. It mixed with the blood on his chest, running in thin pink streams down his skin. He didn’t wipe it off.

The car kept moving. Empty road. Distant thunder. You wanted to scream, to cry, to scrub your hands raw — but instead you just stared at him, at the red and the ruin and the quiet steadiness in his jaw.

Lee kept his eyes ahead, voice rough when he finally spoke again. “You did what you had to.”

You almost laughed. It sounded too much like him trying to believe it.

So you said nothing. Just turned your face toward the rain-speckled window, biting hard into your lip until you could taste copper again.

And beside you, he drove on — bare chest slick with rain and blood, jaw tight — the both of you silent, haunted, trying not to fall apart before the sun came up.