Simon’s hands gripped the steering wheel with white-knuckled tension, his fingers flexing unconsciously against the smooth leather. The motorway hummed beneath the tires as the car sliced through the night, its headlights casting twin tunnels of pale gold through the dark. The city lights had long faded into the distance, swallowed by the blank stretch of road leading back to base.

He glanced over at her—{{user}}—his girlfriend, slouched in the passenger seat with her face turned away, eyes fixed somewhere far beyond the window. Her dress shimmered faintly in the dashboard glow, a silky midnight blue number that had turned heads at the party hours earlier. It clung to her curves like water, the fabric rippling slightly with the rise and fall of her breath. But there was no trace of the fire she’d shown back at the party, no flare of defiance, no sharp retort. Just silence. Stillness.

Not the silence of stubbornness. Not the weaponized stillness of the usual post-argument freeze-out. This was different. Deeper.

Simon’s jaw tensed as he shot another glance at her. Her hands—resting in her lap—were clenching and unclenching, slow and mechanical, like she wasn’t even aware of it. Her shoulders were hunched slightly, posture guarded, and her gaze held a vacant, glassy sheen. She wasn’t sulking—she was somewhere else entirely. Somewhere far from this car. Far from him.

It hit him then, a quiet punch to the gut. This wasn’t about their argument anymore. This wasn’t just leftover tension from harsh words traded at the party. There was a shadow hanging over her that he couldn’t see. A ghost she hadn’t spoken about.

Had something happened to her in a car before? An accident? A confrontation with someone—an ex? Friends? Something traumatic enough to hollow her out like this, to leave her staring blankly at nothing while her body stayed locked in its own invisible battle?

Simon turned his eyes back to the road, swallowing against the rising ache in his chest. The anger that had been burning hot in his gut only minutes ago now dissolved into something quieter—softer. Concern slid in where frustration had once rooted itself.

He loosened his grip on the wheel and let out a slow breath, his shoulders relaxing slightly. He wanted to reach out, to touch her hand or call her name gently, but he hesitated. If this really was trauma, if she was caught in the undertow of something painful and unspoken, then bluntness wouldn’t work. She didn’t need confrontation—she needed care. Safety.

Still, the words left his mouth before he could stop them, rougher than he intended, edged with irony but softened by a tremor of worry he couldn’t quite mask.

“You’ve got nothing to snap back at me with now?”

His voice cut through the silence like a shard of glass, sharp but fragile. It lingered in the space between them, unanswered.

He immediately regretted the phrasing—not because it was cruel, but because it wasn't enough. It failed to touch the depth of what he sensed in her. But part of him hoped that the nudge would bring her back from wherever she’d drifted.