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His eyes dropped to the movement. Something flashed across his face. Gone immediately.

He opened the passenger door.

“I can get in by myself.”

He looked at my half-fastened platforms.

I followed his eyes. “Don’t.”

He put both hands around my waist.

My breath stopped.

Then he lifted me into the passenger seat as though I weighed nothing.

My hands caught his shoulders on instinct.

His body went rigid beneath them.

There it was. That stupid recoil. Not as obvious as the kitchen. Still there.

I yanked my hands away before he could.

His jaw clenched. He shut the door. Hard.

I stared through the windshield while he walked around the front of the Suburban.

I hated him. I loved him.

I hated that those things could apparently occupy exactly the same space.

He got behind the wheel, started the engine and pulled out of the lot.

Neither of us spoke. The neon woman disappeared behind us.

For several miles, the highway unspooled beneath the headlights.

The silence expanded. I had always hated Declan’s silences. Other people went quiet because they had nothing to say. Declan went quiet because he had too much.

At least that was what I used to believe. Lately I wasn’t sure.

Maybe I had spent years assigning meaning to blank spaces because the alternative was admitting there wasn’t any.

I looked at his profile.

He drove with one hand high on the wheel, the other near the console. His shoulders were still rigid.

Streetlights passed over his face at intervals. Light. Shadow. Light. Shadow.

“You had a lot to say to Clayton,” I said finally. “But nothing for me?”

Nothing. Not even a glance. The silent treatment. I hated it the most. I thought he knew that.

“Declan.”

His fingers tightened around the steering wheel.

I waited.