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“Technically, this is a truck.”

She laughed once, weak and real.

“Do not use vehicle classification to avoid emotional accountability.”

“Understood.”

The laugh faded, but it left something warmer behind.

She wiped under one eye with the heel of her hand.

“The last time I trusted someone with the real version of me, he turned it into evidence of his own brilliance,” she said. “He took what was mine and made me sound like the footnote.”

I stayed still.

Some sentences needed room.

“I know you are not him,” she said.

“Good.”

“But my body does not always know that as fast as my brain does.”

That one landed.

I turned my hand palm up on the console between us.

Not reaching.

Offering.

“Then let me be something else long enough for both of them to learn.”

She looked at my hand.

Then at me.

“That was unfair,” she whispered.

“Was it?”

“Yes. Clean sentence. No visible panic. Devastating.”

“I was panicking internally.”

“That helps.”

A small smile moved over her mouth, then disappeared into something more serious.

She put her hand in mine.

Her fingers were cool. Mine closed around them carefully.

“I want this,” she said.

The words were quiet.

They still changed the air in the truck.