Not possessive.
Just grateful.
That almost undid me before we even left the parking lot.
He looked better than he had outside my apartment two days earlier. Still thinner than before the shooting. Still careful with certain movements. Still pale around the edges when pain caught him wrong. But he had shaved, trimmed his beard, and put effort into looking like a man going on a date instead of a man who had recently been threatened by half a hospital staff for trying to sit up too fast.
He wore dark jeans, boots, and a black button-down under his jacket. Simple. Clean. Very Dylan, if Dylan had ever known how to be simple about anything.
His hand rested on the steering wheel.
Scarred knuckles.
Tape gone.
No tubes.
No ring.
No other woman’s promise sitting in the space between us.
That should have made breathing easier.
It didn’t.
It made everything feel more real.
Dylan glanced over before pulling out of the lot. “Seat belt.”
“I’m a nurse.”
“Then you know better.”
I gave him a look.
He gave one back.
It was such an ordinary argument that my throat tightened.
I clicked the belt into place. “Bossy.”
“Alive.”
“That is also true.”
His mouth curved slightly, but the smile faded before it became careless. He checked mirrors, backed out slowly, and drove like a man who had been given one fragile chance and did not intend to run a single red light with it.
For the first few minutes, neither of us said much.
Albuquerque moved past the windows in late-fall gold and shadow. The sun had already begun sliding toward the horizon, turning the Sandias pink at the edges. Traffic hummed around us. A woman in the next lane sang dramatically into her steering wheel. A kid in the back of an SUV pressed a sticky hand against the glass and waved at me like we were old friends.
I waved back.
Dylan noticed.
“She your people?”
“Obviously.”
