Warm air blasting the second he opens it.
The whole thing lifted and overbuilt and obscene in that very male way that says I wanted something big enough to survive me.
He sets me down carefully on the passenger seat like I’m made of something breakable, then leans in long enough to yank my backpack in after me and slam the door before I can argue.
By the time he rounds the hood and gets in, I’m openly crying.
No pretty tears.
No controlled pageant tears.
The ugly kind.
The kind that keep coming because your whole body has decided it’s done with public image for the night.
He doesn’t say anything when he sees.
He just cranks the heat higher, peels off his soaked hoodie over his head in one hard motion, and tosses it into the back.
Underneath he’s in a gray T-shirt clinging wet to every thick line of him—shoulders, chest, arms. Rain runs off his hair onto his neck. His hands are rough on the wheel, tape still around two fingers, knuckles white.
“Put that on the floor,” he says, jerking his chin toward my backpack.
I obey because apparently my capacity for resistance drowned somewhere between the quad and the truck.
The wipers slash across the windshield. Campus blurs past in watery streaks as he pulls away from the curb and drives.
I wipe at my face uselessly.
He glances over once.
Then back to the road.
“Want me to ask?”
“No.”
“Good.”
That nearly gets a laugh out of me.
Nearly.
Instead I cry harder.
He drives off campus in silence, one big hand loose on the wheel, the truck warm enough now that steam is starting to lift off my soaked sleeves.
We turn down a quieter road lined with old stone walls and cypress trees, then through a wrought-iron gate that opens onto a long drive curving toward a house lit gold against the rain.
Mediterranean.
That’s the first thing I think.
White stucco walls.
Red tile roof.
Arched windows glowing softly through the storm.
