Page 139 of Forever Dark
Neither of them spoke.
There was no need to.Not yet.
The quiet between them had changed over the last few days.Early on it had felt barbed, each silence holding all the things they would not say.Tonight it felt tired instead.Worn down by too much truth, too little sleep, and the kind of day that left people grateful simply to sit beside another living human and not explain themselves.
Selena tipped her head back a little more.
“You forget how amazing the night skies are out here without those city lights.”
Connor followed her gaze.“Yeah.But then those cities must have their moments.”
She turned and looked at him.
The bandage at his temple had made him look older in one way and more familiar in another.Not the boy from high school.Not even the man she had married.Something else.Someone who had stayed and been shaped by it.
“They do,” she said.“But… Home is home.”
Connor nodded once and looked back up.
For a while after that, they only sat.
The car hood gave back the heat it had held from the day in a slow, fading warmth.A truck passed on the highway far enough off that it sounded more like weather than traffic.
Selena let her hands rest loose at her sides.
Then she said, “Thank you.”
Connor glanced at her.“For what?”
“For the last few days and…”
He waited.
“When you came through the door.”
A small smile touched his mouth, not careless, not entirely happy.
“Well,” he said, “I feel I owe you something.”
That drew a faint crease between her brows.“For what?”
He looked down at his hands.“I seem to remember you taking a bullet-sized problem away from me.”
She let out a quiet breath that might have been a laugh.
“It’s been a crazy few days,” he added.
Selena nodded.“That’s one way to put it.”
Another silence followed, but this one held less weight.
Connor turned then and looked at her properly.
Not by accident.Not one of those glancing looks people gave because they happened to share a line of sight.This was the old way.The way that said a person had forgotten to guard their face in time.
For one brief, aching second, Selena remembered that look exactly.
High school football games and stolen time in parked cars.The first apartment after they got married, with cheap blinds and a kitchen table that wobbled because one leg was shorter than the others.Long stretches when loving him had felt as natural as waking up in the morning.
