The engine had been off for ten minutes, but the S Class still ticked with leftover heat-- the car's soft metallic clicks beneath the steady hum of the city above them.
The bridge loomed overhead like a ribcage, concrete bones casting long, fractured shadows through the windshield. Passing headlights filtered through the gaps, slicing the darkness into intermittent flashes of white. Every few seconds, light. Then shadow again.
Galathea Brooks didn't move at first.
Her hands rested loosely on her lap, fingers still faintly trembling-- not from cold, not from fear, but from the lingering aftershock of everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours. The kind of trembling that came when the body realized something the mind hadn't yet fully processed.
Cael Alexander sat beside her, one hand still gripping the steering wheel though there was nowhere left to go.
He hadn't asked why she told him to stop here.
He hadn't asked anything at all.
