My hand was on the door handle and it is trembling. My vision swam with tears and the desperate need for air, clean air that wasn't thick with his accusations and my own suffocating humiliation. Every cell in my body screamed at me to escape this metal box, this conversation… this man.
Adrien slammed on the brakes, hard.
The sudden jolt sent me lurching forward against the seatbelt. A sharp breath hitched in my throat, half shock, half relief. The tires squealed briefly before the car settled, idling roughly by the side of the road. We were somewhere unfamiliar.
He didn't speak. He didn't turn to look at me. His hands remained clenched on the wheel, but the white tension in his knuckles seemed to have spread across his entire frame. He was rigid, silent.
The sudden stop had momentarily stunned the panic out of me, but it rushed back in an instant, stronger than before. The silence between us wasn't calm; it was heavy, dangerous.
