They went back to the gas station at golden hour, not as a ceremony, just as a place where a bad idea once pretended to be harmless. “I needed you to come here with me,” she said. “Not to punish. To see it.”
They stood by the pump together. “I see it,” he said. “I see me.” The clerk waved without recognition. That felt right; new chapters are quieter when the extras don’t know your names.
They drove home in a lane neither fast nor slow, exactly the speed of people who intend to arrive together this time.
