Chapter 6

Paige glanced sideways to see if Riley had caught the shift in her voice.

She hadn’t. Riley was still turned toward the window, attention fixed on the dark stretch of trees streaming past. Rain hammered the branches, stripping leaves, turning everything into a wet, restless blur. Beyond the treeline the faint glow of the city hovered low, nothing dramatic, just the usual smear of distant light.

“Riley.”

No response.

“What are you even looking at?”

Riley’s head tilted a fraction. “The trees. They’re holding up better than the rest of this night.”

Paige frowned. The trees looked battered to her, not beautiful. She opened her mouth to say so, then let it go. There were sharper things sitting between them than scenery.

“I need to ask you something,” she said, keeping both hands visible on the wheel. “Earlier—when you said the shop would keep everything quiet. Was that real, or were you just trying to get me to keep driving?”

Riley turned fully this time, expression caught between disbelief and offense.

“Why would I lie about that? What do I gain?”

The question landed harder than it should have. Paige felt the old reflex rise—the part of her that still wanted to believe Riley’s word the way she used to when things were simpler and secret and still theirs. She looked back at the road.

The silence that followed was thick. Her mind, traitorously free for half a second, drifted to the message she had sent Naomi before leaving for the grocery store. A careful, over-edited reply. Coffee or dinner sometime is fine. Just as friends. No pressure either way. She had added a small smiling emoji at the end and immediately regretted it. Too soft. Too open. Too easy to misread.

She hadn’t checked for an answer yet.

Her fingers left the wheel before she fully decided to move. They found the edge of the phone in the cup holder.

“Paige—eyes on the road.”

Riley’s voice cut sharp. Paige’s hand kept going anyway, thumb already brushing the screen awake.

“Paige.”

The oncoming headlights appeared too fast. Riley’s good hand shot across the console, closed over Paige’s on the wheel, and wrenched them sideways. The car lurched. A horn screamed past them, dopplering into the rain. For one long second the tires fought the wet pavement, then held.

Riley didn’t wait for permission. She guided the car onto the narrow shoulder with the kind of control that came from never panicking first, then shoved the gear into park.

The engine ticked in the sudden quiet.

“What the hell was that?” Riley’s voice was low and furious. She was breathing harder than the near-miss alone explained. “You were trying to text her while driving?”

Paige’s hands had gone cold on her thighs. Shame flooded in fast and heavy. She had put both of them at risk for a reply that probably didn’t even matter.

“It was just—”

“Naomi.” Riley said the name like it tasted wrong. She still had the phone in her hand, grip tight enough that the case creaked. “You were reaching for a message from Naomi Cross in the middle of a storm on a dark road. Do you understand how close that was?”

The extra weight in her voice was impossible to miss. It wasn’t only about the driving. It was about the name. About the history neither of them had spoken aloud since the gas station. About the fact that Riley had already seen those earlier messages and chosen, somehow, not to lose her temper then.

Now the temper had arrived late and all at once.

Paige stared at the rain-smeared windshield. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

Riley’s injured arm was curled against her stomach. The sudden wrench of the wheel had clearly pulled at the wound; a fresh dark spot was spreading through the cheap new shirt. She noticed Paige looking and shifted it out of view.

For a long moment the only sound was the rain and the soft click of the hazard lights Paige didn’t remember turning on.

When Riley spoke again the anger had thinned into something more complicated.

“You’re a new driver. That’s not a crime. But you can’t split your focus like that. Not in weather like this. Not ever, if you can help it.”

She set the phone back in the cup holder, screen down.

“How about this,” she said, quieter. “When this night is over—when the bike is fixed and my arm is cleaned up—I’ll teach you. Properly. Parallel parking, wet roads, night driving, the whole thing. No phone. No distractions. Just the two of us until you stop scaring the hell out of me.”

The offer hung in the small space between them, heavier than a simple favor. Paige met Riley’s mismatched eyes in the dark and felt the old pull, the one she had been trying not to name since the moment she realized the past wasn’t as finished as she had told herself.

Outside, the rain kept falling.