The morning Zane drove to Miles' penthouse, he was not sober, and he was not sane. He had not slept the night before because his body refused to collapse, and he had not eaten because food tasted like dust. His hands were on the steering wheel, but his mind was running somewhere far darker. He had called Willow at least twenty times. Every attempt was met with the same mechanical rejection. He had driven past her empty apartment twice, then parked outside it until dawn, staring at the building like he expected her to walk out and make sense of the nightmare consuming him.
She didn't.
His chest ached with a pressure he couldn't name, something between terror and rage. He kept seeing her bruised wrists in the candlelight, kept hearing her voice when she told him she needed time, kept waking up with the certainty that the worst thing had already happened and he had no idea what it was.
