Zane didn't remember unlocking the car.
His fingers must have moved, but he couldn't feel them. His body was on some kind of ancient autopilot, the kind a man slips into when survival takes over and thinking becomes too dangerous. The world around him was a collage of blurred motion and sound—shadows dragging over concrete, the metallic click of the gate behind him, the cold night brushing his skin without permission. But none of it registered. Everything was happening from a distance, as if someone else were wearing his skin.
He didn't remember opening the car door.
Later, he would try to recall it and come up empty, as if the moment had been swallowed whole. His mind was too full, too loud—packed with the ringing echo of Willow's voice shaking apart the foundations he had rebuilt piece by fragile piece. His legs had carried him forward the way a wounded animal crawls toward a cave, not because it's safe… but because it's the only place left to collapse.
