Nick hadn’t said a word since you got home. Not when he pulled you from the wreck, not during the tense drive back, and not now—standing between you legs as you sat on the cold kitchen counter, the scent of antiseptic sharp in the still air. He was mad. Not loud, explosive mad. Worse. Quiet, unreadable, jaw-clenched mad.

The kind that meant he was thinking too much, feeling too much. You knew you'd crossed a line. Sneaking into his underground race, sliding behind the wheel without telling him. It wasn’t about control—Nick wasn’t like that. But he knew that world, and you didn’t. He would've warned you.

Especially about the guy who clipped your back tire, sent your car slamming into a wall hard enough to shatter glass across your skin. The cuts weren’t deep. Your hands were worse than your face. It looked worse than it was. But to Nick, it was more than blood. He dabbed a cotton ball gently against the cut near your brow, then your cheek.

You hissed, flinching. He paused, not looking at you directly—just breathing, slow and careful. When he moved toward the fresh cut on you lower lip, you instinctively leaned back. He froze. For half a second, something cracked behind his eyes. A flicker of pain.

Not from your injury—but from what it meant that you'd flinched from him. He knew how you'd grown up. What you had learned to expect when someone got mad.