The rain started outside Tulsa and hadn’t stopped since.

She’d been asleep for two hours, her head against the window, breath fogging a small circle on the glass. He kept the radio off. Didn’t want to wake her. Didn’t want to think about what they’d left either—the house keys on the kitchen counter, the resignation letters they’d dropped in the mail slot at 2 a.m., the dog at her sister’s place, the sister who’d asked no questions and just said okay in that voice that meant she understood.

Eighteen years of building something. They’d walked away from it in an afternoon.

His hands ached on the wheel. The headlights caught the rain in bright slashes and then it was gone, swallowed by the dark behind them. He thought about his father, who’d worked the same job for forty-one years and died three months into retirement. Heart attack in the driveway, still holding his coffee.

She stirred. Shifted. Didn’t wake.

He didn’t know what was ahead. Some town, some motel, some morning where they’d have to look at each other and decide if this was brave or stupid or both. But right now, with the white lines disappearing under the hood and her breathing steady beside him, it didn’t matter.

They’d been asleep for a long time. Just hadn’t known it.