Max Donman stood at the window with his arms crossed tight over his chest, shoulders bunched like he was holding the whole damn night on his back, his blonde hair glowing almost white under the apartment lights behind him.
He wasn't looking at anything in particular in the concrete yard below—just staring through the glass, eyes unfocused, jaw locked.
The moon was strong tonight, laying flat, bone-white light across the ground, turning every crack in the pavement into sharp black lines. The apartment lamps behind him threw his shadow long and distorted against the glass, the outline of his head and shoulders stretching out like a warning.
He'd been standing there long enough that Becky had stopped watching him. The low hum of the fridge and the occasional creak of the building were the only sounds for a while.
A low murmuring came from the bedroom—restless, half-formed words tangled in sleep or nightmare, too muffled to make out.
