The truck rumbles over gravel, each vibration traveling up through the seat and into my bones. I've been sitting rigid for forty minutes, my hands gripping my duffel bag in my lap, watching the territory markers disappear behind us in the side mirror. The pack lands give way to wild forest, dense and dark, the kind of woods that swallow sound and light whole.

Drake drives with one hand on the wheel, the other resting on the gearshift. His knuckles brush my thigh every time he shifts, casual and deliberate. The touch is small—incidental, anyone would say, but my skin burns where he makes contact, my nerves strung tight as...