Victor had never heard of the artist before but listened with an open mind…to what turned out to be an epically bittersweet song about a couple not getting a “happy ending.”

Despite the track’s gospel-like feel, his lightened mood immediately began to fade. And as it went on, the song drilled into a pool of wild melancholy Victor didn’t know he’d sealed up inside of his chest.

He looked sideways at Dawn. Was this affecting her in the same way?

Apparently, it was. Tears shone in her eyes as the Freddie Mercury-like singer mourned a breakup, singing with a deep emotional fervor that they would live the rest of their lives…just not together.

She wiped at her eyes. And when the singer started wailing his sorrow in the song’s dramatic rise, she abruptly punched her finger into the touchscreen’s power button and ended the song.

“Byron liked that guy way more than me,” she mumbled.

Victor didn’t respond. His heart was too heavy in his chest. She may have turned off the radio, but the song continued to resonate in the car as they drove. Getting closer to their destination, but also closer to the end. Of them.

Eventually, the sign for their Rhode Island exit appeared like a ray of light above the highway.

However, just as they merged into traffic on the busy street that would take them to their tony neighborhood in East Providence, she said, “I…I wish things had turned out differently. I can’t tell you how many times I wished that. Back in college—Mount Holyoke, not RhIDS—I used to do this silly thing where I imagined what it would’ve been like if we had gotten married, like you said. If my dad hadn’t raided your apartment and we’d been able to live out that dream. I mean, maybe we would’ve broken up like everybody else I knew who got married too young. But maybe we wouldn’t have.”

She let out a breath, audible and sad. “That what-if haunts me, you know. And I think it always will.”

Normally, Victor didn’t mind not being able to speak without his hands. But in this case, he abruptly cut through three lanes of traffic so that he could pull up to the closest curb, put the car in park, then lifted his hands to remind her, “You were always going to betray me. Don’t you act as if you and your father had anything else planned. I read the reports. Every single one.”

She visibly swallowed, her eyes widening a little bit. Then she said, “Okay,” and turned forward in her seat to close her eyes. As if she were trying to block him out.

Okay…

Feeling more “shook” than he wanted to, Victor turned to put the car in Drive.