My body reacts on instinct to the sight of his discomfort, my hand reaches for him, longing to ease the pain he’s holding on to. As quickly as I reach out, my mind catches up to my body and I pull away again. Tanner’s fingers flex, even though he would have seen me reach for him, he doesn’t let his eyes linger from the road ahead of us.

“After that night, Jesse and I began working together. Alongside Stanley and some contacts of my own we put together a plan to take down Lance and seek out the answers Kyle went looking for originally.”

“M-My dad?” The words tumble out. I don’t care anymore. He can jam the ‘just listen and don’t talk’ rule where the sun doesn’t shine.

This time Tanner reaches for me, intertwining his fingers with mine; a rush of electricity flows through our palms. He allows his thumb to caress the top of my hand and I stare up at him, pleading with my eyes for him to speak.

“Tanner, did Kyle find our dad?”

“He did.”

Those two words dismantle everything I had known to be true, whilst at the same time they confirm all that I had hoped for. My dad was alive. If he was alive then, could he be alive now? My body begins to shake uncontrollably, the sound of my teeth chattering is all I can hear as I feel myself beginning to spiral. I need to pull myself out before I end up somewhere else. Lately these panic attacks have been turning into dissociations and right now, in a moving car, I can’t let that happen. Closing my eyes, I turn my focus to my left hand, squeezing tightly the pressure of my nails burn before finally the splitting of skin is what brings my hearing back. Opening my palm I see four little crescent shaped imprints; a night sky, each moon sparkling with shooting crimson stars.

Tanner continues to hold my other hand tight and we sit in our own thoughts for the remainder of the drive. After roughly half an hour, we are driving into bush land, the bitumen disappears behind us and dust from the dirt road stirs underneath the tyres.