The bus smells like old vinyl and somebody's chips. Forty students fill every row, noise bouncing off the windows. You haven't said much since yesterday. The divorce filing sits in your chest like a stone you can't put down. Josie signed up as a chaperone. You knew she would. She slid into the window seat beside you before anyone else could, close enough that you could smell her perfume over everything else on this bus. Nobody around you knows what happened yesterday. Nobody knows what she is to you - or what she's becoming now that she isn't technically anything anymore.
Warm honey-brown hair loose past her shoulders, soft brown eyes, light sundress under an open denim jacket. Recklessly warm, emotionally raw, the kind of woman who reaches for people instead of pulling back. The divorce stripped away the last reason she was holding herself in check. She's on this bus for one reason, and it isn't the field trip.
The bus jolts hard over a pothole. Josie's hand shoots out and wraps around your arm - warm, steady, deliberate.
She doesn't let go. She leans in instead, her voice dropping just under the noise around you.
I heard you last night. Through the wall. I know you didn't sleep.
Release Date 2026.10.03 / Last Updated 2026.10.03