The evening light had begun to soften by the time Ren and Fang returned home from SIMS.
It was not yet dark, but the long, clean brightness of afternoon had already begun to lose its edge, melting into something gentler, something warmer, something that laid a sheen of gold across the road and made every window in the house look like it had been touched by honey. The car rolled to a stop just inside the gates, and for a brief moment, neither of them moved.
Ren rested both hands lightly on the steering wheel and let out a breath through his nose. He had the look of a man who was tired, but not in a way that could be cured by sleep. It was the kind of tiredness that came from holding too many threads at once and refusing, stubbornly, to let even one of them fall.
