CHAPTER 194: CHAPTER 193: AFTERMATH

The world seems to fall silent for a moment.

A stillness so loud it rang in his ears.

Rex’s car came to a halt like the world itself had slammed the brakes.

Smoke curled from beneath the hood in lazy tendrils, rising into the golden sky, now dimmed with dread.

The scent hit first — acrid and thick, a choking mix of burnt rubber and scorched metal. It filled his lungs like smoke from a dying engine, clung to his throat, settled into his clothes. Beneath it, something more subtle — a bitter, coppery note that wasn’t blood, but felt close enough to jolt his imagination. The kind of phantom scent that made your brain flash warnings, your gut twist like something terrible had almost happened.

For a moment, he didn’t move.

Didn’t blink.

Didn’t breathe.

More like he Couldn’t.

No blink. No inhale. No exhale.

His hands gripped the wheel until his knuckles screamed. His body locked rigid—every muscle poised like statues carved of tenser steel.

Time suspended. His heart, somehow still beating, felt wrong in his chest — like it had skipped the part where it should’ve exploded.

He felt like he’d been pulled under water. Every sound muffled, vision tunneled. Each breath pounding in his chest like a drum chant:

DUN—DUN—DUN.

For a few long, unreal seconds, it was as if the universe held its breath with him.

No sirens.

No screams.

Just the quiet tick-tick-tick of a strained engine cooling.

Just silence — thick and hollow and heavy enough to crush him.

His foot was still pressing the brake pedal like if he let go, everything would unravel.

Then—

A sound.

Crink—

The whisper of shattered glass tumbling from somewhere nearby.

The soft patter of broken glass raining down from the crumpled streetlight.

And the spell finally shattered.

Behind him, chaos erupted.

A scream from behind him, sharp and shrill.

A car door slammed.

Someone cursed loudly.

Tires screeched.

A horn blared, long and angry, followed by the slamming of car doors as bystanders jumped out to see what just happened.

But Rex barely heard any of it.

His head snapped toward the sidewalk.

She was still there.

The girl.

Still clutching that floppy bear like a lifeline in her tiny arms, still standing in the exact same spot — unharmed, wide-eyed, trembling.

But alive.

His vision blurred for a second — not from tears, just from the whiplash of relief crashing down on top of everything else. His breath came out in a hard, shuddering gasp.

And then he collapsed. His fingers slipped off the wheel, shaking uncontrollably. Sweat dripped down his temple. The tension that had held him together like steel cables suddenly let go, and his body slumped forward.

His forehead hit the steering wheel with a dull thud, arms dangling at his sides. For a second, he didn’t move — couldn’t. His whole body slackened like someone had pulled the plug on a puppet, all strings cut.

Not from injury.

But from pure, soul-deep exhaustion.

The kind that hits when the adrenaline runs out and the silence gets too loud.

That moment—the seconds when he spun into traffic, that forced sideways maneuver—a blend of chance, instinct, physics—had emptied him. Body, mind, soul.

It honestly felt otherworldly.

His senses were still rampaging—tinnitus in one ear, the taste of smoke in his mouth, the metallic phantom of fear running through his veins.

His chest rose and fell in shaky, uneven breaths. Sweat clung to his skin, dampening his collar, soaking the back of his shirt. His hands, still gripping the wheel just moments ago like lifelines, now trembled uncontrollably in his lap.

The fact that he had just spun a car sideways into oncoming traffic like he was in some action movie — not to show off, not for thrill.

To save her.

To stop that from happening.

He didn’t understand it.

Didn’t try to understand it.

Because the truth was... he hadn’t thought.

Not at all.

He hadn’t calculated odds. He hadn’t weighed risk. He hadn’t cared about what could go wrong. About what should go wrong.

He wasn’t a cop. Wasn’t military. Wasn’t some boy scout with a savior complex or a lifelong dream of being a hero.

He was just... Rex.

Selfish. Sarcastic. Usually late. Never particularly noble. Nothing heroic written in the star of his birth.

And yet—he’d seen that little girl, standing there with her too-big bear and her too-wide eyes, and something inside him had just moved.

He didn’t even remember making the decision — just the roar of the engine, the sound of tires squealing and his own heartbeat roaring like a war drum behind his ribs.

No hesitation. No logic. Just instinct.

His fingers curled tighter, nails digging into his palms.

His mouth tasted like smoke and old coffee.

"What the hell did I just do..." he muttered hoarsely, voice almost drowned by the blood pounding in his ears.

No answer, of course.

Just the faint tick of the cooling engine and the muffled chaos outside.

He sat there, folded over the wheel, as if the weight of what could have happened had finally landed. Not as a thought — but as a feeling. Heavy. Cold. Inevitable.

The what-ifs spiraled in his head, hard, unrelenting and completely uninvited.

What if he hadn’t turned the wheel fast enough?

If I’d reacted a second later...

If I’d panicked instead of acting...

If my angle was off—just a hair—I’d have missed. That car would’ve...

If she hadn’t been standing just out of the way...

What if the drunk car hadn’t veered?

What if it spun straight toward me instead—took me out first?

He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed both palms to his eyes, trying to claw down the panic rising in his chest.

No. No. No.

He didn’t want to think about those scenarios—but the echoes were loud.

His heart pounded. His breath came ragged. He felt like his chest had been shredded open—exhaustion slicing through him deeper than any wound.

He dragged in a breath. Then another. Pressed his palms against his face, smearing sweat across his temples, trying to shake it off.

But the image was still there.

That little girl. Still. Silent. Clutching that bear like it was all she had left.

And the silver car. Swerving. Spinning.

That awful sound —

The shriek of twisting metal.

The high-pitched crack of shattering glass.

The gut-punching crunch of a body of steel colliding with something solid and immovable.

It hadn’t lasted more than a second or two, but it was etched into his memory like a scar.

He could still hear it, echoing in his ears, louder than the sirens now approaching.

The memory of it throbbed like an aftershock under his skin, each replay as vivid as the moment it happened.

"Damn it," he whispered, voice dry and hollow.

He didn’t feel like a hero.

Didn’t feel brave.

Didn’t feel like someone who just did something extraordinary.

Not angry.

Not proud.

Just...

Overwhelmed.

The weight of it all came crashing down at once — the adrenaline spike, the deafening silence, the burst of chaos after, the what-ifs that now churned and clawed at his insides.

He was drenched in sweat, breath still ragged, pulse still sprinting like it hadn’t gotten the message that the danger was over. His whole body buzzed with an anxious electricity that had nowhere to go now — except into trembling hands and the echo chamber of his mind.

Slowly, he reached for the water bottle in his cupholder, fingers unsteady as they closed around the plastic. It crinkled beneath his grip.

He unscrewed the cap with a twist that felt harder than it should’ve, then raised it to his lips and drank deep.

Tiny shards of confidence filtered through the fog — barely there, but enough.

Enough to let him realize, to truly grasp, he had prevented a tragedy.

(End of Chapter)