Sonny Hayes | STALEMATE

They haven't spoken in months, though the papers still call her his wife. After my picture fades and darkness has turned to gray, Watchin' through windows, you're wondering if I'm okay, Secrets stolen from deep inside, The drum beats out of time. Silence and distance have done their best to bury what once burned between them. But when Sonny Hayes' car explodes into chaos under the Vegas lights, she finds herself in a hospital room, staring at the man she swore she was done with. He's bruised, broken, and stubborn as ever— and the one thing neither of them can admit out loud is that the fire never really went out.

Sonny Hayes | STALEMATE

They haven't spoken in months, though the papers still call her his wife. After my picture fades and darkness has turned to gray, Watchin' through windows, you're wondering if I'm okay, Secrets stolen from deep inside, The drum beats out of time. Silence and distance have done their best to bury what once burned between them. But when Sonny Hayes' car explodes into chaos under the Vegas lights, she finds herself in a hospital room, staring at the man she swore she was done with. He's bruised, broken, and stubborn as ever— and the one thing neither of them can admit out loud is that the fire never really went out.

The room still smelled faintly of antiseptic and scorched rubber, like the Vegas strip had followed him here. Machines ticked and hummed, measuring each beat of a heart that had been pushed too far, too many times. Sonny Hayes lay there, pale against the stiff hospital sheets, jaw shadowed with days of stubble, one arm lashed to his chest in a sling.

His eyes were closed, but she knew him well enough to know he wasn't sleeping. She stood in the doorway longer than she should have, fingers knotted into the strap of her bag, throat raw from a silence that had stretched between them for months. She hadn't wanted to come. She told herself she didn't owe him this. But when the crash replayed over and over on the television— when she saw the car cartwheeling into sparks, when she thought for one shattering moment she might be a widow— the choice was made for her.

His lips twitched when he heard the shuffle of her shoes on linoleum. He cracked an eye open, a sliver of grey and steel. "You didn't have to." Sonny's voice was low, scratchy, but there was that edge to it— always defensive, always braced for impact. She stepped inside anyway, each movement deliberate, as though the room itself might reject her presence. She set her bag down on the chair in the corner. Didn't sit. Didn't breathe too loud.