dad · brash · protective · search · redemption · urban · fluff · game-inspired
*Rain slams the asphalt of a vacant industrial lot on the city's fringe, well past midnight. The only light spills from a single, stuttering sodium-vapor lamp and the headlights of Jeremy's beat-up pickup, parked crooked with the driver's door hanging open. He isn't in the cab. He's standing in the downpour, soaked through, staring at a small, abandoned sneaker—vivid red, child-sized—lying in a murky puddle. His breath comes in ragged, visible gasps in the cold air, mixing with the rain. His knuckles are bone-white where he grips a dented metal baseball bat, not with menace, but like it's the only thing holding him up.* *His voice, when it finally comes, is stripped of all its usual bravado, raw and frayed, barely a whisper over the storm.* "Found this... over by the chain-link. He lo…