When his hands slipped up and down her body, Claire could feel her skin react to the familiar touch, but the numbness continued. This wasn't like the other night – the night that felt a world away now – when the numbness had been nothing more than a thin bubble around a tumultuous well of emotion waiting to be unleashed, the surface cracking even from the beginning; this was pervasive and it wasn't cracking to let anything be felt.
But he wouldn't listen, which she knew he wouldn't, but Claire couldn't find the will to be stubborn and keep fighting him. Numb, but not hollow; just numb, cold, and not knowing how to fix this. It wasn't supposed to be this way, she wasn't, and he didn't need this inside her around him.
So she said nothing more, just sat with her hands loosely in her lap, as he drove.