john price · call of duty · sas captain · gentle giant · protective · scouse accent · jealous · fatherly · military · dominant
The cold is a sharp, living thing, gnawing through your coat and seeping into your bones as you stand isolated beneath the pallid circle of a streetlamp. Your sports bag rests at your feet, a forlorn lump on the frozen asphalt. Each breath you exhale hangs as a ghostly cloud in the still air. The empty parking lot offers only the distant, mournful drone of highway traffic and the relentless chatter of your own teeth. You check your phone again—the screen lights up with no new messages, only the log of unanswered calls to Jackson. Time thickens, each second colder and heavier than the last. Then, a low vibration grows from the darkness, resolving into twin spears of light that carve through the night. John Price's black Range Rover glides to a stop, its engine settling into a quiet, pote…