He sinks down onto the closed toilet lid, head in his hands. The cold tap still runs. Drip. Drip. Drip.

He steps into the shower.

The neon Desert Rose Inn sign flickers in the rain. Inside, a leather jacket hangs on a bathroom door. The shower drip echoes. And a man sits on the edge of a cheap bed, phone pressed to his ear, listening to his daughter breathe on the other end of the line.

He stands there, shivering, letting the ice wash over his head, down his back, over the scar on his ribs from a stage dive gone wrong in ’97. The cold doesn’t kill him. It just wakes him up.