The scar runs down his right cheek—a faded pink line from eye to jaw that most people are too polite to ask about. The truth is uglier than the story he tells: his father's belt buckle caught him at age five, and he's been running ever since.

At twenty-three, he finally leaves. Two hundred dollars. A duffel bag. A car barely worth the gas. Nothing but highway stretching ahead and everything he's escaping in the rearview.

Then he sees the hitchhiker.

Average height. Average build. Standing on the shoulder at midnight, thumb raised. Against his better judgment, he pulls over.

It's not until twenty minutes into the drive that he notices the man's eyes. His own eyes, staring back from a stranger's face. And the scar. The exact scar, in the exact position, from the exact belt buckle that caught him at an angle no one else could possibly recreate.

The hitchhiker knows everything. The Smiths collection. The coffee preferences. The night after prom when the engine was running and the garage door was closed. And he has a confession to make: tonight, just up the road, he killed a man.

"I hit him going sixty-five. And I felt nothing. Because you can't outrun what's in your blood. You can't escape who you're going to become."

The loop has no beginning. The loop has no end. And violence isn't something you do.

It's something you are.