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Her expression said it all—she’d absolutely fucking had it.

I didn’t know her name yet.

I didn’t know what kind of wreckage she carried in her pockets or what storm—other than the literal one blowing around us—had chewed her up and spit her out in Blackwood.

But I suddenly really wanted to find out.

She stood there for a beat, blinking at the fallen steer like she wasn’t sure if it was real. Then her voice carried clean across the howling wind. “What the fuck is that.”

CHAPTER 3

SIENNA

The rain was screaming.

It wasn’t gentle or cinematic. It wasn’t some rom-com drizzle where you kiss someone dramatically in the headlights. No. This was punishment. As if someone upstairs saw me trying to start over and said, Absolutely not. Try again.

The exit curved hard beneath me, water sheeting across the asphalt in blinding waves. My eyes burned from staring too long, my hands welded to the wheel like if I let go even an inch, I’d vanish into the dark.

“Okay,” I muttered, jaw tight. “Just get through this. It isn’t the worst thing you’ve done to yourself…remember bangs? Remember tequila? Remember him?”

The road spit me into what looked like the edge of a town, blurred shapes rising out of the storm.

You’re here. You made it. You⁠—

CRACK!

The world lurched sideways.

Metal let out a long, furious shriek, the whole frame protesting its own destruction.

Something huge and solid and not road slammed into the hood of the Prius. The airbag exploded in my face like an angry pillow with a vengeance kink. My head snapped back against the seat, and pain bloomed behind my eyes.

I blinked.

And then blinked again.

The rain was still going. The windshield was spiderwebbed. The wipers were still swiping, bless them, completely unaware that the rest of the car had entered a different plane of existence.

Smoke and steam drifted through the air, a low hiss rising from somewhere in the crushed metal.

I tasted blood.

My thoughts marched in, one after the other, like a parade of nonsense.

I think I hit a cow. I should call someone. My phone is dead. I’m dead. Do I smell cornbread?

I shoved the car door open with one trembling hand and stumbled out into the rain.

I was instantly soaked. Everything tilted.

Not just the ground, but the sky, the trees, the entire concept of up. I braced one hand on the roof of the car and squinted into the storm.

There, lying on its side like some fallen idol, was a massive…bull. One leg was bent weird. One horn was cracked clean off. It looked like it had died dramatically, with intent.

I stared at it, and I was pretty sure it stared at nothing due to me killing it. Though I couldn’t be sure it had ever been alive. It looked…shiny and slick, like wet gunmetal. A statue?

And from somewhere inside me—some deep, exhausted, half-broken place—I muttered, “What the fuck is that.”