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Except I’d been right, it hadn’t been alive—it was a statue.

Right up until I plowed into it.

My stomach twisted. I groaned and flung an arm over my eyes, like blocking out the memory might delete it from the universe.

Everything hurt. My body felt like I’d gone twelve rounds against a heavyweight boxer and then gotten jumped in the parking lot for good measure. It had been a while since I’d felt this banged up, and I’d been hoping to keep that streak alive. But here it died, reset to zero.

I peeled my arm away from my eyes and blinked again, slowly this time.

The air smelled faintly of furniture polish, musty old wood, and the vague disappointment you only get in motels that rent by the week. My head throbbed in sync with my heartbeat, and the taste in my mouth was similar to aluminum foil. Not that I’d actually tasted aluminum foil, but I felt like the smell of it was a good preview of how that would be.

I blinked several more times, struggling to get my bearings. This definitely wasn’t a hospital. Unless hospitals here had daisy print wallpaper from the mid-nineteen hundreds and a water stain in the ceiling shaped like the state of Florida.

I pushed myself upright too fast and the room tilted sideways. Nausea hit instantly, and I slapped a palm to my forehead, breathing through waves of it. Once I felt settled again, I realized my clothes were still damp and stubbornly clinging to me. So I must not have been unconscious for too long. That was promising.

Light was coming through the window, and the storm seemed gone. It must be the next morning.

I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and sank my toes into pink shag carpet. The furniture looked as though it had been purchased from the divorced-mom-starting-over app. Or Temu.

The vibe was unclear at the moment.

I squinted at the nightstand. No phone, no charger, not even a bottle of water. But there was a plain white paper bag, with a note taped to the front in blocky handwriting that read:

You look like shit, Roadkill. Try this. -Babs.

I didn’t know who or what a “Babs” was, but the granola bar, Advil, and travel-sized deodorant made me think they were probably some kind of angel. Guardian type, hopefully, considering how life had been going for me lately.

Not that angels had shown up before when I needed them. Better late than never, though.

I blinked blearily, looking around the room again, and noticed a door open just enough to reveal a tiny, tiled bathroom on the other side. It had a clean-looking towel on a hook and a paper-wrapped bar of soap on the sink basin, which felt like luxury at this point.

Fuck, yes.

Shower—please let the water be hot. I needed to shower before I could mentally process the fact that I’d annihilated a giant bull statue, not to mention my car, and possibly suffered brain damage in the process. I didn’t have the brain cells to spare, as evidenced by my life decisions up to now, so the possible brain damage was a real problem.

I pushed myself upright, the room tilting just enough to make me curse under my breath. My head still pounded and my ears still rang, but somehow I managed to get to my feet. I caught the faint whiff of orange and leather for a moment, and I frowned recalling the sexy cowboy, until it was taken over by the overwhelming reek of sweat and wet dog…aka me.

“Gross,” I muttered, peeling the soaked hoodie over my head and tossing it on the floor. It landed with a splat on the shag carpet.

I unbuttoned my jeans and shoved them down over my hips, halfway out of them when I felt a familiar prickle of awareness, like someone was watching me. I froze⁠—

“Well, don’t let me stop you.”

The voice carried a dark rasp of amusement, the kind that made goosebumps rise whether you wanted them to or not.

I stood there with my pants halfway down and absolutely no plan for what to do next.

I turned, very slowly.

And there, in the corner of the room, sitting in a worn leather chair, like he’d been planted there by the devil himself, was a man.

A man who, as far as I knew, had just materialized out of thin air. Because I would have seen him if he’d been there before. Wouldn’t I?

Yes. I absolutely would have noticed someone as ridiculously hot as he was sitting there.

He wasn’t cute, or handsome in a rugged way. No. This was sculpted-cheekbones, square-jawed, dark-flannel, expensive-boots-wearing cowboy hot. His black Stetson was pushed low over stark blue eyes. They flicked lazily across my bare legs like he had all the time in the world to enjoy the view.

He grinned. Big and confident. The proverbial cat that ate the canary.