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The quiet had shifted, though. It no longer felt peaceful. It felt…aware. As if the forest was listening to me just as closely as I was listening to it.

I swallowed.

Every horror movie I’d ever half watched through my fingers flashed through my brain. Women hiking alone. Women glancing back. Women telling themselves it was nothing, right up until it wasn’t.

I gripped the water bottle too tight, the plastic crinkling.

“You’re fine,” I told myself. “It’s daytime. You’re on a trail. There are probably birdwatchers and retirees with walking poles right up ahead.”

The thought didn’t help as much as it should have.

I kept walking. Faster.

The path bent, curving around a clump of thicker underbrush. For a second, the trail ahead vanished from sight.

My heart climbed into my throat.

I rounded the bend…and a figure stepped onto the path.

I yelped and did an extremely graceful half jump, half stumble backward, nearly tripping over my own feet. “Mother of⁠—”

A hand lifted slowly, palm out in a calm, measured gesture meant to steady a spooked animal. “Easy.”

Then the rest of him came into view, broad shoulders and a tall frame emerging from a narrow side trail I hadn’t even realized was there, his steps unhurried as he moved toward me. The light caught his face, and his eyes, blue and intense, fixed on me.

Sterling.

He wasn’t looming out of the shadows like a horror movie extra or dripping blood or carrying an axe. He just…walked toward me, his boots scuffing quietly in the dirt.

Sterling wasn’t wearing a hat this time, and his dark hair fell into his eyes, damp at the ends as though he’d run a long way to get here. The collar of his shirt clung to his neck with sweat where the fabric had darkened against his skin.

He looked very, very real. Very not-squirrel…or monster.

Relief punched through me, and for one dizzy second, I was just glad to see him.

Then my brain caught up.

If he were here…

If he’d found me this easily…

If he’d come in from a trail, and I hadn’t even noticed…

My heart tried to climb straight up my throat for an entirely different reason.

“Were you—” I started, then had to stop, because apparently my tongue had filed for emergency leave. “Did you… Have you been following me?”

He stopped where he was, something unreadable settling over his face. When his eyes met mine, the air between us tightened. “Yes,” he said.

Just that. Blunt and unapologetic. Like it was the most normal answer in the world.

My body didn’t wait for context. It reacted in typical “city girl self-defense” fashion.

My hand dove into my pocket and⁠—

Psssssst.

A perfect, glorious arc of pepper spray nailed him right in the face.