She knew she should’ve stayed home tonight.
Jason Dean, her boyfriend for almost a year—the guy her friends insisted was perfect for her—was steady and ambitious, already burying himself in pre-med courses and talking about residencies as if they were just around the corner and not years away still, while she still felt half-formed, restless, testing her wings. Handsome, confident, and a go-getter, he looked good on paper—he was everything she should have wanted. Sadly, too often she wondered if he really felt the same. He said he did, but in truth Claire had her doubts. Jason made time for his classes, his friends, his family—always them first. For her and her world, he spared only what was left over.
Tonight had been no different, and as always, her daring to mention it had annoyed him. He’d told her she was being unreasonable, that he couldn’t stretch himself any thinner, that she needed to understand. She, raw and defensive, had thrown it back that maybe she didn’t want scraps. Maybe she wanted something else, she’d said. Maybe someone else.
“Then go find him,” had been Jason’s parting shot before Claire had stormed off and slid behind the wheel of her own car.
Now, her knuckles were white on the steering wheel as the headlights cut through the black curves of Gladwyne’s winding roads, trees crowding close on either side. In daylight the drive might have been pretty, but at this hour the scenery was nothing but shadow and shifting shapes in the beam of her lights. Sheturned up the radio but barely heard the music playing, too busy being stung by Jason’s indifference.
She pressed her foot down on the gas.
“Screw you, Jason Dean,” she grumbled. Her mother was right. She deserved better, someone who would make time for her, who wanted to.
The turn came quicker than she expected. She jerked the wheel, too late. Tires screamed against gravel, the car fishtailed, then skidded off the shoulder. Trees and darkness blurred together before the world slammed to a stop with a shuddering crash of metal against wood.
For an instant there was nothing—no sound, no thought, only black.
When awareness returned, she realized first that her head was pounding. She was briefly confused until she realized that the burning in her chest had been caused by the airbag, striking hard, knocking the breath from her lungs. She gasped, trying to draw air into bruised lungs, and tasted blood where she had bitten her lip.
The world outside her shattered windshield was silent, eerily so. She heard no cars, no sirens, no sign of anyone. Maybe it had only just happened? She had no idea how long she’d been blacked out. Maybe not so long, she decided, aware next of the acrid reek of smoke and rubber.
She tried to move, but pain ripped through her shoulder and down her leg, which felt trapped beneath the crushed driver’s side. Panic surged, sharp and dizzying.
“Help!” Her voice cracked in the dark. She tried again, louder, though it came out more like a sob than a shout. “Somebody—please!”
Her phone. She fumbled blindly at the seat beside her, her hand patting at empty fabric where her purse had been. Nothing. Heart pounding, she twisted awkwardly, searching the floor, theback seat, anywhere—but the effort sent another stab of pain down her side and left her gasping.
She pressed her head back against the seat, vision blurring. The thought hit her hard: no one knew she was here. It was past dusk, end of winter, on a quiet section of road that likely didn’t see much traffic, and her car had skidded off the road into a fairly deep gully or ditch. How would anyone see her? Would they see the headlights, still glaring, though angled downward, into days’ old snow.
Her eyes drifted closed again. When they opened, she blinked in surprise. Someone was there, a figure standing just beyond the spiderweb of shattered glass, tall and broad-shouldered, his outline sharp against the dark. For one disoriented moment she thought it was Jason, come after her. But then he stepped closer, into the sweep of her headlights, and she saw him clearly.
It was definitely not Jason, and not anyone she knew, and yet no prickle of unease troubled her.
His face was cut in angles, like something drawn in comic book style, square jaw and harsh lines. His hair fell dark over his brow, his jaw was shadowed, and his eyes locked on hers with a steadiness that should have unnerved her.
And yet she wasn’t afraid, she was relieved someone had found her. More relieved, because she had the strangest sense that there was something familiar about him, maddeningly so, though she was certain she had never met him before. Clearly, she would have remembered meeting so striking a person.
He wrenched opened the door with a groan of metal and crouched beside her. One strong arm slid behind her, between her back and the seat. He didn’t speak, didn’t do anything but stare at her, and strangely, Claire was still not alarmed. His eyes met hers, dark and intent, and she felt the world narrow to that gaze.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” she said. She’d not meant to say that, but then she wasn’t sure what she’d intended to say. The words hovered between them, strange, almost irrational. And then she wasn’t sure if she had said them aloud or only thought them.
His expression didn’t change.
Time stretched. Sirens did not come. The road remained empty. She floated in and out, always returning to his steady presence, the heat of his arm around her, the intensity of his gaze. She tried to ask him who he was, but her voice didn’t come, and the efforts dissolved into a ragged breath.
And then at last, red lights cut through the night, voices shouted, and paramedics swarmed the wreck. In time, she was pulled from the twisted metal and laid onto a stretcher. She turned her head anxiously, searching for him, desperate not to lose sight of him.
But he was gone.
Later, she was told she must have imagined him, that shock, concussion, or trauma might have conjured him. Yet the memory never faded. The face, the silence, the way his very startling presence had calmed her.
Chapter One
Ruins & Reckonings
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The Highlands, Scotland
