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My fingers close around the neck of it. I stand there, bottle in hand, cap still on, arguing with myself in an empty garage.

I don’t open it, at least not yet. Instead, I set it back down on my workbench hard enough that it rattles and roll up my sleeves, like busying my hands might do something my willpower alone hasn’t managed all week.

The minutes blur, then the hours. I fall into the hum of the garage, metal and grease, torque and timing, the only things that shut my brain up these days.

Until thunder cracks, loud enough to rattle the bay doors.

I straighten, my eyes straining against the dark outside the windows. There weren’t supposed to be storms tonight. I grew up in these mountains. I know the signs. The way the leaves turn upside down, how the birds go quiet an hour ahead of it. But there was none of that. No warning. No building. Just sudden pressure crushing the air out of my lungs and a wall of black rolling down off the ridge like it appeared out of nothing.

It’s one of those storms that doesn’t feel natural. The kind that floods the low roads and knocks out half the county’s power.

Let it flood. Let it break. Nothing out here can touch me more than what I’ve already lost.

I reach for a wrench and stop short.

Something shifts in the air, and I freeze.

There. A scent.

Her scent.

It doesn’t just drift past this time. It surrounds me. Black vanilla filling every corner of the garage at once, like she’s standing close enough to touch. Close enough that I actually turn, certain, for one suspended heartbeat, that I’ll find her there.

My eyes sweep the garage, finding it empty. I breathe in again, deeper, chasing it. It holds a second longer than it ever has before letting go all at once, the way a held breath finally releases. Then it’s gone. Completely. Like it was never here at all.

It’s not the first time. Not even the second time. I’ve stopped trying to explain it away every time it happens. I’m either losing my mind, or she’s still reaching for me. Tonight, I can’t decide which answer scares me less.

I rub a hand down my face, my heart thudding harder than I want to admit. I could go back to work. Lose myself in the noise and bolts and grease, trying to pretend that it still brings me any kind of peace.

But something’s off.

I grab the bottle and shove it into my bag. Screw the engine rebuild. I’m done for the night.

Rain’s already coming down hard enough to soak through my shirt in the ten seconds it takes to haul the bay door shut. I throw the lock and jog across the lot toward my truck. Thunder cracks again, closer now.

Once I get behind the wheel, I sit there a second before turning the key. Rain hammers the roof loud enough to drown out my own thoughts.

I don’t have a plan. Just a bottle and a chest full of pain. I tell myself I’m heading straight back to the clubhouse, but my hands don’t follow the lie.

The truck turns the wrong direction at the light, out toward the mountain roads, and I let it. I drive through back roads slick with rain, tires hissing over water already pooling at the low points. Past the diner, dark and shuttered early. Past the tree line where the mountain drops off toward the creek that’s wild with runoff already.

The wipers are losing the fight before I’ve gone half a mile, slapping back and forth fast enough that they’re barely clearing the windshield before the next sheet of rain covers it again.

Lightning splits the sky in a jagged line, close enough that the crack of thunder hits almost the same instant. There’s no gap between the flash and the sound. For a second, the whole mountain goes white, every tree and rut in the road burned into view, then it’s swallowed whole by black again.

Wind screams through the pines in gusts that don’t match anything the forecast predicted. Rain comes down sideways instead of falling the way rain's supposed to fall.

I’ve ridden out enough storms in these mountains to know what normal looks like, and this isn’t it. This built too fast, from nothing. No warning system would’ve caught it. It’s like it dropped out of a clear sky the second I wasn’t looking. I don’t have a name for the unease that puts in me. Some instinct telling me this storm didn’t just happen to be here tonight.

Thunder rolls again, long and continuous, shaking the truck hard enough that I grip the wheel tighter. I ease up on the gas, taking the curve slow, my headlights barely cutting through the rain. That’s when I see it.

A splash of ridiculous bubblegum pink cuts through the dark, completely out of place. A scooter, on the shoulder of the road. And next to it, a woman.

She’s standing with one hand braced on the seat, the other lifted to shield her eyes from the downpour. She’s watching the road like she’s praying somebody comes before the storm swallows her whole.

Dark curls cling to her cheeks and neck. She swipes them back, quick and sharp, the kind of motion that says she’s holding on by a thread. Her T-shirt’s soaked through and plastered to her body.

What the hell is she doing out here? Nobody with half a brain takes a scooter out on these roads in weather like this. This isn’t a joyride. It’s a death trap.