1COLLINSThere were three things that I could see out of my car’s windshield, and all of them were ominous: a sharp and jagged mountain range with one point taller than all of the rest, a gray sky with clouds that were undoubtedly full of rain, and a plume of black smoke that was a little too close for comfort.
How close? Coming out of the hood of my car close.
“C’mon, girl,” I whisper hopefully—giving my 2002 Camry a couple of slaps on the dash for good measure. My car was nowhere near the weirdest thing I’d spoken to. “Forty more miles. That’s it. You can do forty more miles.” Never mind that the forty more miles were steep, skinny, winding switchbacks that only had one destination: Sweetwater Peak, Wyoming.
Nestled in the shadow of the tallest peak in the Elk Spine mountain range, Sweetwater Peak was quiet, quirky, and quaint. It was also the last place I wanted to be.
As if my car could read my mind, she started to shake and sputter. Well, that’s not a good sign. “I get it,” I said. I didn’t really take that great of care of this car—I didn’t even remember the last time I drove it. For the past three years, it had been covered by a tarp in a storage unit in Meadowlark—about two hours south of Sweetwater Peak—which I got to by hitching a ride with a nice couple who were on my flight from Portland to Jackson. They were going to some guest ranch in the area for a week.
I liked having the freedom of having my car where I could get to it if I needed to . . . without coming all the way home, though. So a storage unit was a good solution.
Now that my car sounded and felt like it was going to give out at any moment, though, I regretted not taking my twin sister up on her offer to pick me up from the airport today.
But I needed some time to mentally prepare to see Clarke and my parents. I love my family—really, I do. I’m just a firm believer in the whole “distance makes the heart grow fonder” thing. I’ve never loved my family more than when I wasn’t living in the same town as them. Boundaries worked a hell of a lot better when there were thousands of miles between us.
I sighed loudly but not loud enough that I couldn’t hear the rattle that was unmistakably coming from my engine as the car started to slow—even though my foot was still firmly on the gas pedal.
Shit.At this point, I didn’t have a choice but to pull as far as I could onto the soft shoulder of the road. It wasn’t wide enough to fit a whole car, but if I went any farther, the Camry and I would be barrel-rolling down the mountain.
I got out of the car and slammed the door a little harder than I needed to before walking to the front of the hood. I knew a little bit about cars—like how to check my oil and change my own tire, but I didn’t even know where to start with the black smoke situation.
“Maybe this is a sign,” I muttered to no one in particular. If I had any company of the, um, specter variety, they hadn’t made themselves known yet, but it was only a matter of time as I got closer to Sweetwater Peak. “Maybe I should just hop in the car, throw it in neutral, and coast back down the mountain.”
Thunder boomed around me, and I felt its reverberation in my chest—like I was right next to the speakers at a concert.
I took a deep breath before I popped the hood and was promptly enveloped in the smoke. My lungs burned as it wrapped around me, and I started to cough as I stepped back and tried to fan it away.
I wasn’t clear of it until I was ten feet in front of my car, and even then, I spent an embarrassing amount of time with my hands on my knees hacking. “Can’t”—
cough—“catch”—
hack—“a f***ing”—
cough—“break. Can you, Collins?”
I pulled my phone out of my back pocket and looked at the top right corner. No service. Of course. There was a pocket of cellphone service in Sweetwater Peak, but it didn’t extend very far outward. The last hour of the drive was a dead zone.
There was a string of texts from Clarke on my screen—the last one was delivered an hour and a half ago.
Lars: Remember how you said you were going to be here before noon?
Lars: Weird that it’s almost five, and you’re still not here.
Lars: You’re not even here yet, and you’re already giving me premature gray hair.
Lars: Seriously, Collins. Where are you?
Well, there was no use in trying to text her back when I knew that text wouldn’t go anywhere until I was inside the town limits. I should’ve called her while I was driving—told her where I was, so she knew that she should come rescue me when something inevitably went wrong, and I wasn’t home when I said I was going to be.
Clarke was always saving me.
Something cold and wet hit my nose, and then my arm, and then the top of my head. Thunder clapped again, and like that was all the rain needed, it started to pour.
I didn’t make for the shelter of my car right away. Instead, I stood there with my eyes on the engine and let the rain soak me all the way through.
I’d already resigned myself to sleeping in my car as soon as the smoke started pouring out of the engine, so there was no need to rush into it. Tomorrow morning, someone would have to drive down from Sweetwater Peak for some reason. There was only one way in and one way out. They’d spot me, and then I’d be on my way home again. This was just a little hiccup.
I moved the bar that kept my hood up out of the way, and then I let the hood slam shut. I checked that the emergency brake was pulled all the way up before I crawled into my back seat—the pepper spray from my center console clutched in my grip—just in case.
Believe it or not, this is how I would prefer to be welcomed home. I loved a sunny day as much as the next person, but when I came to Sweetwater Peak, I always felt like I needed to do it under the cover of something—a storm like this was perfect. I hoped it lasted through tomorrow—then no one would be outside when I rolled through town or when I pulled my suitcases out of my trunk and dragged them to wherever Clarke had arranged for me to stay.
It probably would’ve been easier to stay with her or my parents—especially considering all of them thought I was coming home to help out with the family business. My parents owned Toades Antiques—the only antique store in Sweetwater Peak. They also owned the building that Toades, and several other local businesses, were in. Earlier this year, a developer came sniffing around and has been trying to get my parents to sell it all.
I don’t love Sweetwater Peak the way Clarke does, but I love the idea of my family’s livelihood being leveled and replaced by a gas station or a parking lot even less.
I’m also like . . . super out of money. I haven’t had a photography job in over a year—not since the incident. I’d been skating by on savings and the firm belief that things would work out. Unfortunately, they didn’t.
So here I am, with about $340, a junker of a car, and a bag of beef jerky to my name—running home to Mom and Dad. They just don’t know I’m running home. They think I’m selflessly coming to help, that I’ve got some time off and want to spend it in Sweetwater Peak.
And I’m going to let them believe that. Actually, I’m going to do everything I can to make sure they believe that.
I let my eyelids flutter closed as I listened to the rain hit my car. It was loud enough that it was easy to focus on. My mind didn’t wander, which was good because I knew exactly where it would wander to—
Why aren’t they talking to me?I shook that out of my head. Not now.
Instead, I tried to count the raindrops and the thunderclaps and the flashes of lightning that lightened the space behind my eyelids every once in a while. I was nearly ready to doze off when I heard a noise outside my car. I sank lower into the seat as I tried to look out the window to see if I could see anything, but there was too much rain and it was mostly dark. I didn’t get spooked very easily, but I had some sense of self-preservation, so when I felt my heartbeat move to my ears, I clutched at my pepper spray a little tighter.
I wrapped my fingers around the window crank and rolled it down a little to see if that helped my visibility as I moved the mechanism on the top of my pepper spray to “shoot,” with my other hand—knowing it would only work if its target was a living, breathing thing.
Breathe, Collins. It’s just this town playing tricks on your mind already.The window was open wide enough that I felt the rain hitting me and then I saw it—a face. I didn’t have time to think before I let the pepper spray rip with a scream.
I knew it met its target when the face in front of me was covered with hands and let out a scream of its own. “F***!” It yelled. It sounded masculine; the pepper spray had been a good call.
Copyright © 2025 by Lyla Sage. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
