Osiris invited me into the cabin. Maybe it was a pity-invite, but it wasn’t quite as bad as him carrying me as I was drunk. I walked into the cabin. It was as cozy as last time. The smell though was something that stuck. A heavy man-smell. A mix of soap, dirt, sweat, all mixing with the wood of the cabin, along with spots that had been neglected, offering up a mild hint of dust.

In the kitchen, it was small and crammed but there was a two-seater table next to a window.

“You can sit there,” he said to me.

I pulled a chair back against the wood floor and sat down. Outside the window, the trees were moving in any and all directions. It made me shiver even though I couldn’t feel the wind.

“Rain,” I whispered as a few lost droplets smacked against the window.

“Rain,” Osiris confirmed. “Get ready for what happens next.”

I opened the bag of food as he stood there. He seemed like he was as tall as the ceiling.

“Here,” I said as I offered him some food.

“Thanks, sugar,” he said.

He walked away, leaving me feeling a little disappointed.

Outside, I heard the slow rumble of thunder, loud and close enough that the entire cabin started to shake.

Then there was a flash of lightning way off in the distance. Then came more thunder on its heels.

I really wasn’t a fan of storms. Not that I had a reason to be afraid, I just didn’t like them. I guess I could have partially blamed my grandmother for that, since she was always watching the news and the weather. To her, twenty-four-hour weather was amazing. And the specials they did on natural disasters were a stark warning that something bad could happen in the blink of an eye.

Another flash of lightning. Another smack of thunder, this one quicker and louder.

I jumped a little.

“You afraid?” Osiris asked.

I looked at him. He leaned against the corner nook of the counter. One foot over the other, balancing himself, wearing a checkered flannel with the two top buttons undone. I could count two things that intrigued me. Tattoos and muscles. His chest was thick and wide. There was ink everywhere. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up, showing ink down his arms, stopping on his hands.

His jeans were comfortably worn in, fitting his tree-trunk legs. And he wore gray socks with red on the toes.

Everything about this guy screamed sexy mystery. Including his name.

“Not afraid,” I lied. “Just uneasy.”

“Over a thunder storm?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Right.”

So much for a deep conversation.

Osiris downed his food before I ate four bites.

I nodded to the bag. “There’s more to eat.”

“Good,” he said.

He approached the table and grabbed the bag. I studied his hands. Massive hands. Strong hands. I casually tried to look at my hands. My small, girly hands. Stubby fingers. Fingernails all chewed down because I couldn’t take a second to breathe and let life and time do their thing to fix me.

I swallowed hard.

I looked out the window.

“Here’s a trick, sugar,” Osiris said.

I looked up at him. I felt like my neck was going to break.

“The thing with a storm? It always passes. You see it coming, you wait it out, then you see what happened. Yeah, there’s a chance a tree could fall. Hit this cabin. But hopefully, we’re smart enough to avoid any real danger. And, sure, there’s a chance something wild could happen, but what are you going to do? Worry about it?”

Easy for you say. You could probably bench press a tree.

“I get it,” I whispered. “Still doesn’t make me not afraid.”

“Thought you said you weren’t afraid,” he said, and then half his mouth curled up in a grin.

My face burned red. “I didn’t…”

“Thanks for the food,” he said.

He took the last burger and walked to his little nook and ate.

The storm pushed closer. The rain got harder. The winds whipped faster. The thunder got louder. The lightning flashed brighter.

But I ignored the storm and kept my eyes on Osiris.

There were a lot of questions going through my head about the man who saved me. And I was sure there were answers he’d never share, and maybe answers I didn’t want to know about.

“I took a lot of shit for what happened,” I blurted out. “For the record.”

“Yeah?” he asked.

“Yeah. And I didn’t mean to do that on purpose. To anyone. To my friends. To the police. To you. It’s just one of those things. And the cop that helped. Jimmy?”

“Yeah.”

“I want to thank him too. Do you know him?”

“I know of him.”

“You two seemed…”

“Doesn’t matter what anything seems, sugar,” Osiris said.

I swallowed hard. “You sort of disappeared too. Were you upset?”

“No,” he said. “Not at all.”

“You’re lying.”

“Maybe I am.”

I swallowed hard. “I’m just trying to do the right thing here, Syi.”

I loved saying that. His name. His nickname. It was rough and edgy. Like him.

“I don’t get why we’re talking about this,” he said. “It’s done. It’s over. And you drove all the way up here to keep telling me about it.”

I nodded.

I was starting to see how it looked from his end.

Osiris crumbled up the wrapper to his burger and then pushed from the counter. “So, I have to wonder… why? Why does it matter to you so much about what I think?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I really haven’t figured that out. Someone suggested to me that maybe I did that on purpose to-”

“And you’re here to justify you didn’t do it on purpose,” he said. “Which means you’re battling yourself on what actually happened.”

I froze. He was calling me out. Of course, he was calling me out. I took it all in for the first time. He was a big lumberjack-looking guy living alone in a cabin at the top of the mountain. Which meant he wanted to be alone, and he probably had good reason.

“I didn’t want to go camping,” I said. “But my friend—Kim—talked me into it. Then it turned into a mess. The guys that were there were complete idiots. They didn’t bring enough food. Firewood. Whatever. It just…it was just dumb. So, I thought I could walk home. I blame the rum.”

“Rum will do that to you,” Osiris said. “Whiskey makes you fight, rum makes you think you’re invincible.”

“I guess,” I said. “I normally don’t drink like that. Now I know why. I got into the woods and got lost. Pitch black. Trying to use my phone as a light. I don’t know how I ended up on that bench, but I’m glad I did. You said there’s a ridge?”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice suddenly like ice. “A steep one. If you got too close to that…”

I shivered. “So maybe that’s why I’m here then. I did something stupid, and I came close to getting seriously hurt myself. For a dumb reason, too.”

“A dumb reason, huh?” Osiris asked.

“Yeah. You know the way life is.”

“Do I?”

“I’m sure you do,” I said.

“So, you’re up here for what? You want me to be your therapist or something? You want to hide in the woods and escape your life?”

“You don’t have to be a jerk about it.”

“I could be anything I want, sugar,” he said. “You’re in my house. You’re lucky you’re in my house. I could have let you keep walking.”

I slowly stood up. “Okay then. This was a bad idea. I just thought…”

“What? You could get away for a second? Huh? You’re not using me for that. I’m not an excuse.”

“Wow. You look like an asshole, and now you’re filling out the part.”

“Yeah. Because I’m the one who brought firewood for your friends. I’m the one who went on a walk and found you. Remind me again that I’m an asshole?”

“Why were you walking that late?” I asked.

“That’s my business, not yours. What the hell do you really want from me, anyway? Want me to tell you life is going to be okay? Want me to be your savior? Carry you away from the reality you’re dying to escape?”

“Fuck you, Syi,” I said without thinking.

He then laughed.

I walked from the kitchen to the door of the cabin. I opened it and sucked in a scared breath. The sound of the wind pushing at the trees battled against the sound of the pouring rain against the leaves themselves.

But I had seen and heard enough. Somewhere in my head, I had this fantasy of finding a broken man living in a cabin on the top of a mountain. I thought I could find this man who had done something so amazing for me and…

What? What did I expect to find? A hero? A man waiting for someone like me?

I felt stupid.

And no matter how much I thought Osiris was a total jerk, he was right.

I was trying to escape reality.

And now I was going to walk right into a storm.

The question was, was I going to make it off the mountain alive again?

* * *

Osiris was right about one thing. When it stormed on the mountain, it was bad.

The rain crashed against my windshield harder than my wipers could keep up with. The thunder cracked over and over. The lightning flashed.

I went as slow as I possibly could without stopping. The good news was that there was just one road. It brought you up the mountain, and it took you down. That meant I had a scary drive down, but once I hit a real, paved road, I was golden.

Up ahead, there was a small bend.

The rain seemed to suddenly let up so I could see. Pounding one second, just an easy rain the next. I considered it fate helping me out for once. I felt like I was long overdue for fate to do something in my favor.

That moment, everything hit me.

What Thad did. All the things he said. All the lies he told. All the truths he told, too. The way my life spiraled and I hadn’t been able to reel it back in. Which wasn’t like me. And then him sending me some stupid fucking flower. Why? So that I would leave him and his family alone? I had done nothing to contact them or bother them since he left.

I couldn’t believe I was starting to cry.

Most of it was because of Osiris, though. My own dumb mind building up something that wasn’t real. I felt hopeless. I felt like everyone in town knew about me and my bullshit. So, anyone that saw me would know about Thad, naturally.

Tears rolled down my cheeks as the rain rolled down my windshield. I leaned forward, gripping the wheel super tight. I saw at the bend there was a cut in the middle of the road from the rain. It was at a weird angle, the rain water cutting its down path across and down the mountain.

To me it looked easy to get through. Just keep going, hold the wheel, bounce through the mud and the bumps. Simple, right?

I cruised forward. I picked up a little more speed because I could. The rain wasn’t all that bad. The winds were starting to die down a little.

I was going to get off the mountain. Go home. Drink wine. Watch a romance movie. Cry my eyes out. And tomorrow would be a restart for my life.

My front tires hit the bump and I felt myself splash and sink. My car suddenly turned. I was almost sideways as I cut the wheel, hitting the gas, my tires spinning in the mud. I felt myself lurching to the left, and I pictured myself just dropping off the mountain. Falling into the trees, disappearing, never to be found again.

“Shit,” I yelled.

My car turned a little further, then stopped with a sudden jolt that sent my head to the left, smacking against the window. I thought for sure the window was going to break but it didn’t.

The rain kept coming down.

And I was trapped.

I looked over to my phone. I would have to suck it up and call for help. Someone would have to come up here and get me. And help me get my car.

But before that…

I just needed to sit there and cry.