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Jett was out of town doing his bounty hunter thing, so he should be fine…but this was exactly what Ryder had been trying to avoid by having us come to the bar tonight…me alone with Sienna.

Fuck.

I climbed in, the engine roaring to life under my palm like it shared my urgency. Gravel sprayed as I pulled out too fast, the tires biting hard as I pointed us toward the road like I was being chased.

There was nothing behind us, though.

The danger was already in the driver’s seat.

She grabbed the door handle, then the dash, white-knuckled as she held on for dear life. I caught the wide-eyed glances she shot me between breaths and the fear she was trying not to show, and I fucking hated myself.

“Sterling,” she said softly, like she was testing the edges of my name. “What the fuck happened?”

I reached over and cranked the air, flipping it to recirculate and sealing us off from the night. The cab filled with her scent instead, and I gulped her in.

I was pretty sure it helped.

A little.

“I’m fine,” I said roughly. “Just need to get us home.”

She bit down on her lip and nodded, but I could tell she didn’t believe me. Her fingers were still white around the door handle.

I kept my eyes on the road, the speedometer creeping higher, my hands locked at ten and two, my jaw clenched hard enough to ache. “Do you feel…off at all?” I asked. “Lightheaded. Anxious. Anything like that?”

She snapped her head toward me. “Aside from feeling like I’m being kidnapped again?” she shot back. “No. I feel fine.”

Good. Thank fuck.

I exhaled through my nose. “Do you remember that conversation we had on the trail about the gas pockets around Blackwood?”

Her brows pulled together. “Vaguely. Something about the town being weird because of it?”

“That’s the short version,” I said. “It’s in the air right now. And it hits people differently. A lot of folks barely notice it. For me…” I swallowed, my eyes still fixed on the road. “It makes me feel out of sorts.”

That was the softest, most polished version of the truth I could manage at the moment.

She studied my profile for a long second, then nodded slowly, like she was filing it away for later. “Okay,” she said. “Well. I still feel fine. Just…incredibly alarmed by your driving.”

“That’s fair,” I muttered.

The road stretched ahead of us, dark and empty, and I drove like hell itself was breathing down my neck, counting the minutes until home.

SIENNA

I wasn’t asleep.

Shocker.

The bed beneath me was still painfully comfortable, the sheets were still soft, the pillow was perfectly arranged beneath my head, and none of it mattered because my brain had decided we were doing a full postmortem instead of sleeping.

Again.

Same room. Same bed. Same inexplicable talent for ending up here when my life was very much supposed to be moving in the opposite direction.

I stared at the ceiling, replaying the night like it might eventually give up answers if I stared hard enough. The bar. The bull. Sterling’s hand closing around mine. The way his energy had shifted so abruptly, it had felt like someone flipped a switch I hadn’t known existed.

And then there was the explanation.