Sleep never came easily to Elena. That night, it didn't come at all.
She lay in bed listening to the rain hammering against her window, the rhythm too loud, too insistent, as though the storm had followed her home. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw him—the stranger with eyes that seemed to know her, the stranger who'd spoken her name like a secret pulled from her bones.
Her fingers curled tightly in her sheets. She had no explanation. No reason. And yet… she couldn't shake the certainty that his presence hadn't been chance.
By morning, exhaustion dragged her through the motions of her routine. Coffee. Hair pulled back. The long walk to the bookstore that felt more like sanctuary than job. Books didn't ask questions. They didn't stare too closely. They let her hide.
"Morning, boss," called Dana, the other clerk, when Elena slipped inside. Dana was always sunshine, always easy smiles. Elena envied it, though she never said so.
"Morning," Elena murmured back.
She buried herself in tasks, shelving returns, checking inventory. Anything to keep her thoughts from circling back to him. But the effort was useless. Every quiet moment became a battlefield, her mind replaying the curve of his mouth, the way his voice had slid like smoke through the dark.
By dusk, she told herself she'd imagined it. That exhaustion had painted the night stranger than it was. People didn't just know your name. People didn't look at you like they'd been waiting years to find you.
The lie held—until she stepped outside to lock up and found him leaning against the lamppost across the street.
Elena froze.
He wasn't watching her, not directly. His gaze was tipped upward, as though the glow of the streetlight fascinated him. But the moment her keys jingled, his head turned. And when their eyes met, she felt that same drop in her stomach, that same rush of danger and inevitability.
"You again," she said, her voice sharper than she intended.
He pushed off the lamppost with an ease that made her heart stumble.
"Me again."
Her hand tightened around her keys. "Are you following me?"
A slow smile curved his lips. "If I were, would you run?"
The answer lodged in her throat. She should've said yes. She should've ended this here, walked away, disappeared. Instead, she whispered, "Maybe."
He crossed the street in three measured steps. Close enough now that she caught the faint scent of smoke and something darker, something that made her pulse quicken.
"Elena Blackwood," he said, her name tasting dangerous in his mouth. "You think the world is made of choices. It isn't. It's made of collisions."
Her breath hitched. "And which are you? A choice or a collision?"
His smile was cruel and beautiful at once.
"I'm the one that ruins you."
Before she could breathe, before she could demand what he meant, he turned and melted into the night—like the storm had come to life and carried him away.
And this time, Elena knew: she wasn't imagining it.
Fate had found her.