The night cracked open with a sudden burst of thunder.
By the time Lily pushed through the café doors at midnight, the rain was coming down in sheets, heavy and cold.
She pulled her thin jacket tighter around her, but it did nothing against the cold that sank into her skin.
The bus had stopped running hours ago.
The taxis were all taken by the lucky few who could afford them.
So, she walked.
Step by step, through puddles and neon reflections, through the kind of darkness that seeped into your bones and made you feel small.
Her sneakers squelched with every step; her hair stuck to her forehead in wet clumps and her hands shook from the chill. She should have been miserable but oddly, she wasn't.
There was something almost freeing about it, like the storm outside matched the storm inside.
Like the whole world was drowning and she wasn't alone in it.
The city at night was a different creature. It was alive, breathing and dangerous.
She crossed empty intersections, the lights blinking yellow above her.
She passed shuttered storefronts, graffiti-smeared walls, a smarter girl might have been scared but Lily wasn't sure she cared what happened to her anymore.
She just kept walking, head bowed, the rain soaking through every layer until she couldn't tell where she ended and the night began.
She didn't hear the car at first, the rain muffled everything.
It wasn't until she reached the mouth of a long, dark street that she caught the gleam of headlights slicing through the downpour.
A sleek black car, low, powerful, gliding through the storm like it owned the night.
Something about it made her pause.
The car slowed as it approached her, tires whispering against the wet asphalt.
For a moment, it kept pace with her but not close enough to be threatening, but not far enough to be coincidence.
Her heart kicked up painfully in her chest, she didn't look, she didn't dare.
She just kept her head down, pretending not to notice, pretending she wasn't soaked and shaking and terribly, terribly alone.
And then
Something pulled at her.
An invisible tug, a weight.
She lifted her head. And their eyes met through the window.
Him.
The man from the café.
The same gray eyes, sharper somehow in the dim light, like twin storms trapped behind glass.
For a heartbeat, neither of them moved.
The rain battered the car.
It streamed down the window in rivers, warping and blurring the world outside.
But she could still see him and he could see her.
There was something raw in his expression, something fierce and unreadable.
Something that made her chest tighten painfully.
She didn't know what he saw when he looked at her.
The soaked hair.
The thin jacket.
The hopelessness she wore like a second skin.
Maybe he saw everything. Maybe he saw nothing at all.
The car idled there, engine purring low and steady, as if the whole world had narrowed down to just the two of them, two strangers adrift in the same dark sea.
And then, as suddenly as he had appeared, he was gone.
The car peeled away with a muted roar across the wet streets.
Lily stood frozen in the rain, the echo of their locked gaze lingering like a bruise under her skin.
She wrapped her arms around herself, trembling from the cold, from the weight of that look, from something she couldn't name.
She wanted to call out.
To chase after him, to ask why.
Why he had stopped.
Why he had looked at her like that.
But the words died in her throat.
The storm swallowed her whole.
She forced her feet to move, one step at a time, back into the shivering emptiness of the city.
The encounter replayed over and over in her mind, as vivid as a lightning strike:
His face, his eyes.
The heavy, electric feeling that had sparked between them, undeniable, dangerous, unfinished.
Who was he?
And why did it feel like fate itself had wrapped its cold, wet hands around her and refused to let go?
By the time she stumbled back into the crumbling apartment building and up the three flights of stairs to her rented room, Lily was soaked to the bone.
She stripped off her jacket and shoes, leaving them in a soggy heap by the door.
The room was freezing. She shivered violently as she fumbled for the threadbare blanket on the bed, wrapping it around herself like a shield.
The radiator clicked and groaned uselessly in the corner, offering no heat.
Outside the window, the storm raged on.
Lily sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the window, at the darkness beyond. At the memory of those gray eyes watching her.
The rain blurred the world outside into a smear of color and light. It was a night for ghosts.
And somehow, she knew, deep in her marrow that the man in the black car was a ghost of a different kind.
Not one she could outrun and definitely not one she could forget.
She pulled the blanket tighter around herself, curling into the smallest shape she could, like if she made herself small enough, invisible enough, the universe might forget to punish her for a little while.
But no matter how tightly she closed her eyes, she couldn't shake the feeling that something had shifted tonight.
Something inevitable and unstoppable.
And she couldn't help but wonder, with a bone-deep certainty that scared her,
whether the next time she saw him...
She wouldn't be able to walk away.