The town sign looked like something out of a postcard—weathered wood, hand-painted pine trees, a cheerful slogan: WELCOME TO SILVER CREEK – WHERE THE MOUNTAINS MEET HOME.
All I could think was that it felt like a warning.
Fog clung low to the road as my little hatchback rolled beneath the sign, the headlights carving a slice through the mist. The air here was different, heavier, like it had weight and teeth. I cracked the window and cold mountain air slipped in, sharp with pine and damp earth. It should have calmed me.
It didn’t.
My fingers tightened around the steering wheel. "Fresh start," I said out loud, because the silence had started to feel too loud in my ears. "New job. New town. No more idiots who punch walls instead of talking about their feelings."
The joke landed flat in the empty car. I could still see Tyler’s face the night he’d put his fist through the drywall—how his anger had filled the room like smoke. The therapist had told me I was brave for leaving.
Brave felt a lot like terrified, alone on a mountain road with my entire life stuffed into the trunk.
Something moved in the fog ahead. Large. Low. I jerked my foot toward the brake just as a shape loped across the narrow stretch of asphalt, too fast for me to do more than gasp.
Not a deer. Too big. Not a dog. Too… wrong.
Silver fur flashed in my headlights, then golden eyes caught the beam and flared like coins at the bottom of a dark pool. A wolf, my mind supplied belatedly, but coyotes were the biggest things I’d ever seen off a screen. This animal was huge, muscles rolling under its pelt as it vaulted the ditch and vanished between the trees.
My car shuddered as I slammed to a stop. My heart tried to tear through my ribs.
"Jesus," I whispered, hand pressed to my chest now that the steering wheel wasn’t there. The engine idled, a nervous rattle. The forest swallowed the wolf with an ease that made me feel like the intruder.
Wolves. Right. The job posting had mentioned the proximity to nature, the local wildlife, the necessity of keeping trash secure to avoid bear encounters.
“Silver Creek is rustic,” the hiring brochure had said, with a picture of kids in flannel on a football field.
“Silver Creek has predators,” my anxiety translated, while my pulse slowly climbed down from panic.
I forced myself to breathe, counting on the exhale. In, two, three, four. Out, two, three, four. My therapist’s voice in my head again: Ground yourself. Name five things you can see.
Fog. Trees. The cracked dashboard. My own pale knuckles. The stupid air freshener shaped like a strawberry.
I let out a short laugh that was halfway to a sob. "You almost hit a wolf, Amelia. Not a reason to turn around."
Except a tiny part of me—the part that had answered the job ad without telling anyone, that had signed the lease on a cottage sight unseen—whispered that maybe it was. Maybe this was the universe’s last-ditch attempt to say run back to the city, to crowded streets and sirens and the comfort of anonymity.
But the lease was signed, the gas tank was half-empty, and there was nowhere to go back to that didn’t taste like failure.
