Aria tried not to stare, but now that she had a name—Luca—the pieces in her head began aligning, unwanted memories crawling to the surface like specters in the dark.
Luca... her ex's brother.
He looked so different now—older, stronger, and darker than she remembered. Gone was the wild, rebellious boy she had once only seen from a distance. This man was hardened, carved from mountain stone and silence. But those silver eyes? They were unmistakable.
She watched him sip from his own mug, his eyes focused on the fire as if trying to erase time. The silence stretched, heavy and raw.
"You're from around here?" she asked, carefully.
Luca's gaze cut to her again, cool and assessing. "I live here. I keep to myself."
Typical. She always remembered Luca being the quieter one, the mysterious shadow to his brother Damon's golden boy spotlight.
Damon. The man who'd broken her.
The reminder sent a dull ache through her chest. It had taken her months to rebuild herself, to find pieces of Aria not touched by Damon's lies. And now she was face to face with a living memory of it all.
"I didn't know anyone still lived in these mountains," she said, voice barely above the crackle of firewood.
"That's the point," he replied.
His words weren't cold, but they didn't invite more conversation either.
Aria turned her eyes to the fire, the silence between them feeling both comforting and suffocating. She wanted to ask him so many things—what he was doing out here, why he'd never left, if he knew what his brother had done to her—but the words wouldn't come. And maybe she didn't want to know the answers.
But fate had a strange way of forcing confrontations.
"I knew your brother," she finally said, testing the waters.
Luca's jaw clenched, the scar on his face tightening. "I know."
So he had recognized her.
"You're not like him," she murmured.
"No," Luca said, voice bitter. "I never was."
His statement hung in the air, filled with quiet fury and pain. Aria realized she'd touched a nerve, but oddly, it didn't frighten her. It intrigued her.
Luca stood, the movement sudden but not threatening. "You should rest. The storm won't let up for a while."
Aria nodded and glanced toward the small couch. "Where should I…?"
"I'll take the floor."
"No," she said quickly. "This is your home. I'll take the floor."
His silver eyes locked with hers, and for the first time since arriving, Aria felt something shift in the room. Not danger—no, it wasn't that. It was intensity. Energy. A pull between them that neither wanted to name.
"I'm fine," he said shortly, already grabbing a folded blanket from a chest in the corner.
Aria didn't argue. She was too tired to fight the tension, the storm, or her rising heartbeat.
As she lay on the couch, the fire flickering against the dark cabin walls, she let her thoughts drift. This place was wild, and so was the man who lived in it. But beneath the rugged edges and wolf-like eyes, she sensed something else.
Something wounded.
Something hidden.
And something... dangerous.
Her last thought before drifting off into a restless sleep was a question she didn't want the answer to:
What if she hadn't just run into a stranger in the storm... but destiny itself?