Sam wasn’t supposed to end up here.

At twenty-four, he should’ve been finishing his dual degree, mathematics and law on a full ride that people twice his age would’ve killed for. He used to sit in lecture halls with a straight back and sharp focus, the kind of student professors remembered. Numbers made sense to him. So did systems, rules, the way things were supposed to work.

But people didn’t.

It wasn’t even his operation. That’s the part that still bothered him on the long drives. He’d fallen in with a group that liked fast money and louder nights, the kind of crowd that blurred lines until you couldn’t tell where you stood anymore. When they got caught selling drugs, it didn’t matter who was directly involved and who wasn’t. His name was attached, and that was enough. The scholarship disappeared. The university cut him loose. Just like that, everything he’d built collapsed into something he couldn’t fix with logic or effort.

So now he drove trucks. Long distances. Overnight hauls. The kind of job where the road didn’t ask questions and silence didn’t judge. It paid enough, kept him moving, kept him away from thinking too hard at least, that was the idea.

Tonight, though, thinking was unavoidable.

Rain hammered against the windshield in uneven bursts, the wipers dragging back and forth in a steady, hypnotic rhythm. The highway stretched endlessly ahead, slick with reflected headlights and swallowed by darkness beyond the reach of his beams. The cab smelled faintly of coffee gone cold and damp fabric, and the low hum of the engine filled the empty space around him.

It was late. Too late for anyone to be out here.

Which is why he almost missed her.

At first, she was just a shape at the edge of the road, something out of place in the storm. Sam’s eyes flicked toward it, then back to the road, his brain slow to register what he’d seen. A second later, it clicked.

A person.

He eased his foot off the accelerator, the truck gradually slowing as he checked his mirrors. The rain made everything harder to see, smearing the world into streaks of light and shadow. As he got closer, the figure sharpened, a girl, walking alone along the shoulder, her clothes darkened by the rain, her posture tense against the cold.

Sam hesitated.

He wasn’t the kind of guy who stopped anymore. Life had a way of teaching you that getting involved usually made things worse. Still…. no one walked alone out here in weather like this unless something was wrong.

The truck rumbled past her by a few meters before he made the decision.

He swore quietly under his breath and slowed to a stop, the massive vehicle hissing as it settled. Rain drummed louder now that he wasn’t moving. For a moment, he just sat there, hands on the wheel, staring ahead.

Then he reached over and rolled down the window, letting the cold, wet air rush into the cab as he leaned slightly toward the open frame and looked back at her through the rain.

“Hey, are you okay?”