I should have died that day.

I should have, but I didn't. And there was one very specific reason why.

And his name was Sebastian.

Car accidents weren't common anymore. People used to die from them all the time, back when we had to drive cars ourselves. It's hard to believe that humans were ever permitted at the controls, considering the number of deaths it caused. Nowadays, all vehicles were self-driving, and they operated on a complex system that maximized both safety and efficiency.

But even a perfect system failed sometimes.

Sebastian crouched beneath the car as though the weight of it resting on his slender shoulders meant less than nothing. There had been an ear-splitting sound at the exact moment of collision, like metal hitting metal, followed by complete silence as his eyes bore into mine across the hood of my truck.

For a split second, all the world stood still, as a gentle snow fell all around us. I breathed deep, balanced on the edge of the bridge. Had the other car hit me, I would have gone over and plunged into the choppy river. I probably would have died. I could almost feel the cold water and the darkness enveloping me in its lethal grasp.

Then I blinked, and the second was over. It was like someone had pressed unpause. The world came rushing forward again, the Earth spun quickly to catch up for lost time, and Sebastian was gone. The other car now had all four wheels firmly settled on the road.

It had happened so fast, I almost wondered if I'd imagined it. If it had been the shock and the adrenaline scorching through my brain and making me hallucinate.

How else could you explain that I'd seen Sebastian stop a head-on collision with nothing but his bare hands?

You couldn't. And the longer I stared, unblinking, through the windshield and the snow, the less sense it made. My thoughts shifted and rearranged—then shifted and rearranged again, trying to fit the pieces together. But no matter how I looked at it, there was no logical explanation.

The only thing I knew for certain was that a collision had been stopped, and that I was alive.