Out of Time
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Amber Kuhlman
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120K
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46
Addy saves lives for a living—but can’t seem to save her own. After one brutal night shatters her last ounce of strength, she runs, desperate for escape. That’s when she collides with Jay—a stranger with danger in his eyes and too many sins on his hands. He’s a storm she should avoid, but the pull between them is undeniable. He’s broken. She’s bleeding. And somehow, their hearts still recognize each other in the wreckage. As dark secrets rise and pasts collide, Addy must decide whether to keep running from the truth—or face it head-on, even if it means loving the one man who could destroy her.
Chapter 1
Addy gripped the steering wheel so tightly her fingers ached. Water beat against the windshield in violent sheets, the wipers struggling to keep up as they dragged back and forth.
Every few seconds, the road vanished behind a blur of black night and silver rain, and she had to blink hard to keep her vision clear.
She should pull over. She knew that.
Her hands were shaking too badly, her chest too tight, her thoughts too fractured. She could barely breathe around the pressure pressing into her ribs.
But the idea of stopping, of sitting still long enough to think about what had just happened inside that house, made something hot and panicked crawl up the back of her throat.
So she kept driving.
The music was off. The heater blasted lukewarm air through the vents, but it did nothing to thaw the cold buried inside her bones. Her soaked clothes clung to her skin. Rainwater had dripped from her hair down the back of her neck, and now everything felt damp, sticky, wrong.
She reached up at a stop sign and scrubbed at her face with the heel of one hand, but she couldn’t tell what was rain and what was tears anymore.
By the time she hit the main road, Seattle had become little more than a smear of lights in her rearview mirror.
Her breathing came in shallow bursts. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Slow down. Calm down. She tried to force herself into the same rhythm she used on patients in crisis, the same calm, measured breaths she coached through panic attacks and pain and shock.
It didn’t work.
Her mind kept snagging on pieces of the night, sharp little fragments that cut every time they surfaced.
Ryan standing in front of her in the rain, one hand braced on the open car door.
What were you doing in the bathroom?
The way his voice had changed when he asked it, softer than before, almost sober. That was the worst version of him sometimes. Not the loud one. Not the sloppy, staggering drunk. The quiet one. The one who acted like the reasonable man in the room. The one who made her feel insane for reacting to the things he did.
Addy’s fingers slipped on the wheel. She adjusted her grip, jaw clenched so tightly it hurt.
You’re my fiancée. I care about you.
The words made her chest tighten. She let out a bitter sound that was almost a laugh, except there was nothing funny about any of it. He cared about her. Right. He cared enough to put his hands on her every time the bottle won.
Cared enough to leave bruises in places she could hide beneath sweaters and long sleeves and careful smiles. Cared enough to buy her flowers afterward. Jewelry. Expensive apologies.
Her gaze dropped, just for a second, to the ring glinting on her left hand.
Even in the dark, the diamond caught the passing lights and threw them back at her. It was beautiful. Flawless. A hard, glittering thing perched on a trembling hand.
She hated it tonight.
A fresh wave of nausea rolled through her. She swallowed against it and sat up straighter, trying to ignore the pain in her chest where he’d shoved her. It had dulled from sharp agony to a deep, throbbing ache, the kind she knew would bloom ugly by morning. Black and blue. Tender. Another thing to hide.
She thought of Lisa on the couch, red cup in hand, eyes narrowed with suspicion.
Are things okay with you two?
Fine, Addy had said.
Fine.
The lie tasted sour now. It sat like poison on her tongue.
She pressed harder on the gas.
The road stretched on, dark and slick and nearly empty. Houses disappeared. Streetlights grew sparse. Her headlights carved a narrow path through the storm, illuminating wet trees and ditches and the occasional reflective sign.
She had no plan. No destination. She only knew she needed distance between herself and Ryan before she lost what little control she still had.
Control.
The word lodged in her chest.
Addy’s right forearm throbbed beneath her soaked jacket. She felt it with horrible clarity now, every inch of raw skin pulsing in time with her heartbeat. She didn’t need to look to know what was under there.
She had seen enough blood in her life to picture it perfectly. Jagged cuts, angry and fresh, hidden beneath the sleeve she had yanked down before leaving the bathroom.
Her stomach dropped.
For one terrible second, she was back there.
Locked in Lisa’s bathroom with mascara streaked down her face and the bass from the party vibrating through the walls, the mirror had shown her everything she didn’t want to see. Her ring. The bruises on top of older bruises.
The pink ridges of healed scars. A girl who had worked herself to the bone for years, who had just gotten into medical school, who had everything in front of her, and still somehow couldn’t figure out how to save herself.
Then the spare razor head on the floor.
The flash of steel in her trembling fingers.
The first bright sting of pain.
Addy sucked in a breath so hard her lungs burned. “No.” Her voice sounded thin inside the car. “No, no, no.”
She blinked hard, forcing the memory away, but it clung to her anyway. The bathroom floor. The blood. The toilet paper pressed against her skin. Her own ragged sobs swallowed by the music outside. She had known, even then, that it was insane.
That it changed nothing. Ryan was still Ryan. She was still there. The cuts would sting tomorrow, and she would have to drag herself through another day, pretending she was all right.
And yet for those few seconds, with the blade in her hand, she had felt something she almost never felt anymore.
Relief.
The admission made shame burn through her. Addy tightened one hand on the wheel and used the other to wipe at her cheeks again. She felt ridiculous and raw and exhausted in a way that went beyond sleep.
She was tired in her bones. Tired in her soul. Tired of being afraid all the time. Afraid of Ryan when he drank. Afraid of leaving him. Afraid of what people would think if they knew. Afraid of herself for staying.
The rain came down even harder.
Thunder rolled somewhere in the distance, low and long. The SUV’s tires hissed over standing water. She leaned forward, squinting through the windshield, trying to make out the lines on the road.
How had it gotten this bad?
That was the thought she never let herself have for too long, because it came with answers she couldn’t bear.
The first time Ryan hit her, she had left him.
She remembered that night with humiliating clarity. The black eye. The pounding in her skull. His shaking hands as he begged her not to go. The tears slid down his face as he swore it would never happen again.
She had believed him then. Maybe because she wanted to. Maybe because the version of Ryan she loved had still seemed more real than the version that hurt her. Back then, his violence had felt like an aberration, some awful mistake in an otherwise beautiful thing.
Now she knew better.
Now she knew that love could rot. That apologies could become routine. That a bouquet of roses could look a lot like a warning if you stared at it long enough.
Her acceptance letter flashed through her mind next, limp on the coffee table with condensation collecting on top of it. University of Washington School of Medicine. The words had looked unreal even after she opened the envelope.
She should have been happy tonight. Lisa had wanted that for her, even if she went about things in the loudest, most chaotic way possible. A party. Drinks. Music. Too many people packed into the apartment. And Addy had tried, for all of ten minutes, to pretend she could enjoy it.
Then Ryan had followed her upstairs.
Her pulse thudded harder.
She could still smell the whisky on his breath. Feel the pressure of his hand around her wrist. Hear the edge in his voice when she told him no.
Don’t tell me what to do.
Addy shifted in her seat as pain radiated through her chest again, deep and hot. Her fingers brushed the collar of her jacket as though she could touch the bruise through the layers. He had shoved her hard enough to send her stumbling back.
Hard enough to leave her gasping. Hard enough that when she looked up, he had his fist raised like maybe this time he wouldn’t stop.
Her stomach turned over.
It was always that moment that stayed with her. Not just what he did, but the split second right before, when she saw the decision in his face and knew she was at the mercy of it.
A car passed in the opposite direction, headlights flooding the inside of the SUV with white light before disappearing into the storm. Addy flinched anyway. Her heartbeat wouldn’t settle. She rolled her shoulders and tried to loosen the stiffness in her neck, but the tension only worsened.
What was she doing?
Driving nowhere in the middle of the night with wet hair, a bleeding arm, and a man she was supposed to marry probably calling her over and over again. Her phone sat facedown in the passenger seat, silent only because she had turned the sound off before pulling away.
She didn’t need to see his name flashing across the screen. Didn’t need the voicemails. The apologies. The demand that she come back so they could talk.
Talk.
Another bitter laugh escaped her.
They never talked. Ryan talked. Ryan explained. Ryan apologized. Ryan cried. Ryan promised. Addy listened. Addy forgave. Addy stayed. And somehow, in the end, Ryan always became the wounded one, and she became the unreasonable fiancée who expected too much.
Her eyes blurred again. This time she couldn’t tell if it was tears or the relentless rain. Maybe both.
She should call someone.
Lisa, maybe. But the thought of Lisa hearing the tremor in her voice and immediately knowing something was wrong made her chest constrict. Her best friend wasn’t stupid. Lisa suspected far more than Addy had ever admitted. One real conversation, one moment of honesty, and the whole rotten structure of Addy’s life would collapse.
Her father’s face rose in her mind without warning, followed by Lisa’s voice from earlier.
I don’t want you to end up with someone like your dad, Addy.
She swallowed hard.
Too late for that.
The road curved sharply, and she followed it, slowing only a little. Pines crowded close on either side now, dark and swaying in the storm. The farther she got from the city, the more isolated everything felt.
It should have scared her. Instead, the emptiness was almost a comfort. No partygoers. No curious stares. No Ryan standing in front of her with that infuriating, practiced tenderness.
Just the rain. The road. The ache inside her.
Addy rolled her shoulders again and flexed her fingers. The movement tugged at the cuts beneath her sleeve, and she hissed. She should have wrapped them better. Should have cleaned them better. She knew that. She of all people knew better. But she’d only wanted out. Out of the bathroom. Out of the apartment. Out of his reach.
Her headlights caught something up ahead—a reflective sign, then a stretch of cracked shoulder, then a pothole big enough to swallow a tire. She moved to avoid it, tires skidding just slightly on the slick pavement. Her breath caught. The SUV fishtailed once before correcting, and she froze, every muscle in her body rigid until the car steadied.
“Jesus Christ.” Her voice sounded louder now, almost frantic.
Her heart slammed against her ribs. She forced herself to loosen her grip, but it was no use. Her whole body felt wired, jumpy, and brittle. She couldn’t keep doing this. Couldn’t keep driving blind through the storm like a lunatic.
She looked for somewhere to pull over, but there was nothing. No gas station, no diner, no cluster of lights in the distance. Only trees and darkness and rain.
A sob rose unexpectedly and caught in her throat. She bit it back.
She had to get herself together.
Addy took one hand off the wheel and turned the heat higher. Then, on impulse, she reached to the passenger seat and snatched up her phone. The screen lit her face in cold blue. Six missed calls. Four texts.
Ryan.
Of course.
Her thumb hovered over the notifications, nausea twisting low in her stomach. But before she could decide whether to throw the phone out the window or shut it off completely, the SUV hit something hard.
There was a violent pop. The steering wheel jerked in her hands.
“What the—”
A horrible flapping sound erupted from the front of the vehicle, followed by a grinding pull to the right. Addy cried out and wrestled the wheel, trying to keep control as the SUV lurched toward the shoulder.
The phone slipped from her fingers and fell somewhere near her feet. Tires spat gravel. The whole vehicle shuddered and dragged before finally lurching to a stop at the side of the road.
For a moment, all she could do was sit there.
Rain hammered the roof. Her breath tore in and out of her lungs. Her hands stayed locked around the steering wheel even though the engine was still idling and the car was no longer moving.
Then slowly, terribly, reality settled in.
“Please don’t do this to me.” Her voice broke.
Addy leaned forward and rested her forehead against the wheel. Outside, the storm raged on, and the empty road stretched black in both directions. She was alone.
It was after midnight. She had no idea where she was. Her phone had fallen somewhere out of reach, and judging by the awful angle of the SUV and the sound that had followed that pop, she already knew exactly what had happened.
Blown tire.
Her laugh this time was closer to a sob. She pushed herself upright and stared out at the rain-swept road ahead, every nerve in her body buzzing as dread settled into her chest.
Then, swallowing hard, she reached for the door handle.
