Prologue
KIM
"Shit," I mutter to myself, as the car lets out another groan beneath me.
I hear a crack from the front of the vehicle, and a puff of dark smoke snorts out from under the hood.
My heart sinks.Just my luck...
I manage to pull my little beat-up old Mini to the side of the road before it gives out entirely, the coolant hissing loudly as I scramble out and plant my hands on my hips to survey the damage.
It’s not exactly what I was hoping for, coming out here like this, but then, nothing has exactly run as I’d thought it would these last few weeks.
I run a hand through my hair and pop the trunk to pull out the toolkit I stashed in there the day before last, when I left Denver and headed out to the hills to clear my head.
Not exactly the most sensible way to deal with a break-up, but then, when you walk in on your boyfriend making out with one of your graduate students on the couch, it’s not like anyone could blame you for reacting the way you did.
My heart pangs when the memory hits me once more – the way that I froze when I walked through the door to ourapartment, the look on his face as he glanced up at me with sheer horror in his eyes as it clicked that he had finally been busted.
Natalie, for her part, had the decency to scramble her clothes back on and flee while she muttered out a million apologies to me, but I could hardly take any of it in, the ringing in my ears too insistent to ignore.
My boyfriend.Cheatingon me. If I hadn’t come back from that seminar early, I would never have found out. He’s tried to convince me a million times over that I’m crazy for thinking that it had happened before.
I should’ve trusted my gut – we might have moved in together the year before, but that was likely just his way of trying to throw me off the scent and keep me from putting the pieces together.
God only knows how much screwing around he has been getting up to – telling the girls that I’m too focused on work to give him the attention he needs, as though he’s not a grown-ass man capable of taking care of himself...
I squeeze my eyes shut and try to remind myself that I have come here to blow off some steam, not to linger on the assholery that Colton subjected me to. My tenure at the college I’ve been teaching English Lit at has come to an end anyway, so it’s not like I have anything to keep me tied down – packing my stuff up into my car, I took off to the mountains in the hopes that the fresh air would go some way to salving the pain in my guts from everything that has gone down between us.
Only, of course, for my car to break down on the side of the road. I should have had it looked over before I came out here, and I can see that now, but the thought of spending another second in that place was too much to bear.
And now I’m paying the price.
I flip open the toolbox and frown as I examine what I’ve got inside. Not like I know much of what to do with it, anyway...
I reach for my phone, figuring that I’d be better off calling some roadside repair place than trying to deal with all of this myself – but I have no signal out here in the woods. Of course I don’t. I came out here to get away from everything, didn’t I? That includes phone coverage too, I guess...
I sigh as I head off down the road a little, holding my phone high above me in the hopes that I will be able to catch something in the way of a signal. I don’t know how long it will take for someone to get out here and put me out of my car-trouble misery, but I guess I don’t have any choice but to wait. I take another step forward, head tilted back to look up at my phone, and-
And I sprawl forward, my foot catching on a rock and my phone flying out of my hand as I tumble towards the ground.
I cry out, throwing my hands out in front of me to try and brace for the impact, but I land hard, my knees unprotected by the shorts I have on and skinning to a bloody mess. My hands ache, and, when I flip them over to check the damage, I groan when I see that they’re scuffed-up too.
As if today couldn’t get any worse...
I lift my head to figure out exactly where my phone made it to. But, as I scan the area in front of me – I find that there is nothing there.
What?
I look back and forth, searching for the glimmer of metallic under the sun that will give away its location, but nothing catches my eye.Huh.That’s weird. It can’t have gone far. I haven’t exactly got a good throwing arm on me, and the grass is short enough that it would hardly have had time to swallow up the phone just like that.
I’ll head back to the car and find a map, see if there’s somewhere I can go to make a call, and-
And that’s when I see that my phone isn’t the only thing that’s vanished. No, my car seems to have dropped off the face of the earth, too, even though that’s entirely impossible. I stare at the spot where it was just sitting, certain that I must be losing my mind, or that some strange heat-haze mirage must be driving me crazy.
There’s no way that it could have just dissapeared like that, could it? It was sittingrightthere.
As I make my way back towards the spot I last saw it, picking my way slowly as though it will blink back into existence at any second, something else pricks my senses – the smell of the air, the taste of it on my tongue.
