Chapter 5
Carly
She approached the closed casket and drummed her fingers across the sleek top of it. “Good morning,” she said. “Quick story
is that I rescued a puppy. Named it Apple. You’d like him.”
The office door swung open and thwacked the wall, which meant Shireen was on the move. Usually, Carly spent a little more
time with her dad, but if she waited too long, she might accidentally see Adam again. Now was her chance. “See you next loop.” She gave two taps to the top of the coffin, then shot down the aisle.
Carly came to the hallway and followed Shireen closely. As Shireen swung open the front door to the funeral home, Carly snuck
through and walked out onto the gravel driveway. Her clunky Doc Marten boots scattered the rocks as she headed toward the
road. She’d done it. She managed to avoid Adam.
“What are you doing?”
Or had she? She instinctively looked back to where Adam stood, glaring like an angry gargoyle from the door. Maybe he was still mad about last night. Admittedly, Carly had felt a twinge of shame for gloating over his misfortune.
Now, though? She was focused on getting to town so she could go about her day. Being the mature adult she was, Carly did the
only thing she could think of to get him to leave her alone forever. She stuck out her tongue. The look on his face—shock
and horror—made her day.
“Hey!” Adam shouted back.
But Carly rolled her eyes and refocused on getting out of the parking lot. She’d only taken a couple of steps when something
hit her from behind. She fell to the ground with an oomph and realized that she was being flattened. Being run over by a car did not feel the way she would’ve imagined. Less instantaneous,
more lingering. Rocks from the gravel driveway pierced her arms and she shrank against the sharpness of them.
“What the fuck?” Shireen’s voice called out.
Carly opened one eye, then both, and that was when she realized the pressure on top of her wasn’t a car, but Adam. From the
corner of her vision, she spied his blue button-down, the skin of his neck and a sliver of his chin. She wriggled against
him to try to get up, but was seized with pain.
“Adam?” Shireen’s stern tone made Carly freeze. “Do you want me to accidentally kill you? My car has backup cameras. And you’d
reset anyway.”
“Carly tried to throw herself behind your car.” His words came out ragged as he pushed himself off.
Ohhhhhh. Wait. Was that what Adam had yelled at her about? Wouldn’t, “You’re about to be run over by a car!” have been the better option?
“I didn’t—” Carly started to say, but then more searing pain flashed across her back.
“And you thought you’d what? Save her?” Shireen planted her hands on her hips.
Carly understood on a very hidden level that what he’d done was a misguided selfless act, but judging by the look on Shireen’s
face, she wasn’t impressed.
“Didn’t seem right to watch her off herself,” he said.
Shireen finally spoke to Carly. “Are you going to just lie there until I actually run you over?”
Carly tried to move, but the moment she did her body seized. “Ow, ow.” The words barely came out and her eyes filled with
tears.
“I think you threw your back out,” Adam gently said.
“Because you tackled me,” Carly hissed.
“To save you,” Adam quickly clarified.
Shireen muttered, “That’s just fucking great.”
Carly’s dad had thrown his back out on occasion—years as a camera operator had worked their magic. Each of those times involved
her dad lying on the floor and unable to move. But Carly was face down in a gravel parking lot . . . How was this going to
work?
“Stay still,” Adam said. “I have some pain relievers in the office.”
Carly should’ve been surprised by the earnest tone, but she was in too much pain to react. She pursed her lips as a way of
saying, Okay, and Adam quickly headed for the funeral home.
With only the sound of Shireen’s shoes kicking pebbles, Carly added, “Sorry. I didn’t notice your car backing up. I was just
trying to get away from him.”
“You and me both.” Shireen scratched a spot on her forehead.
Carly almost felt sorry for Adam, but she felt worse for Shireen, who was now spending additional time with the ex who sometimes went out of his way to make digs at her expense. “You don’t have to stay,” Carly offered.
And while she’d sort of meant those words, she was a little surprised when Shireen quickly answered, “Okay.”
And even more dumbfounded when Shireen got in the car and pulled it forward over the bumper and across the grass, like Carly
was on fire and she had to escape.
Which is how Carly found herself alone in the parking lot of a funeral home, as unable to move as everyone else in the nearby
cemetery. Which made her think of her dad, something she absolutely didn’t want to do.
Things couldn’t get worse.
Except, apparently, they could. Adam’s footsteps crunched toward her. She pinched her eyes closed. Now she was stranded in
a parking lot, in pain, and the only person who could help was this guy.
“Shireen left?” he asked.
“You can go, too. I’m fine,” she said. “In a few hours, I’ll reset and the loop will fix everything.”
She hoped he would speed off, but then his steps closed in. She supposed this six-foot-whatever person should be intimidating,
but as Adam crouched down his expression was confusingly kind.
“Despite what you might think of me, which I’m coming to realize isn’t much, I’m not the type to just leave someone who is
clearly hurt.” His fingertips tenderly brushed a small rock from her cheek. “Even if that someone sicked a dog on me only
hours ago.”
Carly glanced down then, sure her cheeks had flooded pink from embarrassment. Unlike Adam, she didn’t relish being rude. He
just happened to bring that side out of her.
“I’m going to turn you onto your side and lift your head.” He carefully slipped his palm under Carly’s head and gently lifted her. As he eased her shoulder up, she turned so that she was on her side. He handed her two pills and a cup of water, and she swallowed them down.
“Thank you,” Carly said. “What are they?”
“Vicodin. My dad has a bad back. He always keeps these in his desk.”
A long section of Adam’s blazing red hair fell across his face, and Carly itched to tuck it behind his ear.
As if reading her thoughts, he swiped the hair back and revealed the line of his cheekbone. “Were you . . . I mean, was that
on purpose? Were you trying to hurt yourself?”
“No,” she said, maybe sounding a touch defensive.
“Okay.” It was clear Adam didn’t believe her. “Well, you know you can’t kill yourself, right? Because everyone has tried at some point already.”
“I don’t need you to mansplain how the loop works. I know I’d just reset.” No one died in the loop. If they tried to disappear,
they just reappeared in the next one. Still, out of all the ways Carly attempted to escape, death hadn’t been one of them.
Adam sat cross-legged next to her. “Okay then, if you could not run behind Shireen’s car again, I’d appreciate it.”
“Reminder that you were the one who tackled me to the ground and screwed up my back. So now I’m in massive pain and stuck here. But now that
I know it’s a big problem for you . . .” Carly let out a breath. She wasn’t sure if she was at fault for inconveniencing him, or if he was for every word coming
out of his mouth.
The next words out of Adam, though, were unexpected. “What happens if you need to pee?”
“Excuse me?” She squinted at him.
“We can’t stay here all day. Eventually, we’ll need food and water and . . .”
“To pee,” she added quickly, because she sensed he was easily embarrassed. Sure enough, a flush crept up those dangerous cheekbones of his.
“Yes, that.” Adam looked away.
She put her free hand on her hip, as if to emphasize she was capable of moving. “Eventually, the painkillers will do their
thing, and I’ll get up to . . . pee, etcetera.”
“And I’ll just wait until you can do that.”
“These rocks are surprisingly comfortable,” Carly said. “I could take an all-day nap right here.”
“I bet. The one digging into the side of your eyebrow looks particularly soft.”
She didn’t care for his smile. It was unnerving, like seeing a dog walk on its hind legs—unnatural and forced.
“You’re not going to stay with me,” Carly replied.
Adam raised a brow. “Oh, I absolutely am, if only because I can tell that really annoys you.”
Her mouth fell open. “I don’t want you here.”
“I don’t want you to be pecked to death by hungry buzzards, so we’re at an impasse.” He stood with the kind of ease she could
only dream of in that moment. “Be back.”
Carly gripped a handful of stones in her fists and squeezed. Hard. Maybe the loop wasn’t a state of limbo, but actual hell.
As if sensing her need for a release, the pain meds kicked in and she felt altogether light and woozy. When Adam returned,
he pushed a navy wheelchair.
“This feels a lot like a horror film,” she said. Though, perhaps because of the medication, she wasn’t as frightened as one should be when their enemy was wheeling a chair toward them.
“I know what you mean. Hearing you complain all day already feels like knives in my ears.” He came to a stop next to her and
brightly said, “I’m going to lift you onto this.”
Adam was proud of his little idea, that much was clear, but Carly wasn’t going to give him a win so easily.
In order to get into the chair, she’d have to move.
“Do funeral directors have the upper body strength to lift thirty-something-year-old women?” She eyed his button-down shirt as if to say, I don’t see anything impressive hiding under there.
“I go to the gym every morning before work. Or, I used to.” The bastard’s smile widened. Then he added, “Lifting you will
be nothing.”
She swallowed. “If you hurt me, then I get to do something in retaliation. Like, hand you over to the Swifties so they can
use your limbs as friendship bracelet holders.”
“Weirdo.” His face was genuinely disgusted, which made her happy.