You can read The Man Who Saved Me free below.
Blurb:
A BBW, Black woman White man romance novel. Shonali’s life is changed forever when an accident on her bike leads to Dr. Adam Catten stepping in as her savior. Overflowing with gratitude, the plus-size beauty barely has time to articulate her feelings before Adam departs for a mission with Doctors Without Borders.
Never in her life did she expect to see him again! It’s been four years, and Shonali thought she had long moved on from her encounter with Adam… But when they suddenly meet again old sparks rekindle, throwing them into the romance Shonali had only ever imagined.
Yet as their relationship deepens, Adam’s insecurity causes him to suddenly leave for Uganda for work, leaving Shonali to mend her shattered heart and close the door on love. Is this the end of their story? Or could fate have another twist in store to reignite their bond? Get answers in this interracial romance book by Ellie Etienne.
Chapter 1
The sheets shifted, tangling around her as if they were holding her down, keeping her pinned.
They felt like invisible ropes to her as, even in her dreams, she struggled to escape from the inevitability of it all.
She knew what was going to happen, but she could never be resigned to it.
It always happened so fast, and yet so slowly, as if it went frame by frame, played by a projector that was far too slow. It always happened to somebody else, and to herself, at the same time. She always watched it, saw the horror of it, and felt it, too.
Red – that was her overriding impression. Everything was red. The light, the monster that was about to mow her down, the blood that flowed so freely from her that she wondered how anybody could survive it.
She was riding red, too. She had been.
Could she have done anything differently? Even in her dream, as she struggled so surface from that red nightmare, she asked herself that and came up short as she usually did.
Even the sound of the screaming ambulance seemed to be red. Maybe the light shouldn’t have been red, but it flashed red in her eyes. As she watched, and she felt it, all over again.
The blessed darkness that beckoned her was comforting. But she couldn’t go to it. She was being called back, yanked back ruthlessly and the world stayed red.
Not the scarlet of her favorite jacket, not the crimson of the boots she’d wanted to buy, not the comforting depth of the wine she’d been saving for a special occasion.
It was all red, like blood, because everything was bathed in blood.
Especially herself.
With a gasp, she pulled herself out of it and her eyes sprang open.
“I’m Shonali Wilde. I survived.”
She whispered the words to herself, over and over again, until her heart felt like it had slowed down to a steady trot instead of the mad gallop that had felt like it might carry her away to a place from where she could never find her way back.
She had survived. She had done better than just survive.
But now, the sheets were soaked again, as was the T-shirt she was sleeping in.
Well, the T-shirt she had been sleeping in, because there obviously wouldn’t be more sleep for her that night.
Shonali glanced out the window and saw that dawn was breaking. The sky wasn’t red; it was bleeding pinks that comforted.
She got up and walked to the window, determined to leave those nightmares behind. It had been a while since she’d had one. Maybe she had been caught off guard, because it had affected her more than it should have.
Shonali reached up to push the light green curtains out of the way, and saw that her hands were still trembling.
Breathe, she told herself, and focused on the light, and her own breathing. She counted them off, until she saw that her hands had stopped shivering. Well, mostly.
The light had turned golden. She could see the scars on her left hand now.
She noticed them rarely, really. She’d gotten used to them. They were a part of her now, and she could accept that.
But now, the paler streaks on her rich, coffee-toned skin seemed to stand out as if they didn’t belong.
She could close her eyes and still see the shape they made across her fingers, across her knuckles. Sometimes, she thought they looked like a web of some kind. When she wasn’t feeling so fanciful, they were just scars, and now faded enough to escape notice most of the time.
She had more on her body, but she wasn’t ashamed of them.
Most of the time.
She had survived. The scars showed that she had been strong enough to survive when it had been tempting to just give up and fade away into welcoming darkness.
No. Shonali made herself focus on the sun breaking through the clouds, promising new beginnings in that crisp winter air. It was cold, but Shonali didn’t usually mind that.
A twinge in her left leg reminded her that there were parts of her that did mind the cold. At least, the rain that seemed to come with the January cold in San Francisco. Her leg always reminded her that she wasn’t as she used to be.
But it also reminded her that she was alive, strong, and a survivor.
It reminded her, always, of the man she was convinced was responsible for her relatively hale and hearty body.
All of that blood… Sometimes she wondered how doctors managed to work through it. It was probably just part of the job, after a while. It had to be, didn’t it? How could you possibly survive if it gave you red nightmares, all the time?
But he had pretty much put her left hip and leg back together. She would forever be grateful to him for that.
Adam Catten, the man who had made sure she could walk again. And ride again, though it had taken some time before she could make herself do that.
Even if she’d known that it hadn’t been her carelessness that had caused all of it.
Maybe especially because she knew that. Being on a bike meant, too often, that your safety was out of your hands. You could do everything right and still end up nearly dead, as she had.
She hadn’t run the red light. The distracted man in the red Mustang had run the red light, and he’d gotten away with a few bumps and bruises. Of course, his Mustang had been damaged. That probably made him hurt a bit.
Shonali did take some petty satisfaction from that. She figured she was pretty much entitled to.
Why not?
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But from the day she’d woken up and had been in her right mind, she’d wanted to thank Adam Catten.
She hadn’t been able to. He’d left, and others had helped her.
She was grateful to them, too, of course. They had all helped her. But Adam had been the one to save her, and save her leg. She’d been told, later, that there had been some talk of amputation.
Shonali was fairly sure that she could’ve lived a good life even if she’d had to have an amputation.
But she was very grateful that she hadn’t had to, and the man who’d made sure of that deserved to be thanked, and properly.