Why Does The Protagonist Take A Detour In Detour?

Danielle Harris is the daughter of an overprotective police chief and has led a sheltered life. As a kindergarten teacher, she’s as far removed from the world of Harleys and bikers as you could get, but when she’s rescued by the sexy and dangerous Austin Carver, her life is changed forever. Although Austin ‘Booker’ Carver is enamored by the innocent Dani, he tries to keep the police chief’s daughter at arm’s length. But when a threat is made from an unexpected source, he finds himself falling hard and fast for the only woman who can tame his wild heart. Will Booker be able to find the source of the threat before it’s too late? Will Dani finally give her heart to a man who’s everything she’s been warned about?

By the seventh year of my engagement to Tristan, he postponed our wedding for the third time. The reason was simple. His childhood sweetheart, Gabriella, had returned to the country. She had just gone through a divorce and was emotionally unstable. Tristan personally retrieved every invitation we had sent out, his tone calm and steady. "Gabby has no one by her side right now. I can't upset her at a time like this." I held the ring that had already been resized twice and asked, "What about me?" Tristan glanced at me. "You're different. You're sensible." I had been hearing that word for seven years. Sensible. When his startup failed, I sold the old house my grandmother had left me to help him pay off his debts. When he suffered a gastric hemorrhage, I stayed at the hospital for three days straight and missed my own promotion defense. When his mother said my background was too ordinary for him, he only rubbed his temples and said, "Tori, don't make this difficult for me." Every time, I nodded. He once told me that no matter how thick the fog became, he would always leave a light on for me. Until the day Gabriella stood in front of the mirror wearing my wedding dress and smiled as she asked, "Victoria, you don't mind, do you? Tristan said your wedding's being postponed anyway." Tristan stood behind her. He did not deny it. He even reached out and adjusted her veil for her. The fog lamp he had given me with his own hands sat by the display window of the bridal shop. It was still lit, illuminating someone else in the white dress I had waited seven years to wear. Only then did I realize that some roads were not lost because the fog was too thick. It was because he had never planned to come for me at all.

A blizzard had buried the mountain, turning every road into a death trap. Locals called it Deadman's Pass—seventy-two icy switchbacks with zero room for error. As the only person who had ever made it through without a scratch, I'd just gotten a million-dollar rescue call from beyond the final curve. Ten years ago, I went there once. My seventeen-year-old daughter, Maya, was skydiving with her classmates when a violent air current forced an emergency landing. The rescue came too late. She died there. Later, I learned my husband, Jayden Boone, had ignored Maya's safety. He poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into the rescue effort and redirected every team to save his ex's daughter instead. The girl had only sprained her ankle on a hiking trip. The day Maya died, I walked away from my career as a professor and stayed here, living as a broke driver. I risked my life running Deadman's Pass again and again until I knew every turn by heart. In the ten years since, no one else had died on that road. Today, a friend shoved a million-dollar rescue job in front of me and told me to leave right away. I looked at the face in the photo—the one I could never forget. Then I smiled and tossed my keys onto the table. "I can't take this job."

At the World Rally Championship Final, my fiancee, Brielle Fuller, deliberately gave me the wrong turn call. Because of her, I lost the championship. Right there on the spot, she called off our engagement and ran straight into the arms of my rival, Chase Monroe. Just when I thought I'd lost everything, my childhood friend, Naomi Sutton, proposed to me. "It's okay. To me, you'll always be number one." Seven years later, I rebuilt my career and fought my way back to the top. Just as I was preparing to break Chase's championship record, a brake failure sent my car plunging off a mountainside. While drifting in and out of consciousness at the hospital, I overheard a conversation outside my room. "You're ruthless. You actually did something like this. Weren't you afraid he might die?" "If he dies, so be it. The only person I've ever loved is Chase. I only regret that you married him before I could. Otherwise I wouldn't have had to put myself through that all these years." I stared wide-eyed into the darkness. The love I thought was so deep was nothing more than wishful thinking. If they cared so much about Chase, then maybe I should disappear.

The day before the race, I burned my car and announced my withdrawal. Overnight, my fanbase collapsed. Supporters unfollowed in droves, and casual fans turned on me just as viciously. Jasper, the man who had always treated me as his only real rival, put on a show of false concern. “Without him, the race feels too lonely. No matter what, I still hope he’ll return to the track and face me properly.” I sneered. In my previous life, the racecar I had painstakingly modified ended up identical to his. No matter how many videos I released of full recordings of every step I personally took, all Jasper had to do was tearfully tell his fans, “Then let Finn use it. He needs it more than I do. I’ll win on my own strength.” And just like that, I became the shameless thief in everyone’s eyes. Later, the moment I started my car, the components inside exploded, and I was left in a vegetative state. His fans called it karma. Even on the day my fiancée pulled out my oxygen tube and watched me die, I still couldn’t understand. Why had everything that belonged to me—my career, my girlfriend—all become Jasper’s? When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day the race schedule was first announced.

Gia Rowan was diagnosed with a terminal illness in the second year after the death of her husband. She prepared to donate everything she had built to charity, but the will of her late husband shattered her world. Her late husband had left everything he owned to his twenty-eight-year-old illegitimate son, including half of her company. She and her husband remained childless for thirty years. The mother mentioned in his will was not her, but it was Cecelia Warren instead. Betrayal struck her, and in the haze of despair, she lost consciousness. She opened her eyes again to find herself back in the third year of her marriage. With the truth in hand, she had a new chance to choose differently.