Page 152 of For Better or Hearse

Pulling back, he touches the flower in her hair. “When I saw this,” he rasps, “I knew that I’d waited too long.”

Her breath hitches. “Too long for what?”

“To tell you what you mean to me.”

Emotion clogs her throat. “Nathaniel—”

“Tomorrow, that plane,” he whispers. “It’s not how I lose you.”

Her head spins. Her heart pounds against her sternum. “It’s not?”

“No.” A shudder of a breath shakes out of him. “I don’t want this to end, Ash.”

“You don’t?”

God. Clearly, her brain’s been taken over by a robot who can only ask breathless, inane questions.

He chuckles, presses his forehead to hers. “No. I don’t.”

For a moment, silence.

Fresh tears sting her eyes. Her heart feels too heavy for her body. Her mind works out the kinks, and suddenly, it seems so seamless. Maybe the coconut to the cranium cracked something loose. Sure, she almost died. But it’s more than that. It’s an ache. A bone-deep knowledge that death is always there. That risk is something to be leaped at. Because the end result in life is that time runs out. She has to live while she can. Love while she can.

Love. Nathaniel.

She does.

She loves him with all 206 bones in her body.

“Ash?” he asks, when the silence has gone on too long. His eyes are worried, begging. As if her answer has the power to undo him.

She gasps it out, opening that place inside herself that’s been closed off for so long. “I don’t want it to end either.”

“Thank fuck.” He grasps her arms, skims his hands down them. The grooves of his fingers indent in her flesh, muscle, like he’s terrified she’s already gone.

“But how?” Heart racing, she searches his eyes. “How do we do this?”

His face is intense, as if he’s been planning this. Resolve races through his voice. “I still have two weeks of leave.”

“What about Peru? The backpacking trip?”

“It doesn’t matter anymore.” He cups her face. “The thought of not being with you makes me want to die.”

“So morbid,” she teases.

He chuckles but sobers quickly. “I’ll come back to LA,” he husks. “We’ll figure us out there.”

She thrills.Us. All her stupid emotions shaken and stirred. Real world. They go back to the real world and try this.

All she can do is nod. A hard stab of want, of hope, spears her through the stomach.

“Yes,” she says. She’s unhinged. In the best possible way. “Yes, yes, yes.”

A brilliant grin fills his face. “Monosyllabic sentences are very off brand for you, Bigfoot.”

She laughs. “Shut up.”

And then, expression heated, he’s stepping into her, pulling her against him, cradling her jaw as if they’re the only two people in existence. And for a long second, she wishes it could be like that.