Page 176 of For Better or Hearse
“Ash.”
Sniffling, she looks up. Don stands above her, holding out a glass of whiskey. She wipes her face with trembling fingers.
Ash gives him a wobbly smile. Accepts the glass. “Thanks.” With that, she swallows it in one long gulp. Savors the sting. Anything to take away the panic. To keep her from thinking the worst. She’s doing her best not to imagine Nathaniel unconscious, horribly injured. Lost in the ocean. Burned alive.
Eyes closed, she sends out an SOS to the heavens. To whatever or whoever is up there to hear her plea.
Let the water be warm. Let him not be lost. Let him be so, so very lucky. Let her be bashed with a coconut a thousand times over. Let her pillow always be hot and her socks always slip off her feet. Anything. She’ll give up anything and everything if he’s just okay. Please let him be okay.
He absolutely cannot be at the bottom of Davy Jones’s locker right now. She won’t allow it. The only one who kills Nathaniel is her.
Death has always lingered in the margins of her life. Her aunt, Tessie, her diabetes, made her more comfortable with death than she should be. It’s a part of life she’s supposed to come to terms with in her career as a death doula. But now…
It’s too close. Nathaniel could be gone.
This is the real world, Ash. She takes a deep breath. Life is full of pain and panic and heartbreak and death. And yet, if it’s with Nathaniel, she’d take it on always, forever.
It’s all so clear. How much she loves him.
She used to believe it cost too much to love. But it doesn’t. It costs too much not to take risks. For so many years, she was anti-love. So against it that she objected to weddings for a living.
Love almost broke her. But Nathaniel makes taking the risk easy. Worth it.
There’s no end to what she feels for him. She knows that now.
Memories, so many memories, threaten to take her down.
Nathaniel carrying her off that rock ledge, long talks on the beach. His lips against hers beneath the waterfall. The way he saved her when she didn’t know how to save herself, checking her blood sugar at midnight and never making her feel like a burden. The luau that last night in Hawaii, heated eyes dark as he leaned in to adjust the orchid in her hair. The glow of his face in the sunlight when he tucked her into his body on that beach and told her he wouldn’t lose her.
Ash closes her eyes.
God, she loves him.
She has never loved anyone more on the earth than her Very Tall Asshole.
He has to still exist. On this earth. On this planet. In her universe. Because there is no world in which she wants to exist without the Very Tall Asshole that is Nathaniel Whitford.
Ash rests a hand over her hammering heart. Its beat fills her fingertips.
She would feel him, right? She would feel if he was gone. Far from her.
Truth?she asks her heart. But all she gets is silence.
Ash wakes to the scream of her CGM alarm. Blearily, she reaches for her phone, sandwiched between her right hip and the couch cushion. After checking the reading, she silences it.
It takes all her effort to drag herself to the kitchen for a glass of juice. At five a.m., and after yesterday, her blood’s the last thing she cares about. Even if Nathaniel’s stern voice sounds in her head, telling her to take care of herself.
She stands at the sink. Numbly, she drinks her juice. Augustus’s house is a cavernous type of quiet. The silence is matched only by the rush of blood in her ears. The glow outside, the rising sun, feels like a taunt. A new beginning, a new morning, but does it matter?
All the Whitfords—with the exception of Augustus—are at the hospital waiting for word on Nathaniel. It kills her to not be there, but Delaney’s promised to send updates. Ash’s duty is to Augustus. Nathaniel would understand. He’d want her here.
Her heart balloons when her phone rings.The hospital?
Then slowly deflates.
It’s Tessie.
Ash picks the FaceTime call up quickly, not wanting to wake Augustus.