For Better or Hearse

Chapter Nine

I t’s in the wild blue moonlight of the witching hour that Ash’s thoughts take over. When her anxious brain catches up to her mouth. When she wakes in bed and panics about-slash-ponders life and death and everything in between. That article she read five years ago about the swarm of murder hornets. And where exactly is her birth certificate? Has Jakob stepped on a rusty nail and gotten lockjaw yet? She replays the conversation she had with her mom before she left for Hawaii. When she suggested that maybe Ash should get a job with health insurance benefits so she doesn’t go broke before she’s fifty. How existing in LA while existing with diabetes is like playing Russian roulette with her money. Rent or insulin? Her parents would never say it, of course, but they worry. They care. She knows that, even though she’s thirty-three years old, her mother still logs on to her CGM app to check the spiking trajectory of her blood sugar.

Maybe her life isn’t as together as she tells herself it is. Maybe it never will be.

Ash shoves the thought from her mind. She has this. Her life gripped with both fisted hands. Even if 75 percent of her brain space is taken up by what-ifs, grudges and so many ways to die before a person’s time.

Ash stares at the ceiling, her mind whirling. Inhales. Exhales.

Everything’s okay. Tessie is fine and she is fine and Augustus is fine. They will all live long and beautiful lives.

She pushed Tessie. Pushed her right into the arms of her flannel-clad mountain man. She helps her clients, but she doesn’t know how to help herself .

Sometimes it’s as if she’s still that little twelve-year-old. Newly diagnosed and unsure about everything. Especially herself. She’s an acquired taste, like fernet or oysters. Never fits in. Too weird. She was never all the fishes in the sea. She was the junky thing found in the bottom of a drawer. And that was before her diagnosis. After? Friends didn’t get it. They dropped off, quit calling. Either thought she was weird or got weird about it themselves. Ash learned then that when things got hard, people who love her will let go. So it’s better if she does it first.

She believed that for a long time. And then she met Jakob.

Ash met Jakob, a financial controller at a credit union, at a brewery during horror movie trivia night. On paper, they shouldn’t have worked, but they quickly discovered that they liked the same crappy music, shared a hatred of crowds and had insane chemical bliss. He was like cling-film against her skin; she couldn’t pry him off. Eventually, they moved in together. Got engaged. Ash never thought she’d be planning a wedding, but she was. And she did.

Except she never truly saw Jakob.

What he didn’t do.

What he did do.

He always made her feel like that lonely kid left at the lunch table.

Jakob. Even his name means supplanter and deserter. And he lived up to the moniker. He replaced Ash. With a different woman. A better woman.

Even now, years later, the memory lingers. Stings.

Coming home to find him with another woman. The “fucking hell, Ash,” he bleated in surprise. Like it was her fault she walked in on them. The sight of the woman’s bare ass as she ran from the room. The smell of her honeysuckle perfume.

That night, she got drunk and lit her wedding dress on fire in her bathtub.

She gave back the ring. Tessie helped her move out and wore a boys suck manicure for six months .

She thought she’d be okay. She had survived worse. It was only when Ash found out Jakob had taken the girl on their honeymoon that it was like her world blew up.

After that, she could have starred in a new season of Snapped all on her own. She quit her job, got a new tattoo and blew through her savings to travel the world. Before then, she was certain she wasn’t the kind of woman who’d let a man and a bad breakup make her go AWOL for six months. She was wrong.

Every emotion—betrayal, rage, grief—she went through it at warp fucking speed.

It wasn’t fair. Cheaters like Jakob get to survive. Love again. Fuck another person over again. While their victims have to wear the battle scars. Even all these years later, Ash has guilt that she did something wrong. That she’s a fool because she didn’t see it. That she wasn’t enough .

In the end, it all comes back to that, doesn’t it? That she was too much, too messy.

If not for Tessie, who pulled her back from the pit of a black hole, those thoughts would still eat her alive.

He made you disappear , her cousin said. Come back to us.

So she did.

Tessie and Ash’s mother were relieved. Only now, in hindsight, can she recognize all the times they tentatively broached the subject that Jakob might not be as fucking fabulous as Ash thought. But she never heard them. That’s love.

Obsessive, disgusting denial.

Only her father lived in ignorant man-bliss. He was good to you. He made you laugh, Ash, her father would say, turning a page in his paper, while her mother shot daggers at him from the kitchen. Later, she would pull Ash aside to say, We love him, but your father is an obtuse buffoon.

“He laughed at me,” she told her dad later. “Not with me.”

And she was right.

Jakob didn’t get her. They were a match made in paisley shirt and plaid pants. Absolutely awful. But the worst part was that Ash let him change her. Let him make her feel bad about herself. Let him shame her for the things she wanted.

Slowly, she got her life back together. She focused on jobs she loved. Not what Jakob thought she should do. The wedding objecting, Nathaniel, were casualties of her relationship. Once her vengeful plot twist was satiated, she found her calling as a death doula.

It’s been a long road.

Finally, she’s set her focus on what matters. Her family. Her dreams. Her freedom. She refuses to give her heart to a man ever again. To be anything but herself for anyone else.

Falling in love did nothing but make her look fucking stupid.

Ever since Jakob, her heart has been wrapped in thorns. Stopping it from blooming. Though she wouldn’t get rid of them if she could. She likes those thorns. They cut. They protect.

She doesn’t love Jakob anymore. She’s haunted by him. Because isn’t that what past relationships are? Ghost after ghost after ghost? And what do ghosts do? They haunt. They linger. They freak the fuck out of people when they least expect it.

Once, when Ash was on a New Orleans ghost tour, she was sure she’d seen a ghost. It crossed the room and held for a heartbeat. That glimpse of possibility, and then it was gone. After, she was left wondering if she was crazy for seeing it. If she imagined it.

That’s what love is.

An apparition.

It exists, until it doesn’t.

From the next room over, Augustus snores.

Does Nathaniel snore too? If so, is it as room-shaking as his grandfather’s? Is his preferred method of murder throttling or suffocation by pillow?

Ash sighs. She’s wide awake. The whirring of her brain won’t be silenced. It’s on a tilt-a-whirl ride to anxiety land, and she’s the lone passenger .

Restless, she rises. Checks her phone. Finds a late-night text from Tessie that asks: Lavalier?

That’s a necklace, preggo , she replies. Not a name.

Ash checks her blood sugar and then tiptoes out of her room. Quietly, she slides open the door to the shared balcony. Steps out barefoot into the gaping dark, leaving her darker thoughts behind.

In front of her, the white sand beach is just visible. The salty ocean breeze and tropical flowers are fragrant in the balmy night air. The moon shines with bright uncertainty, illuminating the jagged peaks of Diamond Head.

It’s so unlike LA. No street noise. No sirens. No arguments over parking spots. Except for the crash of waves on the beach, there’s silence.

Ash peers over the balcony at the beach below.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you. For reasons I don’t understand, my grandfather seems to like you.”

At the grating voice, she tips her head back, groaning. She can’t escape him.

In the dim light, she squints. Finds Nathaniel. He sits in a deck chair, clad in gray sweatpants and a black T-shirt.

“Lurking in the dark?” Why is she not surprised he blends in so perfectly with the shadows?

“It took you long enough,” he says dryly, rising, “to realize you weren’t alone out here.”

She arches a brow. “Planning your attack?”

He laughs, a husky, calm sound. “Not yet.”

“We’re on the same sleeping schedule.” She bats her eyes at him. “This could get messy.”

He grunts unhappily.

Angling forward, she rests her forearms on the railing. “You know, I was just lying in bed thinking about how you owe me a coconut.”

“Saved your fingers from a massacre. You can thank me later for that. ”

She snorts. His doctor’s ego knows no bounds.

“That’s Diamond Head crater,” he offers, appearing at her side.

She stiffens as he grasps the railing and looks out into the dark. She looks straight ahead, telling herself not to think about how their elbows are touching, how she can feel the scorching heat from his tall asshole of a body. “We’re hiking it tomorrow.”

“Wonderful. More exercise.” Ash’s gaze abandons Nathaniel and finds the moonlit beach. “Did you know Hawaii’s a hotspot for suicide tourism?”

He turns, mouth agape, and blinks at her.

“It’s the charm about Hawaii.” Her smile is feline. “Every place has a dark side.”

Pinching the bridge of his nose like he’s pained, Nathaniel sighs. “How did you get so weird?”

She laughs, unoffended. “My mom’s a flight attendant. My father’s an accountant. Instead of forcing me to play sports, they let me be me, and now I’m this person who has no talent or ambition. All I do is float through life like an unsatisfied wraith.”

“That’s not how I pegged you.”

“Oh? Do tell. I’m afraid I won’t be able to live my life until Nathaniel Whitford tells me what he thinks of me.”

Nathaniel lets out a soft laugh. “I’m still forming a consensus.”

Without looking over, Ash says, “While you do that, there’s this lighthouse in Kauai. It’s supposed to be haunted by ancient spirits.”

“Haunted lighthouse, noted.”

Finally, she glances over at him. Takes in his strong jaw, those stern brows. “I went to the Paris catacombs when I was fifteen. Changed my life.”

His eyes snag on hers, his mouth curving into something like a grin. “I can see how those skulls would have an impact.”

“When I was ten, I was so unhinged about Jack the Ripper and Lizzie Borden that my mom had to go to a parent-teacher conference about it. ”

His jaw tightens with tension, and he shifts, straightening up. “I don’t think my father’s ever been to a parent-teacher conference.”

“What about your mom?” Ash asks, tilting her head. “She seems like she misses you.”

His face closes up like he’s sorry he’s overshared. “Work keeps me away from civilization,” he says, his voice low, gravelly.

“Does it get lonely? Being out on the high seas?”

He looks out at Diamond Head. In the blue moonlight, the angles of his face are almost exaggerated. The sharp jawline. Lush full lips. The crooked bridge of his nose.

Lust rushes through her. Flips her stomach over in a wild sort of hunger.

Shit. She looks away.

When he speaks, the words are lighter than she anticipated. “Nothing a pirate can’t handle.”

Ash bites her lip. Searches for a fitting response. Miraculously, they’ve been having a civil conversation for at least four minutes. A world record.

Before she can say anything, Nathaniel’s striding toward his balcony door.

“Make sure you don’t freeze to death,” he warns. With a hand on the doorknob, he gives her a once-over.

Ash smirks. “You wish.”

A quiet snort. He steps into his room and disappears.

Left alone in the balmy night air, Ash wraps her arms around herself, willing that funny feeling in her stomach to dissipate.

But even long after she’s gone back to bed, it lingers.