For Better or Hearse

Chapter Forty-Two

B arely two weeks without Nathaniel, and she’s already looney tunes.

After another restless night of sleep, Ash wakes at nine. Changes her clothes and makes a pot of tea. She eats a six-day-old slice of cake for breakfast, because YOLO dumb ways to die, and takes a scalding shower. Then she heads to Augustus’s cottage.

After a lunch of tuna salad sandwiches and chips, Ash cleans the dishes in the sink and rinses them in hot water. She sets the fine china back inside the curio cabinet and dries off her hands.

She needs these moments full of tediousness and monotony. When she’s not with Augustus, she’s preparing A Very Good Death for launch. She met with a lawyer about setting up an LLC and a contract to protect herself and her clients.

Anything to take her mind off Nathaniel. Off why every conversation they have is stilted and awkward. Why it’s been so damn hard to get ahold of him out on the rig. He said he’d have service, a connection, but for the last two days, there’s been radio silence. What if…

Ash swallows back the trepidation rising inside her, grips the countertop tight. Stares out the window at Augustus’s lush backyard.

What if he doesn’t want to talk to her?

Ash growls at herself, wipes down the counters and stove. God, she’s like one of those frontier women perched at the window, waiting for her hero to return from war.

Her anxiety is a riot. She can’t stop overthinking all the ways she ruined what they had. What if he’s realizing she’s a mess he doesn’t want to clean up? What if he’s reconsidering his options? What if he’d rather have the North Sea than her? What if he doesn’t trust her anymore because he believes she doesn’t love him?

The thought has her gasping for air.

Where is her hard shell when she needs it? Her anger? Her spite? All she has in her head anymore is Nathaniel. Brain space, brain waves, he occupies every last bit. She wants him here beside her. Wants to rest her head on his shoulder and inhale his salty sea scent. That hit of calm for her senses. Her heart.

She dissects the argument in her head. What he said. What she said. She wants to apologize. Craves it so badly it’s a soul-deep ache.

She hurt him. It was evident in the look on his face when she said they shouldn’t be together. Blue eyes glassy, shoulders defeated. That sharp jaw moving over and over. Her stomach roils at the memory. At the knowledge that she was the cause of his pain. It breaks her little black heart that they spent their last minutes together arguing when they could have spent them making love or planning their future or threatening bodily harm upon one another.

Most of all, she wishes she could take it all back.

“Ash?” Augustus hovers in the doorway, gripping the frame tightly. Holding himself up. “Chess?”

“I’ll set it up.” She doesn’t want him to struggle with righting the pieces like he did yesterday. “I need the practice.”

Augustus scoffs. “I know charity when I see it, my dear, but like I told Betty White in 1972, I’ll shut up and play along.”

Ash laughs and flicks a towel at him. “Go rest. There’s a recliner with your very fancy name on it.”

Ash sinks into the big green couch. As she sets up the chessboard, Augustus wanders off and prattles around in the kitchen. She sighs and shakes her head. The man won’t sit still. Which is a good thing. He’s strong. He’s not ready to kick it yet.

With dexterous hands, she moves the brown and white pieces. Focusing on the board and the board alone. Because dammit, Nathaniel’s all around her.

The jacket he left here when they had lunch two weeks ago. A notepad full of instructions for his grandfather sits on the coffee table. A new photo framed on Augustus’s wall. The selfie taken of all of them at Rainbow Falls. Right before she pinched Nathaniel’s ass. As he pressed her in close, like he already knew she belonged there. He’s smiling so big and beautiful it makes her chest hurt.

Their time spent together is like the melody of her favorite song. So clear it kills.

“Your pick of poison,” Augustus says, hobbling into the living room. He sets a tray with a pot of tea and small glasses of whiskey on the coffee table.

Ash smiles. “You have a tray too.” It’s identical to Nathaniel’s. Goddamn these men.

He raises his bushy eyebrows as he settles in front of her. “Something on your mind?”

Ash hesitates. She doesn’t want to cross client/employee boundaries with Augustus, although she supposes she’s already in too deep. Cheeks fusing with heat, she says, “Nathaniel and I—we had an argument the night he left. We fixed it, but…” Her voice breaks a little, her heart cracking as well. “I’m worried that I messed up. That he won’t feel the same way about me when he gets home.”

Augustus casts her a wry look. “My dear, in every phone call, you are a topic. How’s Ash? Is Ash planning to maim someone today? He speaks about you so often, I’m afraid he is, what they called back in my day, twitterpated.”

She laughs wetly. Feels just a fraction lighter.

“He’s always been stubborn. A thinker. A wanderer deep down. Most of his adult life, he’s pushed people away because he doesn’t know how to let them in. But with you, he doesn’t fight it. You challenge him. My grandson’s come alive these last few weeks, Ash.” His blue eyes, so like Nathaniel’s, twinkle. “Because of you.”

His words only intensify the guilt, the love in her heart .

“Same.” She tucks her hands between her knees. “He made me feel the same way.”

With a hum, Augustus nods. “Have you tried telling him that?”

She shakes her head. “I tried calling. He didn’t pick up. I just miss him, is all.”

Augustus leans back in his recliner, considering. “I see.”

“I’m sorry.” She sits up straight, willing herself to get a grip. “You’re the one who needs me, and here I am, putting all my bullshit on you.”

A fond smile curves his lips. “You’re not just a person I hired. You’re family, Ash. You’ve given all of us a light to follow. And you’ll give them one after I’m gone.”

She brings a hand to her mouth, like she can steady her trembling lips. “I’ll miss you.”

“It will be great to be missed,” he says. His smile is wide and his eyes are bright. “It will be an honor.”

Ash leans forward. Eyes this incredible man. A man she’s built such a wonderful familiarity with, and says, “You know, I might not be great at this whole love thing, Augustus, but…I love you. Very much.”

“And I love you too, Ash.”

For one long moment, they watch one another, silent. Hope, love, sorrow rising in her chest like the most brilliant sunrise. One she’ll remember forever.

“Now,” Augustus says, flexing his gnarled fingers. “Allow me to kick your ass.”

Her phone rings the minute she reaches for her pawn.

She blinks down at her device. It’s Claire.

She answers.

“Ash?” Claire’s voice trembles, borders on hysterical. “Are you with my father?”

“I am.” Suddenly alert, Ash grips the phone tighter to her ear. “What’s wrong? ”

Claire lets out an unearthly sob. “It’s Nathaniel. Something happened on the rig.”

It’s instantaneous. The disintegration of her heart. Just dust. Disappearing into the ether.

She closes her eyes. “What kind of something?”

“I don’t have many details yet. All I know is there was an accident.”

“Fuck.” She opens her eyes, seeks out Augustus. Her vision blurs. Her hand shakes around the phone. It’s like the death of herself with just one phone call. “Fuck.”

Not him. Not Nathaniel.

Chaos. Mess. For once, it’s not Ash’s.

The Whitford family fills Augustus’s cottage, making it headquarters for Operation Nathaniel Whitford Rescue. They won’t give up until he’s found and brought home.

They came together impossibly fast. Delaney jetting back from France in record time. Tate leaving his studio in downtown LA halfway through his podcast recording. Don and Claire, each on their phones, pace the living room floor. It’d be comedic if the situation wasn’t so terrifying.

Ash’s heart’s stopped a thousand times since they got news that Nathaniel was missing. The audacity of her Very Tall Asshole to make her worry about him.

“He can swim like a shark, dawg,” Tate tells Delaney. Despite his cavalier tone, his face is drawn. “Look on the bright side. At least he’s not in the North Sea.”

Ash, hovering over the table where a map of the California coast lies, glares at him. “Not helpful.”

“Idiot,” Delaney snaps, looking up from her tarot spread. She’s on hands and knees on Augustus’s Moroccan rug. Her lower lip wobbles. “That isn’t funny. ”

Claire hangs up the phone. She’s pale. “I just heard from the coast guard.” Tears roll down her cheeks. “The Sophia Marie collapsed after it was hit by a cargo ship. Most of the rig crumbled. A fire broke out.”

Ash covers her mouth, smothering a scream. She knows, she knows Nathaniel went back. He wouldn’t leave anyone behind. Especially not if there was an accident.

Ash tries out her voice. “Are there any survivors?”

“Two people were rescued from the water,” Claire whispers. Don reaches out to steady her. “Four others are presumed dead.”

Every person in the room gasps in unison.

“They’re taking survivors to Cedars-Sinai.”

Delaney gulps. “We need to go there.”

Tate runs for the keys.

“I’m the one who’s supposed to go first, damn it,” Augustus says, his voice in fissures. “Not my grandson.”

“Sit down,” Ash commands. Gently, she helps him into a recliner.

He obeys, but he curses and grinds a fist against his temple, a sure sign that a migraine’s begun.

Awful. It’s all awful. She’s frozen, helpless. She doesn’t know whether to scream or to fall apart or to put herself to work.

Don speaks, crossing the room. “We have a search and rescue going out.” Though his expression is stoic, there’s the faintest tremor in his voice. “I hired an additional team to help with the search.”

For once she’s thankful for Don’s bluster, his billions. If it finds Nathaniel, if it finds any survivors, she’ll never gently bully the man again.

“If he’s in the water, it’s warm enough, right?” She doesn’t even recognize her voice. High pitched. Shaky. “To survive?”

She looks at Don, and Don looks at her. “I’m not sure,” he says bluntly.

Blood draining from her face, Ash sinks onto the couch and buries her face in her hands. Her shoulders shake. Those fucking thorns around her heart are gone, forever, but right now, she’d do anything to get them back.

To live means death. But she’s not ready to face this life without Nathaniel.

“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.