Beg her to forgive me the way I was willing to forgive her.
Fuck it.
I was just going to go over there. Talk it out the way we should have earlier.
I spun and took one step back down the hall, before I froze. Something cold skated down my spine, caught up by nothing but the feeling I got when I saw the burn of lights gleaming from the gap at the bottom of the bathroom door.
Breaths short, I inched forward. I stilled, before I slowly turned the knob and pushed open the door.
Stark white light blazed from above.
My heart stopped and my stomach turned.
Blood.
Splatters.
Handprints.
Smears.
Grief, horror, and shock.
Her body was twisted at an odd angle, cuts lashed open in every direction on her wrists, an empty bottle of pills tipped over on its side next to her bloodied hand.
No.
A bottled sob worked its way out, and I slowly dropped to my knees beside her.
“No. Anna, no,” I whispered, before it wound its way into a wail.
I gathered her in my arms, rocked her and rocked her while I begged and pled.
“No.”
Body cold. Face ashen.
“No. Anna, no. God, please, no.”
Willow wept, struggling to get away. I fought to hold her closer.
“How could you? She needed you. Oh my God. She needed you. She was sick. She was sick.”
“I’m so fucking sorry. If you knew how sorry I was.”
“She was sick,” Willow begged again, slumping back down. Grief pressed down around us. Fuck. I wanted to end it all, but I opened my mouth and gave her the last of her sister’s story.
I sat in the hard, plastic chair in the waiting room, fingers trembling as I continuously folded and unfolded the note Anna had scribbled and left on the floor. As if by doing so, the confession pressed into the blood-stained paper might change.
I’m so sorry. I never wanted to be this person. But I can’t stop her, and I’m too scared to do this alone. What if I passed it on? That thought? That possibility? It hurts too much. Please forgive me. I need to be free.
The words coiled with my being like a foul, incurable disease, the possibility taunting me from every angle.
She hadn’t been lying.
I’d known it in that fleeting second I’d found her lying on the floor and pulled her into my arms. I’d tasted her fear. Felt her sorrow. It was like I could almost reach out and touch the loss.
“Mr. Evans?” a woman asked.
I looked up with a nod.
She sat down beside me. “I’m Dr. Kirklen.”
I could barely swallow, because what she was getting ready to tell me was already written in her eyes.
“She’s gone?” Grief. Saying it was utter fucking grief.
“I’m sorry. She went into cardiac arrest. Between the overdose and the blood loss, we couldn’t get her back. We did everything we could.”
It didn’t matter that I already knew, sorrow plowed through me.
Blades and ice and fire.
Destroyed.
“The baby?” I could barely croak it out.
She touched my forearm. “The pregnancy was positive.”
I blinked, completely numb and in agony at the same time.
I had been going to be a dad. Fuck. I had been going to be a dad. Something I’d never even wanted until the possibility was taken away.
I rammed the heels of my hands into my eyes.
Me.
All of it was on me.
“They told me her name was different on her insurance card. I realized then she’d come to LA and changed her name. Desperate to become someone else. Thinking she was chasing her dreams and she might find them there. I didn’t want to know, Willow. I didn’t want to know who she was other than that girl I’d fallen in love with. I wanted to erase the rest. So like a coward, I tucked the letter she’d written back into her box and left it. Then I ran.”
I’d been running ever since.
Frantic, I jabbed at the elevator button. Desperate to run because there wasn’t anything here left for me.
The heavy metal doors closed and the emptiness swelled.
As soon as the elevator landed me on the first floor, I flew out. With each thundering step, I felt a piece of me getting left behind.
The pieces Anna had revealed because all of them belonged to her.
The love.
The loyalty.
The compassion.
Not one of them had been enough. Because I wasn’t enough. I was too reckless. Lived too fast.
Thoughts of a child I wouldn’t ever get to know overwhelmed me.
The possibilities that never had a chance.
Was it insane I loved someone I didn’t even know?
Never fucking again.
I couldn’t.
Not when I couldn’t be trusted to stay.
I sped up, letting the hold she had on me rip and rend and tear at my back. I was almost at a sprint when I aimed my escape on the glass sliding doors.
Could feel myself being cracked open wide. Splintered.
I had the sudden urge to turn my head as I was flying out the door. My gaze tangled with big, chocolate eyes. I recognized the agony in their search. Like this girl was as desperate to get inside as I was to get out.
I jerked my attention away, not wanting to process anyone else’s pain.
Because I’d never again hold a fragile heart in my hands.
Not when the only thing I would do was crush it in my grip.
The familiarity. It was her. My Peaches.
Willow was completely slack in my hold, gutted.
Shame howled through my spirit as I finished the story I’d been too much of a coward to tell.
Both that day I’d taken off from the hospital and left her and her mom with all the questions they’d deserved answered and the day when that familiarity I’d seen in Willow had finally caught up to me.
The question was, just what was it I had recognized?
Because the second I’d left that hospital, for the next seven years, I’d chosen the easy route. Refusing to ever get too close. Living for the kind of joy I could find.
Until I’d collided with Willow Langston.
Heart first.
“She was sick, Ash. She was sick.”
“I swear to you, I didn’t know the extent of it. Not until it was too late,” I murmured at the top of her head.
“I can’t…” She unwound herself from my arms, climbed to her feet, and I did the same, wanting to wrap her back up and knowing I didn’t have the right.
She turned away like she couldn’t bear to look at me.
That right there? That was why I’d done what I’d done. Hidden it. Pretended some more. Pretended like I didn’t love her when I knew in my gut I could never really have her.
I could feel the quiver that rolled through her body, the pain that laced the accusation. “You knew…when you slept with me today.”
My tone was quiet and pleading. “Willow.”
Her lips trembled. “You know…somehow I already knew when I got to the hospital she was gone. My mom and I, we’d already been on our way, going there to bring her back because we knew she was spiraling.”
Every cell in my body constricted with grief. Grief for her. Grief for Anna. For Willow’s Summer.
She turned her attention to the ceiling. “They took us in this room, sat us down and told us, and gave us the box and said the man who’d come in with her had left it.”
She looked back at me. “I hated that man.” The words turned into a hushed whisper. “I hated the man who’d gotten her pregnant then left her. The one who hadn’t taken care of her. The one who was too much a coward to even wait for us to get there to tell us what happened.”
Her body quaked. “Did you know she was terrified of being a mom? Terrified she’d pass her sickness on? She told me she’d l
eave that for me. The messy part, she’d tease, because she knew she couldn’t take the risk. But she promised she’d be the greatest auntie in the world.”
“Me,” I told her. Just like I’d told her that night. I was responsible. All of it…it was on me.
She wiped her palm over her wet face. “I need you to go.”
Panic seized my heart. “Willow.”
She squeezed her eyes closed. “Please…just go.”
I dropped my head, nodded slow as I accepted this cruel, sick fate, before I crossed back to the door. I hesitated there, before I gathered the courage to look back, wishing I’d had it all along. I smiled at her. Softly. Sadly.
“It wasn’t pretend, Peaches.” I touched my chest. “You can’t fake this.”
“No…but I can’t live in my sister’s shadow.”
I wanted to argue it. But I wondered if she and I had been living in her sister’s shadow all along.
thirty-six
Willow
The door quietly clicked shut behind him.
I collapsed to the floor. Grief consumed me, agony spreading like a slow, splintering crack as I gathered the pictures to my chest.
I hugged them. A bitter, beautiful treasure I could hardly bear.
Summer smiled back from the stolen moments. Joy and inhibition. Her vibrancy spilled from the glossy sheets, as if she still held the power to command the room. The way she always had.
Wrapped around her was the man I loved. With all of me. Heart. Body. Soul. Forever.
I slumped forward and wept.
Crushed by grief.
Swallowed by sorrow.
Weak.
Silence hung like a shroud in the extra room upstairs. I sat in an antique rocker staring out the window. It was the room where I kept all the memories I couldn’t endure seeing each day, so I’d steal in here when I wanted to get close to everything I’d lost.
A late summer rain poured it’s fury on my backyard. Entranced, I watched as it pelted the roof of the small workshop where I’d fully fallen.
Because falling with Ash Evans had been worth the risk.
Days had passed in a blur as I struggled through a heartbreak more intense than I’d ever experienced. The loss of Ash. The anguish of Summer.
The problem was I couldn’t tell if they were one in the same.
Memories of my sister swam through my mind.
“Ring around the rosy
A pocketful of posies
Ashes, Ashes
We all fall down”
Willow and Summer toppled in a pile to the ground, their giggles mounting toward the sky.
Summer linked her pinky with Willow’s. Her sister smiled. “Willow and Summer forever.”
Willow grinned. “Forever and ever.”
Sorrow clawed through my being. For years, I’d wanted to track down the man who I’d believed abandoned her. Accuse and demand. But somewhere inside, after listening to his story, after hearing his regret, I knew his love for her had been just as helpless as mine. That the picture I’d conjured in my mind had been all wrong. Even after I’d done everything I could, it still wasn’t enough to save her from herself. And I had to believe that same truth applied to Ash.
Pain intensified. Gripping me everywhere.
Because that hurt, too.
So much.
His love for her.
Did that make me a horrible person?
Summer ran through the tall grasses, wild locks of black hair flying around her smiling face as she turned to look over her shoulder. Willow followed her sister’s lead, the way she always did, running down the embankment toward the deep, swollen creek hidden in the bank of trees. Summer jumped in with all her clothes, sinking under, two seconds later shooting up through the water. Her laughter danced through the warm air. She flung her arms above her head.
“It feels amazing, Will. Don’t hold back. Don’t ever forget what Mama said. The world’s waiting for you.”
Willow hesitated, wishing she were more like her sister, before she squeezed her eyes closed and jumped in.
But that was the thing about Summer and me. I’d always watched the world with caution while she’d taken it head on, until that world she’d wanted to embrace had slowly tumbled down around her. When the fear had set in.
Willow brushed the tears from beneath her sister’s eyes, and Summer clung to her, sobbing at her chest. “It’s not supposed to be like this, Will. It’s not. I’m supposed to take care of you, not the other way around. I hate this. I hate it so much.”
“Shh… It’s okay. I’ll always, always take care of you.”
I swiped at the tears running down my face. I’d tried. God, I’d tried. The hardest part was I couldn’t make sense of how we’d ended up here, Ash and I. Why I’d been dealt such a cruel twist of fate. Because I had no clue what was right and if loving Ash was wrong.
He’d been calling me, leaving me messages, begging me to return them. Maybe it was my turn to be the coward. But I didn’t know how to face him. How to look at the man I loved wholly and wonder if there was any possibility of him ever loving me.
Twice I’d caught him sitting in his SUV across the street, the presence of that mesmerizing, intoxicating man stretching out to touch me where I wasted away in the loneliness of my house. As I questioned and ached and pleaded for the answers neither of us had.
Memories pressed into my mind, and I hugged her box to my chest. I rocked as I thought back to the conversation we’d had the day before she’d left.
“Bates is…safe,” Summer argued, shaking her head at Willow.
Willow continued to work on the old piece, scraping away the decayed to reveal the new. She shook her head. “He said he’s gonna marry me. You know that’s what I want. A family.”
Summer breezed by, whispered in Willow’s ear. “Does he make you shake?”
No. Never.
“Love’s supposed to be steady. Stable,” Willow contended.
Summer laughed, the sound bouncing off the workshop walls. “Oh my sweet, Willow.” She grabbed Willow by the cheeks and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Love never, ever looks like you expect it to. Just wait. When you really feel it? I bet you won’t be using any words like stable and safe. Just you wait.”
She headed from the shop, before she turned to look back at Willow. Something significant tightened her words. “And when you find it? Promise me you won’t ever let it go.”
Gasping through my tears, I pressed both hands to my belly, because I’d never, ever expected this love to look like this. I’d never expected it to shatter and shake me through.
Ashes, Ashes, we all fall down.
But my mama…she’d taught me and Summer our worlds were ours to hold. Even when they were in pieces. Even when our dreams were scattered with the wind. Because we never knew where those scattered seeds might land and take root.
thirty-seven
Ash
My fingers fumbled on the frets of my bass.
“Goddamn it,” I gritted, dropping my head, hunting for that elusive cool that was getting harder and harder to find.
Baz’s voice came through the speakers in the booth where I was trying and failing to lay down my track.
Failing would be the key word.
Hard.
“Why don’t you take a break. Walk it off. We can come back to this later.”
Harshly, I rubbed the back of my hand across my mouth. “Already have this album weeks behind.”
Zee had been right to call me out on my bullshit. Walking out on my band was the last thing I wanted to do. But with this kind of productivity? I might as well have.
“Take a breather,” Baz said. This time it wasn’t a suggestion.
I set my favorite bass aside, hands clenching and unclenching in vicious fists. Like the action might burn off the aggression and desperation threatening to boil the blood in my veins.
I tore out of the booth, tossing a glare at Baz where he sat at the console, like any par
t of this was his fault. “Better?” It was all kinds of sarcasm and spite.
He was right behind me as I stormed out where I landed myself in the lounge outside the studio. Zee and Austin were in the far corner, having some kind of hushed, private conversation that probably had everything to do with me. Lyrik and Tamar were on one of the couches, girl draped across his lap and the dude whispering softly as he gazed down at her.
Didn’t think the knots laying siege to my guts could twist any tighter.
They did.
I headed for the stairs, needing to get out of there.
Baz stopped me with a hand on my shoulder, his words measured but severe. “You want to take this out on me? Fine. But you know stomping around here like an asshole isn’t gonna change a thing. I don’t know what the hell happened with Willow, but it’s obvious you need to fix it.”
Fix it.
I scoffed as I spun to face him. Incredulous. “Fix it? Some things can’t be fixed. Not when I was the one who broke them in the first place.”
I’d been breaking them all along.
Swore he read it in my eyes, because his voice lowered farther and sympathy edged into his expression. “I know what happened with Anna messed you up, man. It was horrible. Awful. Something no one should ever have to go through. And I know you chose to put it behind you. Live your life the best way you could. Making the best of every day. Do you think I don’t know you never quite let any of those days count? But there comes a point in all our lives when that’s not enough anymore. When we need the days to matter, because what’s the point in living if we don’t really have something to live for?”
Emotion welled, too fast, and I was fisting my hands again, struggling to cling to the anger so I wouldn’t have to deal with the hurt.
He blinked, jaw going rigid. “God forbid, Ash, God forbid, but if I lost Shea today? I’d never regret slowing down, realizing what was important, choosing to make every single one of our days count. One day spent with her is worth more than a million without her.”
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