“The scar. Just ask,” he said, point blank.
Okay. Here it was. Moment of truth. “Why did you need the heart transplant? Were you born with a defect or something?”
There. I asked. I asked about it.
He watched me, eyes going dark as his gaze thinned. It’s almost as if he was thinking about what to tell me.
“Car accident. Tore three of my four chambers on impact. A cardiologist was at the scene with a surgeon’s kit or I wouldn’t have made it.”
Holy shit.
I wanted to know more, I wanted to know who he lost and how the accident happened and everything, but he reached out and his fingers touched my collarbone, causing all thoughts to leave my brain. Pinching my necklace chain, he pulled Colin and my rings up out of the water and held them in his hand.
“How did this happen?” His voice was husky and dark, and now that the spotlight was on me, I squirmed.
It was time. It was time to tell him everything, especially because I was starting to feel something for him. I didn’t want to lie to him, this was so fucked up. How had I let it go this far in the first place?
I looked down at the rings in his palm. “That … was also a car accident.”
He nodded as if he understood. “Were you in the car?”
I shook my head. “Just him. Drunk driver.”
He nodded again. “How long ago?”
I gulped. Everything was unfolding perfectly.
Tell him. Tell him.
“About a year. Two days after our wedding.” I was preparing for the moment, I was going to tell him.
He winced. “Jesus, that’s cruel.”
I nodded. “Life isn’t fair. We don’t always get what we want.”
His eyes fell to my lips and he floated a little closer, causing the breath to hitch in my throat and my heart to beat so loudly I was sure we both heard it.
Reaching out, he cupped my right cheek in his hand. “Sometimes we do.”
As he leaned in, my brain processed thoughts like a computer on crack.
He was going to kiss me.
My first kiss since Colin.
The man who had my dead husband’s heart was about to kiss me.
Run.
Lean in.
Tell him.
Don’t tell him.
He’s here.
When his lips hit mine, I didn’t expect the small moan that escaped me. I went on a date a few months ago. It was forced and weird and I was trying to see if I was ready to move on. I wasn’t. I hadn’t kissed that guy, couldn’t even conceive of it. But with Ashton, everything felt so natural. I didn’t recoil as I had expected; instead I opened my mouth, deepening the kiss.
When his tongue stroked mine, I wrapped my legs around his waist and his arms came around my lower back, pulling me closer to him.
I was hungry, so hungry for his touch that I actually ached. I didn’t realize until this very moment how lonely I had been. I was so used to sleeping next to Colin every night, having someone to kiss, to go to movies with, to touch. Then all of that was ripped away and I became an island where very few entered. Jules, John, my mom and dad … that was about it. I kept my circle tight and I was so damned lonely.
But not anymore. Like a switch had been flipped, everything inside of me came alive. Parts of me that I thought were dead, that I thought were never going to care for another man.
Taking Ashton’s bottom lip into my mouth, I sucked it hard and his breath hitched. Tilting his hips in the water, he pressed his hardness against me.
Just as suddenly as we’d started kissing, Ashton froze and pulled away, his eyes wide.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
He looked like he wanted to jump out of his skin.
Oh God. Was my kiss that bad? Maybe I’d read this wrong.
“Don’t. Move,” he breathed and looked down at the water between us.
The next few seconds were weird. It was like time stopped and sped up at the same moment. I peered down and my brain tried to process what I was looking at.
Then it did.
Fucking snake.
A fucking snake slithering right between the gap that lay between Ashton and my stomachs.
“No,” I whimpered as every muscle in my body clenched.
I was about to bolt and start screaming and rip off what was left of my clothes and call 911 and have a general fucking panic attack, when Ashton’s arms came around me in a vise-like grip.
“Don’t. Move.” He was calm, as the snake slowly skimmed the water between us, and spots started to dance at the edges of my vision.
I couldn’t breathe.
I was going to die.
“Cottonmouth. Very venomous,” Ashton said as the snake’s tail passed us and then it was gone, swimming toward the shore like a fucking Jesus snake who walked on water.
Even though the snake was gone, its scales, head, its slithering motion, was imprinted on my brain. I still couldn’t breathe, I think I was having a panic attack.
“Shit. Hey. You okay?” Ashton asked as his gaze zeroed in on my chest.
I looked down, saw the red hives splashed across my chest, and then I blacked out.
Ashton
I shouldn’t have kissed her.
I mean shit … I loved kissing her, but maybe I’d cursed the god of widows or something because a fucking water moccasin slithered across my belly, breaking us up. That was a sign, right? A sign from her dead husband? I believed in spirits and shit, that stuff was real. I’d gone and kissed a widow after she told me about losing her husband in an accident and then a venomous snake broke us apart.
Then she broke out in hives and fainted?
This day was fucked. I was never touching her again, I didn’t care how beautiful she was.
I should just have my cousin drive her back home at this point.
After hauling her out of
