“Ashton, let me explain…”
He laughed, walking closer to me, and I was suddenly grateful we had the room to ourselves because I had a feeling I was about to get my ass handed to me.
“Explain what?” He reached up and gripped the neck of his shirt, yanking so that it tore open, revealing the scar. “This is why you’re here, right?” He tapped his chest. “Your dead husband’s heart?”
Nausea rolled through me at his words.
I lowered my head. “No.”
He stepped closer, jaw clenched. “No?”
I swallowed hard. “That’s why I came here, but not why I stayed.”
“Oh bullshit, Millie!” he shouted and I jumped. “You’re a psycho!” He seethed, “You’ve wormed your way into my life, stolen half my bar, and had sex with me, all in the name of getting closer to your husband’s memory.”
His words hurt; they weren’t true. But did I deserve them? I should have told him day one. I looked into his eyes and saw so much hurt there. I hoped he saw equal emotion swimming in my gaze. “No.” I shook my head fiercely, tears streaming down my cheeks. “I didn’t know you were going to be good looking, I didn’t know we would have chemistry, I … hated you when I first met you.”
“Ditto,” he growled.
This was going off the rails.
“That night with you … at your grandmother’s guest house, I never once thought of him. I—”
Ashton shook his head. “I can’t believe a word out of your lying mouth.”
Tears blurred my vision and I realized in that moment that I was going to lose him. Lose Ashton, the bar, his dad, everything I was trying to save. I had really started to fall for him, allowed myself to open up for the first time since Colin. I’d imagined a future with this man, and by withholding the truth I’d fucked it all up.
“I’m sorry.” Tears splashed down my cheeks. “What if it was Jenna. What would you have done?”
He seemed to consider it before that mask of anger was back. “Not this. Not fucking this.”
I reached for him, suddenly desperate to make him see, but he recoiled. “Get out. I want you out of the apartment by tonight or I’ll call the sheriff and have you evicted.”
My mouth popped open. “Ashton, let me explain. This wasn’t—”
He stepped forward, nearly slamming into me, and I froze.
“Millie, I’ve got so many scars inside of me I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins!” he shouted. “I cared for you and now you’ve just become another scar. So just get the fuck out before you completely ruin me.”
Get out before you completely ruin me. Those words slashed a New York City sized hole in my chest and I couldn’t hold in my sobs any longer. Tears burst from my eyes and I ran for the door. If he wanted me to go, I would go. But as I placed my hand on the handle to leave, a huge thud hit the floor.
Spinning around, my worst nightmare became a reality.
Ashton was having some kind of heart attack. He lay on his back, hands clutched to his chest as he groaned in pain, sweat dripping down his face before he went completely still.
No!
“Help!” I screamed down the hall, running back over to him. My one regret about losing Colin was that I wasn’t there when he got hurt. I had magical thinking as my therapist called it, that I could have somehow saved him. Well, here I was doing chest compressions over Ashton’s lifeless form. Everything I wished I could have done for Colin, I did for Ashton, but nothing was working. His body jerked and twitched with each push on his chest and he wasn’t breathing. In fact, his lips were turning the slightest shade of blue.
“Somebody help me!” I wailed through my sobs as I pushed harder and harder. Julie told me once that she did CPR on a kid and cracked one of their ribs from pushing so hard but saved their life. The mom was pissed about the cracked rib, but Julie said if you went to lightly you might as well do nothing. So I pushed, hard, trying to pump life back into this man while screaming for help.
I must have blacked out for a minute, because the next thing I knew I was smooshed up again the wall and a team of doctors and nurses were wheeling Ashton out of the room on a gurney.
“What’s this scar? Heart surgery?” the nurse asked, pointing to Ashton’s chest.
“Transplant recipient,” I mumbled, the adrenaline rush causing my hands to shake.
“Book the OR!” a doctor yelled, and everything came crashing around me.
I’d allowed my heart to care again and now Ashton was going to die too. I wasn’t sure I would make it out of this one.
Ashton
A dull throbbing in my chest pulled me from sleep. What was that incessant beeping? Stupid alarm. My eyelids peeled open to see a hospital monitor.
Was I dreaming?
My head felt foggy.
A small, muffled sob from beside me pulled at my attention and just like that, everything came back to me.
Millie.
The lying snake.
The sight of her hand in mine, her thumb stroking the soft flesh of my hand, it sent a fresh pang through my heart, this one emotional. I’d gotten so used to her kisses, the way her perfume filled the hallway long after she’d walked by, her little backhanded comments, the way she chewed on her bottom lip, and fuck, the way she cooked. I’d actually allowed myself to envision running a bar with this woman for the foreseeable future. These last few days with her had been … I’d let myself care too much, like an idiot. I couldn’t believe she would come all the way from New York and insert her way into my life like this, all to be closer to her dead husband. Or a piece of him anyway.
News flash. I had his organ, not
