For Better or Hearse

by Ava Hunter

As a professional wedding objector, she requires proof. Concrete evidence, like the Roswell incident or the JFK assassination. Otherwise, she won’t touch the job with a ten-foot pole. Sure, she ruins lives, but she ruins lives with purpose.

Is she really helping? Or is she the girl who breaks hearts to make her own feel better? Who knows? Right now, Ash doesn’t feel anything. Least of all good.

Though Ash is always homesick for her cousin, Tessie is where she’s supposed to be. Alaska. Getting railed daily by her bearded mountain man.

Her mom was sad. Her best friend was sad. She was too, but all Ash wanted to do was heal them. Help. Only, she didn’t know how.

Her own death doesn’t scare her. But her cousin? The one person she needs in this life, the only person who’s ever understood her, who never questions her weird, who loves her fiercely even when she doesn’t love herself? Her close call almost ended Ash.

Augustus cackles. “That’s why I like you, Ash. You sting.” “Oh good,” she huffs, fighting with the strap of her carry-on. “I love being likened to a swarm of wasps.”

Holy fuck. She’s always believed in kismet, but this? Flying halfway around the world only to discover that Augustus’s favorite grandson is Nathaniel Whitford is truly the coup de grâce. It’s the worst karmic retribution she’s gotten in her thirty-three years of existence.

“Augustus, you cannot fucking be telling me that I am stuck on vacation with your grandson whose wedding I pretty much atom-bombed.” “The more the merrier. Isn’t that what you said?” Augustus grins like the Cheshire cat. She elbows him. “You’re lucky you’re dying.”

“Help,” Ash says into the device. “What do you wear to a dinner party where you need to be cool, calm and collected, but you’re also dining with the family of the man whose wedding you crashed?”

She doesn’t reply. She can’t. Not with the way she itches in her skin. That age-old feeling of not belonging. Even the suite is too fancy for her. Polished and pretty and light, when all she has is dark edges. Fuck. She hates this feeling.

If there’s one thing her ex taught her, it’s that love is a kind of death. Ash wants none of it. The happily-ever-after belief system perpetuated in fairy tales is a farce. Because eventually it all ends.

He’s lounging in his chair, looking like he’s been personally styled by Hades himself.

She fucked up his life when she came storming into that church. Only he’s not sure fucked up is the right term. Admitting that grates at him. Has for the last three years.

makes you the expert in grief?” “Everyone’s an expert in grief.” The gray flecks in her green eyes catch the soft overhead lighting. “We just don’t know it until it fucking hits us.”

but when she notices the fond way Nathaniel watches his grandfather, her mood quickly sours. Ugh. Having the same emotions as Nathaniel Whitford is nauseating.

After their heated conversation in the bar, she slept like shit. She dreamed up no less than fifty scenarios where she is wrong and he is right.

Glancing over her shoulder, she finds that Nathaniel’s also thinking about her ass. If the way he’s ogling it is any indication. She smirks. He’s not the only one who can catch a person in the act of self-destruction. “That’s a very shameless stare, Doctor Whitford.”

Two thin stripes run up the backs of her calves all the way to the tops of her thighs. Like the seams on pinup stockings topped with little bows.

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.

He didn’t. He knows nothing about the school. What he does know is that he’d do anything to get rid of that sad look in her eyes.

Curious now, Nathaniel keeps at it. “What have you survived?” She looks at him, sharp. “What makes you think I have?”

“Am I alive?” she gasps. “No, you’re in heaven, and even the angels don’t want you.”

Dinner’s unbearable. His father picks apart the last few episodes of Delaney’s show while Delaney agrees with every single fucking offensive word. Why wouldn’t she? For the first time in God knows how long, she actually has thirteen minutes of her father’s attention.

Augustus keeps trying to mend fences. No one seems to want to reciprocate. Nathaniel’s not sure what to do. Except wish Ash were here. She’d have a solution. Make jokes, lighten the mood, at least piss off his father.

For once, the North Sea isn’t on is mind. Neither is figuring out an early exit from this trip. Instead, he’s consumed with thoughts revolving around a different subject entirely. One that doesn’t make him want to run away. It’s Ash. The macabre girl with the blood-red smirk.

“I was in the wrong, though. All this time, I thought he was a devil, a cheater, but—” “But he’s tolerable.” Ash scoffs. “Hell no. He’s literally the worst person I’ve ever met. But he is taller than me. So there’s that.”

“You’d think being so very tall and assholeish, you’d lurch rather than quietly sneak up on your victims.” Ash tosses her hair. “And truth. You got me. I mean, the time it takes to count it all out? Sadistic.”

She rolls her eyes. “Is that on your family crest? ‘Make an effort’? It’s so extortionist of you.”

She’s a mix tape blasted to the max, and even then, he wants to crank the dial until it snaps.

The woman is entirely too beautiful. The husky sound of her voice. Those blood-red lips. Her feral black hair. That impossible-to-ignore yellow bikini that breaks every synapse in his brain. He’s hated her since the moment she objected to his wedding. Now, she’s the only one he wants to talk to on this trip.

“Can you—can you get your fancy doctor bag and come help?” The corner of Nathaniel’s lips tug. “You assume I have one?” She props her hands on her hips and stares at him. Waits. “Fine,” he grumps, crossing the room to pull out the small satchel he brings with him in case of emergencies. She brightens, a smile of vindication on her face. “I fucking knew it.”

“Listen, I detest a himbo podcast bro as much as anyone, but maybe it’d be good to give Tater the benefit of a doubt. Maybe he just wants you to listen to him.” She shrugs. “Sometimes when people are annoying as fuck, it’s because they want attention. Maybe he just wants you to like him. People will do all kinds of things to be liked.”

A tap on her ass would probably sound like a microwave being slammed shut.

“You think you can shut up about the podcast for the next week and try to enjoy the trip for Grandpops?” Tater’s glower quickly morphs into a smirk. “What do I get out of it?” A black eye. A black eye is what the kid’s going to get out of it.

“I couldn’t find you,” he rasps.

The instinct she triggers in him is primal. He reaches out, slides his arms around her slender waist to pull her to him. The moment she’s in his arms, his tension ebbs. His heart pounds, on fire, as he takes her in. Soft, dewy skin. A hint of a sunburn on the tops of her shoulders. Her pretty face a mix of amusement and confusion. “Are you okay?” Fuck. Somehow his hand has attached itself to her cheek. Cupping it like it’ll help him feel better. “You’re not hurt?”

The hangdog look on his face will haunt her for the rest of her life. At this rate, she’ll never get him out of her horny nightmares.

“I apologize for your raging boner.” He exhales, chuckles. “You have no idea.” Ash backs away. “I—I should go.”

Then she’s walking, stumbling, running across the sand like she’s trying to leave Past-Ash behind. A mistake. She’s made a very bad mistake. And she doesn’t know if that mistake is the kiss or the not-continuing of the kiss.

“I think you’d be Mothman. You act big and scary, but really, you’re just misunderstood. You’re kind and sweet when you want to be.”

“I can’t stop thinking about that kiss.” Usually, he wouldn’t try so hard. Be so goddamn desperate. But he can’t help it. This woman is keeping him afloat on this trip. Keeping him sane. Alive.

A cool brow arched. “You notice when I’m nervous?” The words roll off his tongue before he can stop them. “I notice everything about you.”

She can’t explain her many riotous feelings for this very serious man.

“I have many bad habits,” she offers. “I reuse tea bags. I have way too many intrusive thoughts. I bite the heads off gummy bears first, and all doors in my room must be completely shut when I’m sleeping.” “Because of the monsters,” he says with utmost seriousness. “Exactly.”

“I don’t think my father would negotiate a ransom if he received my ear in the mail.” Nathaniel swears. Frustration laces his tone. “And I still can’t stop myself from trying to make him proud of me. I have never been able to be what they want. A better brother. The right type of doctor. I don’t even fucking know sometimes.”

Then he says, “Do you know you’re the first person who’s ever said they were proud of me?” “I’m sorry,” she says simply. Her heart aches in her chest. “That would be awful.”

But why should she? Her past needs to stay dead and buried. It’s too intimate, too hers. The truth is ugly and embarrassing, and she wants to shove it back down in the lockbox of her thorny heart before it grows thrashing arms and monstrous fangs.

“In every new place I’m in, I take a rock.” “That’s a right proper nerd, Nathaniel.” She tilts her head. “I’m impressed. There’s nothing sexier than a rock.” Eyes blazing, he inches closer. She smirks. “Do you have lots? Of rocks?” His hands settle on her waist. “Of course. Igneous. Metamorphic. Sedimentary.”

“Fuck.” Nathaniel takes her in, looking like he’s been sucker punched. Ash flushes, feeling vulnerable and sexy under his admiring stare. “Do you know?” he rumbles, blue eyes shining with a gleam of lust, as he moves toward her, “how goddamn beautiful you are?”

“Holy fuck,” Ash breathes when she gets a look at his thick, impressive cock. Tessie was right. It is unholy. Good for her. If she’s lucky, he’ll plow into her like a monster truck.