For Better or Hearse

by Ava Hunter

Groomsmen—LA’s top five blandest white guys—in dark jackets turn her way. Women in long beaded gowns sneer.

Solomon’s mountain man sperm really claiming that uterus.”

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.

“Do you think I’m packed?” Ash says, coming back to the conversation. “Or do you think my suitcase is lying in the bottom of my closet, filled with vintage copies of Nancy Drew and dried-up sea monkeys?”

“God, I’m such a whore for your love story,” Ash muses. Tessie laughs. Ash smiles. Love. It’s all she ever wanted for her cousin. Herself? She’ll steer clear, thank you very much.

And as you repeated numerous times on the plane, you will not save him from a shark attack, and I am banned from doing so as well, which is exactly my type of petty.”

I think you’re a lying liar.”

Goes by the unfortunate nickname Tater Tot.

“I will be on guard,” she says. “But I will also be on my bullshit.”

“Nathaniel. That’s, uh, short for Jonathan, right?”

“Are you always so full of fun facts?” “I am a walking encyclopedia.”

“Apologies for the inconvenience of being a type-one diabetic,” Ash says calmly but sharply. “I can drop dead if you prefer.” Her response is met with nothing but silence from Nathaniel.

“I am nothing if not an agent of chaos.”

“I may be a lot of things. Ill-reputed. Disheveled. A Scorpio. But I’m no con artist.” For a split second, she looks genuinely hurt.

“Your chances of being hunted by a seagull are low, but never zero.”

“I don’t want to be a main character. I want to be that statue in the corner of the room that sometimes gets mistaken for a ghost and scares the shit out of people.”

That’s a match made in—” “Hell,” Nathaniel snarls.

“We need a task force that stops white men from starting podcasts for no reason.”

Ash eyes him warily. She’s certain he’s 11 percent human and 89 percent homicidal robot.

That’s what love is. An apparition. It exists, until it doesn’t.

The whirring of her brain won’t be silenced. It’s on a tilt-a-whirl ride to anxiety land, and she’s the lone passenger.

Nathaniel sighs. “How did you get so weird?” She laughs, unoffended. “My mom’s a flight attendant. My father’s an accountant. Instead of forcing me to play sports, they let me be me, and now I’m this person who has no talent or ambition. All I do is float through life like an unsatisfied wraith.”

Miraculously, they’ve been having a civil conversation for at least four minutes. A world record.

That rebellious say-anything streak of Ash’s sends a pulse traveling through his dick. Fuck. What the hell’s wrong with him?

Maybe he is a robot. The thought of Ash being right irritates him even more.

Beside him, Ash huffs. “Why do people over six feet always walk so fucking fast? Do you have something to prove?”

“Okay. Truth or lie. Would you rather fight one hundred chickens or a bear?” The question’s so out of left field that he bursts out laughing.

“Isn’t this really Would You Rather?” he asks. “Listen. It’s whatever I want it to be.

“If I had to guess, I’d say your favorite color is black and your favorite holiday is Halloween.” “You forgot something.” “What’s that?” “I drink the blood of little children by candlelight.”

“You have psychopath eyes, you know.” He lets out a sound of frustration. “Probably because I want to murder you.”

“You can even suck the joy out of a photo. Fascinating.”

Of course he heard her. She’s the loudest living thing on the entire planet.

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

You’re a pain in my ass,” he replies. “But even I wouldn’t shove you off a cliff.”

like the sound of her full stupid-ass name would be enough to snap her out of the coma.

“Melanoma is a real risk.” “My god, you have such a boring doctor brain.”

“Should you be doing this?” she goads. “Touching me?” “Ah,” he says, tone dry, “I forgot the part where you spontaneously combust at human contact.”

We’ve all been where you’ve been,” Tessie continues. “Where we want to fuck up the person who hurt us. And sometimes, when we can’t, we take it out on everyone else.”

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.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Ash says as she passes the people. “He’s a nepo baby. No one ever said no to him when he was a child.”

Holy shit. She needs an exorcism. Clearly, she is diabolically horny.

“Wrangle. What is she, a cow?”

“What do you mean?” Nathaniel hates himself for asking, but dammit if he isn’t curious.

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.

“I was in the bathroom, you Tall Asshole.”

“Thanks a lot, Lancelot. I could have been dying, and you just bulldozed me out of the way.” Delaney’s eyes flash fire, her hands propped dramatically on her hips. “You don’t even think to look for your little sister when there’s practically a tsunami on the beach? What were you doing?”

As the sound of the ocean crashing against the beach rushes back to his ears, bone-deep awareness hits him like a brick. Ash. She’s the first one he looked for.

“Fry hoarding is a victimless crime,”

“Tequila. In a fancy as fuck glass.” “You heard her,” he tells the bartender. “Tequila in a fancy as fuck glass.”

Flirting. They’re flirting with something. Most likely disaster.