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I clung to the hope he really was, that he had no plans to toss twenty-some years of love down the drain over my poor choices leading up to the admonishment I’d spewed out at Skylar the night before.
A nurse took me through double doors into a hallway. “So you’re his angel,” she said, smiling as though everything was peachy in the world.
“What?” I asked, too brain too fucking fragile, too wound up, to focus on her words.
“He kept asking for Rhett, his angel.”
It took a few seconds for me to put together the simple misplacing of a comma rather than a period.
Angel wasn’t a definition but a second person.
Skylar.
If they didn’t know that bit of information, it meant she hadn’t shown up yet, probably hadn’t been notified—
The nurse pushed aside a privacy curtain, and I shuffled to a stop, my heart stuttering at seeing my love laid out on a hospital bed.
Just like Mom.
Pale and eyes closed, my love didn’t move—but his chest rose.
I quickly scanned over his body, the lack of anything but an IV attached to him.
No machines pushed air into his lungs.
My breath left in a rush, relief flooding through me, and I forced myself to take a slower look over Ash while my feet took me closer.
A bandage covered part of his head, but there was a distinct lack of blood like I’d expected. His hair stuck out in all directions, slightly damp, as though a nurse had sponged him down.
Stinging lit in my eyes, and I blinked back tears while swallowing hard against the thickness in my throat.
Someone touched my elbow, and I tore my focus off my love.
“Are you Rhett Stirling?” A man too young to be a doctor introduced himself as such after I nodded, his voice hushed.
“Can you tell me anything about Ashton’s symptoms over the past couple of weeks?” he asked.
“Symptoms?” I croaked, once more turning my focus on Ash to watch the steady rise and fall of his chest.
“He was going on and on about cancer eating away at his insides—symptoms like Archer’s?”
My knees went weak, and I sank into the lone chair of Ash’s cubicle. “Oh fuck.”
The doctor kept silent while I stared at Ash, so many goddamn things clicking to place in my head. My stomach went hard as a rock, my palms suddenly sweaty.
Beeps and voices I hadn’t noticed before seemed to crescendo in my ears, making me wince.
“H-His twin brother died from leukemia when they were young.” I barely managed the words.
“He said he’d been having body aches—stomach pain especially. Exhaustion and light-headedness. What’s his physician’s name and has he been seen?”
I rattled off our PCP’s name but knew without asking Ash hadn’t gone to get checked out. Chances were, he’d self-diagnosed himself rather than stepping foot in a doctor’s office.
“He claimed he vomited while driving to his office and that’s what caused the accident,” the doctor stated quietly.
He’d been coming to find me.
“Christ.” I scrubbed a trembling hand down over my face. If I’d stayed home, faced what I’d done rather than escaping to lick my wounds, he wouldn’t be there. Wouldn’t be—