Page 50 of Escape to the Sun

“Do…”

“This.”

Heather pulled away, putting a little distance between them. “Looks to me like you’re doing it.” She struggled to keep her voice even, at the same time hating herself for letting him affect her so much. It wasn’t supposed to be serious. She shouldn’t care what he had to tell her, or why he was being so strange while he was doing it.

“I really enjoy spending time with you.”

She looked at him warily. “As do I.”

“But I need you to know that it can never be more than that. Us spending time together.”

“What do you mean?”

Ash took a deep breath. “I think there’s something I should tell you.”

She sighed, the last of the easiness between them slipping away completely. “Right, about your ex?”

“My wife,” he corrected her. “I vowed to never put myself in that position again,” he said simply, as if it explained everything.

“What position is that?” She tried to keep her tone light. “Marriage? No one mentioned anything about that.” She giggled a little, but it fell flat.

“No—love. I vowed never to love again. And I’m not saying that…” He held up his hand and shook his head, clearly backing himself into a tight spot.

She didn’t know what to say about the L word; instead, Heather ignored it and tried to refocus him. “What? She screwed you up so badly that you think you can never feel something again, so you vowed to never again let yourself get hurt? That’s a pretty common story, Ash. Hell, I could say the same thing. Don’t worry about it.”

He took a breath. “That’s the thing. We didn’t get divorced. She died.”

The words fell on the air, landing heavy between them.

Died?

“Ash, I’m sorry.” She put her hand on his, needing to connect with him, but he shook off her touch.

“Don’t be. It was my fault. Remember when I told you I worked all the time? That I missed holidays? Parties? Anniversaries?” She did. “Carlie was always so understanding about my need to build the business and work hard. She never complained. Not like you’d expect. But there was one time when she asked me to please not cancel our date.” He closed his eyes. “I left too early that morning for her to ask me, so she texted me. It was our third wedding anniversary and we had dinner reservations at her favorite restaurant. She told me she had something special to talk to me about and to please not cancel.”

“You didn’t.”

He nodded sadly. “I didn’t mean to. I had no intentions of canceling, but at the last minute, an important investor came into town and…it doesn’t matter. I let her down. Badly.”

“What happened?”

* * *

This wasthe part that was so hard. The part he’d replayed in his mind repeatedly for months. He swallowed hard. “When I didn’t show up, she was upset. Like, really upset.” Heather nodded. “She called me. From the car.”

Heather shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut. “No.”

He nodded when she finally looked at him again.

“She was crying. Yelling. Calling me names. She’d never done that before and I tried to calm her down. I tried to tell her to pull over and call me back when she wasn’t driving.”

Heather put a hand to her mouth but didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say. She must know what was coming next.

“I heard the squeal of the tires, the scream and the crunch of the metal. Then nothing. I didn’t even know where she was to go to her. I didn’t know where to send help. I just screamed her name over and over again.”

“Oh, Ash. I can’t even imagine how terrible that would have been for you.”

He shook off her touch again. He refused to let her feel sorry for him. No one should ever feel badly for him. It was his fault. It was all his fault.

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