Ash: A Bad Boy Romance (26 page)

“I’m sorry—” she gasps, voice shaking. “I’m sorry I never told you about the baby we lost.”

“Summer,” I whisper. “It’s not the same. I made you go because Cullen and Bianca told me I
had
to let you go. I was the one who got made into an asshole. I had no right to know. But I’m so sorry I wasn’t there.”

She leans against me, face still pale, body still shaking. “Got any more secrets to share, Ash?” Her voice is still hoarse from crying, and she nearly croaks out the words.

“I’m fresh out.”

“Why the
fuck
didn’t you tell me before?” She holds onto me for support.
 

I grin. “It wasn’t my story to tell. Not until now. Your fucked up parents got me to swear to secrecy until you’d come home again. I was
supposed
to sign the divorce papers like you asked, but I never did. You were already
my
family, and I intended to keep you that way until you told me to fuck off to my face. After a year of separation in the great state of North Carolina.”

“Christ.”

“Do me a favor, Sunshine?”

“What’s that?”

“Let’s keep it under wraps that I told you. I’m technically supposed to wait until the old bastard is dead, but he’s probably close enough by now. I haven’t heard an update in a damn long while.”

She nods against me, and she’s quiet for a long time. When her breathing evens out, she looks up at me. “This must explain why I can’t hold any kind of functional relationship.”

“Until this one,” I say. “Ash and Summer, version two. We can at least give it a try.”

Three Years, Two Months Ago

It’s five o’clock in the morning, Syria time. I’m awake, and I should be getting up for my shift in the medical tent, but I have jet lag, and my body
aches
like I’ve been awake for days, the pain centering in the tip of my shoulder, just where the blade meets the arm. The pain pulses and radiates, extending down my left side and into the pit of my abdomen, creating a perfect circle of agony.

The pulled muscle—or whatever the hell it is—just adds insult to injury. I spent last night awake, on and off, dreaming about Ash. I tried calling him, dialing him again and again from my phone, but he never picked up. The last call mechanically informed me that his number had been disconnected.

Gone. Almost like it never happened—the wedding, the honeymoon, the plan to leave together. It’s like none of it was ever real.
 

I turn over onto my left side and cry out from the pain. A full body cramp makes its way up from my leg to my shoulder, so I turn the other way instead. Lying on my right side, the feeling lessens, and I can close my eyes again, even though my teeth and fists are clenched tight. Like any good doctor in the field, I can work my way through the pain and wake up in time for a stiff coffee and some early morning appointments. There are people who need me more than I need to lie here.
 

Still, I don’t move my legs. It’s my third morning here. The first morning, the feeling was barely noticeable, just a low cramping in my side, poking at me on and off. The shoulder pain started just last night, and that’s the real bitch in all of this.
 

It seems like a physical manifestation of my guilt and regret, my fucking idiocy.

I belong here.

I am a doctor.
 

There is only this job, this place, and the burning ache, like a shot of lightning, wrapping its circle around my body, around my consciousness, taking over my thoughts.

I drift in and out of conscious thought, thinking of Ash’s crooked face and the heat of his body, the way he made me do things I never thought I’d do, the thrall he kept me in.

I’m free now. If I could only get free of my shoulder, float away from my body.

I absently wonder if it was the bus ride, or the sleepless nights spent at my mother’s empty inn, or the crying on the flight into Cairo that did it.
 

There’s a voice calling me from far away, one I barely recognize, and I can’t open my eyes. They feel heavy and hot. I have a sharp memory of my mother pressing a cool washcloth to my eyes when I was trying to fall asleep as a very young girl. Her hair was strawberry blond, like mine is now. I remember reaching up to touch it, twirling it between my fingers. She told me she was coming back very soon, and her smile looked sad. But it’s a silly memory. It isn’t right. My mother has red hair. I smile anyway and think of the washcloth against my head, delicate fingers smoothing down my brow.
 

It’s so good to be loved, better than anything else I know.
 

I choke out a sob and raise up my hands like I’m reaching for someone. Someone is calling me, but it’s not my name.
 

“Dr. Ash, we need you in the medical—”

“Colington,” I say, but it feels like there’s cotton jammed in my throat, and I can’t manage the squeak out the word. “Colington,” I try again, attempting to move my heavy muscles so I can get out of bed. My legs stick where they are, and I realize my arms are still raised. I put them down heavily and open my eyes. The room is spinning, and I’m dizzy, even though I’m still lying down. It’s the very
tip
of my shoulder that hurts, like someone has a chisel and they’re hammering it down between the bones.
 

The woman calling my name touches my arm, and I shudder, trying to pull away. Her cool hand goes to my forehead and then my cheek.

No, get up. It’s time to go to work.

“Dr. Colington—is that what you said? You have a fever. Were you exposed to anyone who was ill before you arrived?” The doctor—or nurse—speaks quickly, her words jumbling together.
 

I shake my head slowly, and now it feels like my whole head is filled with cotton. It’s a pulled muscle—or no, a pulled muscle doesn’t feel like this. There’s a part of my brain that wants to generate an answer, pulling out some information I learned a long time ago when I was a candy striper with Natalie at the hospital.
 

“Does anything hurt, Dr. Colington? We need you out there today, but you can have medical leave if—”

I point to my left shoulder and then down to my abdomen, my eyelids barely fluttering open. There’s something I should
know
. “My shoulder. The tip. It’s...”

Shit
.
 

My eyes open wide, and I sit up straight, adrenaline flooding my body. I’m counting backwards from the time I left to the time I got here, picturing a calendar in my brain.
 

I grab the woman’s arm and look at her scrubs. She’s a nurse. “Get the doctor,” I tell her. “Any doctor. It doesn’t matter. We need an ultrasound machine.” The nurse backs up like she’s scared, but I grab her arm hard, and she comes to. I nearly collapse with the pain, but there’s enough energy coursing through my body to keep me conscious.
 

I’m breathing through it, my gut clenching through the pain. There’s a chance I’m wrong, but even the nurse knows I’m probably right. There’s a bright, stultifying pang in my abdomen, and I fall back to the bed.
 

“Ultrasound,” I mumble. “Now...” I must pass out for a second, because when I wake I feel the chilly gel, the ultrasound wand. “I consent to whatever you have to do. Just make sure I live.”

After that, sounds and conversations come in bursts, and I follow them like a lifeline, like scenes from a TV show when I’m falling asleep but want so desperately to know what happens next.
 

“Measuring seven and a half weeks.”

“Left fallopian tube.”

“Rupturing as we speak.”

A weak heartbeat. Is it mine or—

“Get the medevac. We need to get her to Damascus.” A pause. A husky female voice, the gynecologist on staff. I’ve met her. “I don’t care how much it costs. A ruptured ectopic pregnancy counts as a surgical emergency, no matter where the fuck we are.”

After that, everything goes black, and I wake up in Assad University Hospital, a tiny incision on my left side held together with stitches and glue. They tell me I was conscious on the way to the hospital, talking about my husband and telling them to call him, but there was no working number listed. But I don’t remember that ride at all. Instead, the repeated image, false memories imposed over real ones, of cool hands against my forehead.
 

“Hush now. I’ll be back, girl.”

In Damascus, a very good surgeon removes my left ovary and fallopian tube, and with it, an amniotic sac and a tiny embryo that would have lived if only it had implanted in the right place. It even had a heartbeat on the ultrasound, for a brief moment in time, a tiny flicker that ended as soon as it had begun.
 

I don’t cry. Instead, I eat ice chips, try to talk with nurses and doctors using hand gestures. There is silence. And the hushed voice of the doctor who removed my ovary, telling me about the scarring she found, about the very real possibility that I’d never have children of my own, asking if there’s anyone she can call, if my husband has another number. She holds my hand in hers, even though I can see that she’s uncomfortable when I shake my head and say that no, there’s no one I would like to call. No one at all.
 

Slowly, methodically, I fill out paperwork during the week I’m in the hospital on IV antibiotics and bedrest. I won’t quit Doctors Without Borders, but I will bury myself even further away, somewhere cold and punishing and nowhere near Damascus. The day the transfer comes through, I get an email from Ash on my phone. I read it, and then delete it.
 

And after that, I don’t bother to read his emails at all.
 

Instead, I create memories of Ash, tucking them away until it seems harmless to think of him from time to time while I clean my tiny apartment in the Ukraine.
 

It’ll all be over when I get home, I tell myself. I have myself convinced of it. And soon enough, Ash’s letters and emails quit coming. And he seems like a memory, frozen in time, more than ever.
 

Maybe I should read his explanations.
 

Maybe I should go back in time and wait for him to tell me he loves me. But this cold apartment is my reality for three years, and the distant memories of a tall, redheaded man are a warm, golden daydream before everything broke and I realized who and what I was.
 

Present Day

The locker room is empty when I come in for my shift.
 

“Good,” I groan. I slump down on the bench at the back of the room and close my eyes. It’s like I woke up with a tequila hangover and
then
had six or seven people beat me with boards.

A brief memory flashes through my mind, but I can’t grasp it before it’s gone. I shudder with fear and an old longing I absolutely cannot place.

Stomach virus? Gastritis?
 

A wave of nausea hits me, and I think about the chicken and white bean chili Ash made me last night. It had smelled absolutely horrible when he was cooking it, like he’d taken every spice in my cabinet and combined them in a screaming mess of smells. But it tasted excellent going down, especially when I smothered it in cheese and sour cream and ate it with chips.
 

My stomach clenches, and I can barely breathe.