side of your scalp and had ink from your collar to your wrist on each arm, people tended to think you weren’t really a very nice guy. Funny thing was that I was typically a lot nicer than most of the guys I loved like brothers, but not right now, and if the nurse who sat behind the desk didn’t tell me where my uncle was in the next second I was going to straight up lose my shit.
I was just about to breathe fire way hotter than the kind inked all over me when I saw her walking toward me. She looked like an angel, even though her name was Saint. It fit her, Saint Ford, healer of the sick and hater of anything and everything having to do with Nash Donovan. She was beautiful, breathtaking, absolutely despised me, and made no secret about it. I had run into her more than once on my unfortunately frequent trips to this ER, where she seemed to be a permanent fixture as one of the attending nurses.
We had gone to high school together years ago, and while I was all for striking up a reunion of sorts, she was having none of it. She made a big production of avoiding me, or giving me nervous, sideways looks like she didn’t trust me or was forced to endure my company. Only right now, in this moment, she was looking at me with equal parts compassion and seriousness in her soft, dove-gray eyes. It left no doubt whatsoever that things with Phil were really, really bad.
She put a hand on my shoulder and I felt like I was going to shatter under the gentle touch.
“Nash …” Her voice was light and I could hear the bad news in it. “Come over here and talk to me for just a minute.”
I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to hear whatever horrible words she was going to have to say to me, but because she was so pretty, because she had the loveliest eyes I had ever seen, I just numbly did what she asked. There were worse people to take bad news from.
We took a few steps away from the nurses’ desk, and I gazed down at her with trepidation. She was fairly tall for a girl, so we were eye to eye when she leveled it at me in a feather-soft voice speaking rock-hard words.
“Did you know Phil was so sick?”
I felt like she was asking me as a friend, or someone who actually cared about what was happening, and not as a medical professional. I knew logically she was just doing her job, but it made me feel better to pretend otherwise.
I didn’t have any words that sounded or felt right to answer her, so I shook my head.
“I recognized the name on the intake paperwork and the two of you look an awful lot alike. I figured I might find you out here.”
I gulped down my thundering heartbeat and nodded my head stiffly. “He’s my only family.” That wasn’t entirely true, but he was the only family I had that really mattered to me.
She sighed and I tried not to flinch when she put a hand on my cheek. I knew she didn’t like me, and for some reason that made the fact that she was being so considerate, so caring, hit home that whatever she was getting ready to lay out for me was way worse than I had imagined.
“He has lung cancer … the doctors are thinking stage four. He has an extensive medical chart. He’s been receiving treatment for a while. We got him settled, gave him fluids, he might have pneumonia, so that’s why he’s struggling to breathe, and his oxygen levels are dangerously low. We aren’t a hundred percent sure why he was unresponsive just yet, but we’re trying to get him awake. The attending doctor called the oncologist that was listed in Phil’s chart. It’s a serious situation, Nash. I can’t believe he didn’t let you know how ill he was.”
I let my head drop on my neck like it was suddenly just too heavy to hold up and her gentle fingers stroked along my cheek. It was startlingly soothing.
“He’s been avoiding me.” It sounded pathetic to my own ears.
She was going to say something else when a tiny, pregnant pixie and a hulking giant came thundering into the room where we were standing. I didn’t recognize the older guy that entered with them, but he had an intent look on his face that was almost scary. He took one look around the empty waiting room and turned on his heel in a way that made it seem like he was on a hunt for information or someone that had answers. The cavalry had arrived. Saint went to pull away and I instinctively grabbed her wrist. I needed my friends, loved my crew of misfits and rebels, but right now I needed her more. I couldn’t explain it. She gave me a wan grin and tugged her arm free.
“I’m gonna go check on him and see if we managed to get him awake so that you can see him. Nash … you should consider quitting smoking.”
The last of her words trailed away as I was steamrolled by a punk-rock pixie and engulfed in a hug I needed like no one’s business. I let Cora do her magic and try and make me feel better. I also let the quiet strength and steady assuredness of the guy I considered my older brother try and ground me. Rome Archer was a rock and I needed that kind of stability as my world was shaking around me.
I was pulling it together, getting the emotions that were churning and rolling in check, getting my head around what was going on when they showed up. It was bad enough that my mom was there, but that she had the nerve to bring that asshole she married with her was just pushing the limits of my already tattered control.
She just had to go and call me Nashville … no one called me Nashville and lived to tell the tale … well, no one but Cora. I think it was hearing my real name spoken from my mom’s lips that had all the questions rolling and the pieces tumbling into place. I went from hovering on the brink of calm to a volatile molten core of fury that was ready to take this ER down in flood of hate and wrath.
Why was she here?
Phil made her his next of kin, his power of attorney … like she was somehow more important to him than I was.
Why?
She didn’t answer.
Did she know he was sick and for how long?
She did. Phil didn’t want me to worry.
She tried to convince me it was all in my best interest and my top was about to blow with each biting question I fired at her, when my best friend, Rule, showed up with his fiancée. I had a moment of clarity and was starting to see through the haze of dread, anger, resentment, and everything else fueling my blood when Saint’s copper-colored head popped back around the corner. Her words had already changed my life once tonight.
I had no idea that she wasn’t even close to being done.
She cocked her head to the side, blinked those gray eyes at me like she wasn’t just going to break apart the foundation of everything I thought I knew, and said, “He’s awake and asking for you.”
“He is?”
“Yeah, he said he wants to talk to his son … that has to be you, right? You guys look identical.”
The world fell away. I stopped breathing, stopped feeling, and stopped living. I was just rooted on the spot, stuck in a moment where my beloved uncle Phil had somehow just morphed into my father. The lies, the secrets, the wasted time, the hollow feeling I had always carried around from being unwanted not only by a superficial and uncaring mother, but also by a faceless, nameless father turned around and around, and I felt like I was going to pass out from the dizziness it caused.
“Holy shit!” Typical Rule, he brought me back to the white room with a clatter and blood rushing into my face and ears. I was going to lose it, but like she knew it, Cora was suddenly there, right in
