CHAPTER FIVE

BY THE TIME THE BOARD meeting was over, Ash wasn’t sure he hadn’t lost already.

Especially when he was bent over in the private bathroom in the CEO suite, losing his breakfast in the toilet while Forsythe rubbed his back and murmured soft, soothing things as if that could ease the raw, terrified nerves turning his stomach into a pit of churning acid.

That room full of stiff, balding, suit-stuffed men had eviscerated him. The cheat sheet hadn’t been worth a damned thing when they had barely even let him talk. They’d barraged him with questions, rapid-fire and accusatory, and before he’d even finished half a sentence in stammered response another would start up. If this was a trial by fire, he’d been completely and utterly burned—and only Forsythe’s hand against the small of his back, concealed by his chair, had kept him from running from the room in the first five minutes.

He coughed one last time, then straightened and flushed, wiping at his mouth—only to find Forsythe watching him, obligingly holding out a damp folded cloth and a little paper cup full of blue mouthwash, the scent so strong it stung his nose.

“Here, young Master Ashton. This should help.”

Ash took the cup and swigged it back, swishing it around his mouth before slipping past Forsythe to spit into the sink, then rinsing with water before dabbing clean with the cloth. “Don’t tell me where you were hiding that,” he said—only to turn and find Forsythe offering a plastic-wrapped toothbrush and a travel tube of toothpaste that seemed to have materialized from nowhere. Ash sighed. “Or that.”

“As I said, a proper valet is always prepared.”

Ash leaned his hip against the wide counter, the same slate as the floors and walls, and ripped the plastic off the toothbrush. He felt hollow, and not just because he’d just emptied himself out. “So you knew I was going to come running out of that meeting ready to puke.”

“I had an idea it would not go well, preparations or not.”

“They hate me,” Ash said miserably, then laid a strip of toothpaste on the brush and stuck it in his mouth, mumbling around the bristles. “They want me to fail.”

“They want to make money.” Forsythe leaned his bulk against the counter next to Ash, folding his arms over his chest and tilting his head back to regard the ceiling contemplatively, dimmed white fluorescents reflecting from the lenses of his glasses. “Right now, they do not believe you are capable of accomplishing that goal.”

Ash wrinkled his nose, then finished scrubbing his mouth out, spat, and rinsed before drying his face on one of the towels stacked to the side of the sink. “They’re probably right.”

“Are they?”

He eyed Forsythe sidelong. “You think they aren’t?”

Forsythe shrugged, so close one massive shoulder brushed against Ash. “You are here, when you could be running away.”

“That’s nothing. Being here doesn’t matter if I don’t do anything useful while I’m here.”

“Then let us be useful, young Master.” Forsythe straightened, pressing a hand to his chest in one of those light bows, even if it was significantly less mocking this time. And Ash might almost think there was actual concern in his gaze, as Forsythe fixed him with a searching, lingering look. “Are you well enough to work? Do you need medication?”

“No.” Ash shook his head, drying his hands and dropping the towel. “No, let’s get to work.”

“I am at your disposal.”

Ash managed a faint smile. “Going to be the Alfred to my Bruce Wayne?”

Jaw tightening, Forsythe scowled. “I am neither that old nor that wrinkled.”

With a grin, Ash folded his arms over his chest. “Are you insulted that I think you’re old?”

“You do not think I am old.” That scowl faded into another penetrating look—knowing, as if reminding Ash how he’d clutched at Forsythe’s arms, how he’d melted and gasped and arched when the man had kissed him like a tempest. And that tempest seemed to sweep over him in a rush of body heat as Forsythe brushed past him, sliding body to body in the narrow space for a moment before breaking free, voice drifting over his shoulder. “And I think you rather find my age appealing.”

Heat suffused Ash’s face and crawled down his neck. He stared after him. “…Forsythe!”

Pausing to hold the bathroom door, Forsythe turned a dark glance over his shoulder. “For my wisdom and experience, of course.”

“I…” Ash gulped, straggling after him—then scowled, resisting the urge to fucking shove that broad back. “Of course.”

Asshole, he muttered mentally.

Fucking demon.

ASH HAD BARELY SETTLED AT his desk and pulled the laptop up on a new email with the meeting minutes—Ms. Vernon had been the only person besides Forsythe in the room not grilling him—for his review when his cellphone buzzed in his pocket.

He fished it out and winced at Andrew’s name on the text preview. He flashed a guilty glance at Forsythe, but the man was fixed on his own laptop, typing rapidly, long fingers elegant on the keys in efficient drumbeat notes. Ash swiveled his chair away a little, then swiped his unlock code and read the text.

Hey haven’t seen you for a few days

Followed by:

Wanna hook up tonight

Ash scrunched his nose. Just yesterday he might have said yes in a heartbeat. Andrew was easy, uncomplicated, handsome in a sort of overly tanned Ken doll way, their relationship completely shallow. They weren’t even friends, not really—not like Vic, whom Ash had known since boarding school. Andrew was just another bratty rich kid who always said yes, didn’t ask questions, didn’t get personal, and didn’t want Ash to stick around until morning. They were a habit for each other, when a hookup was too much work.

And for some reason, the idea of Andrew made Ash feel bizarrely ill.

Maybe because Andrew didn’t taste like embers and calm, quiet command.

With a surreptitious glance for Forsythe, Ash dropped his phone back in his pocket and settled back to work.

And ignored his phone when it buzzed again ten minutes later—and again not long after, before the ringtone chimed. He grit his teeth and reached into his pocket to mute his phone without even looking at the screen. Even if it wasn’t Andrew, he didn’t have time for Vic right now. Or for some tabloid reporter who managed to get his number. Or for demanding phone calls from business partners he had no idea what to say to. He had an entire fucking mess on his desk with a contractor build dispute and some labor union threatening a lawsuit when he didn’t know a goddamned fucking thing about New York unions and labor laws, and of course Forsythe chose now to be bizarrely silent and withdrawn instead of a know-it-all telling him everything before he even asked—

A polite knock came at the door, muted through the heavy slab of slate. Forsythe’s rapid-fire typing stopped; Ash glanced up as the door swung open. Ms. Vernon peered around almost tentatively, her warmth subdued, her dark skin subtly ashen.

“Mr. Harrington?” she ventured…and that was when Ash’s stomach sank. She never called him that. And she met his eyes, her own dark and aching, as she continued, “…Ashton. I…it’s the hospice center. They’ve been trying to reach you. I’ve got them on line two.”

For a moment Ash couldn’t breathe. His lungs were stone, and he couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, everything choking inside him.

Then Forsythe’s hand curled against his wrist, clasping it against the arm of the chair—and Ash realized he was gripping at the leather in a white-knuckled grasp with both hands. But that touch seemed to free him from his frozen spell. Mouth dry, he managed to rasp, “Thank you, Ms. Vernon.”

She nodded, offering him a wan smile, and slipped out, pulling the door tactfully closed. Ash stared at the desk phone, at the red light for line two, that gentle hand on his wrist the only thing keeping him from bolting. He lifted his gaze to Forsythe’s; Forsythe nodded, silent encouragement, and somehow it felt as though through that touch he bled his strength into Ash, giving him the courage to pick up the receiver from its cradle and tap the button to take the call.

“Hello?” he croaked.

“Mr. Ashton Harrington?” an authoritative, not unkind female voice said.

“Y-yes, that’s me.”

“This is Nurse Failia Hawkins as Fairways Hospice. It…it’s about your father.” Her voice softened. “There’s no easy way to say this.”

Ash closed his eyes. His throat knotted, trying to strangle his voice, his breath. “He’s not…?”

“Not yet,” she assured him, yet the next words were anything but reassuring. “But his vitals are low. It may not be long, if you can come.”

Ash nodded—then cursed himself. Like she could fucking see him. “I…I…” He had to speak. Had to keep himself under control. Had to be the adult here, and act like he knew how to handle any of this at all. “I’m coming right now. Thank you,” he managed.

Then dropped the phone back in its cradle before he could hear her response.

That hand on his wrist tightened. He opened his eyes, staring at Forsythe.

“Forsythe…”

“I’ll bring the car around immediately,” Forsythe promised, that deep, rolling voice soft with understanding.

“Thank you,” Ash repeated numbly.

Forsythe said nothing.

But at first he didn’t leave, either.

He only shifted that grip on Ash’s wrist to cover his hand, enveloping it in his own, resting there for a moment of reassurance as though that massive hand had the strength and surety to hold Ash’s crumbling world into place.

Then he stood and, with one lingering look, left Ash alone.

Alone and free to curl in his chair, burying his face in his thighs with a grieving, miserable keen.

HE’D MANAGED TO SPEND HIMSELF in dry sobs by the time Forsythe came back up for him; Ash refused to step outside for the brief few steps from the tower to the car with his face streaked with tears, not when he’d probably be giving a hovering reporter a feature shoot that would further embarrass his father’s name. He was grateful for Forsythe’s rather obvious shifts to place his body between Ash and any particularly open lines of sight, as he escorted him to the car.

And he was grateful to Forsythe for not expecting anything of him, not even a single word, as he drove them through New York City’s busy traffic and into the quieter, winding suburban roads leading out to Fairways Hospice Center.

Set against low, unassuming hills of well-tended green and made up of multiple private little cottages scattered around the main building, Fairways didn’t look like somewhere where people were dumped off to die in peace. Every last one of those cottages was just a cozy little mausoleum.

The bodies inside just didn’t yet know they were dead.

The gate guard waved them through after checking Ash’s ID. Forsythe parked in the main lot, let Ash out of the back of the car, then hung back, clearly waiting. Ash stared across the almost violently green grass—so offensively bright and alive—toward his father’s cottage, tucked away behind a few others. He’d only been here once, the first day after the collapse, and suddenly lawyers were talking about living wills and making decisions that flew over Ash’s head like a cloud of buzzing gnats while he watched his father be transferred from a gurney to a quilt-laden bed, unmoving and barely breathing, tubes shoved up his nose and down his throat.

Ash had wanted to scream at him, so much. Wanted to scream because his father had planned for this, so efficiently that the second he collapsed this machine kicked into place ejecting Calvin Harrington into this retirement home for the dead and kidnapping Ash into a kingship he’d never asked for, never wanted.

And right now, Ash didn’t trust that if he walked in there he wouldn’t start screaming anyway.

“Young Master,” Forsythe urged gently.

“I know,” Ash said around the lump in his throat. “I know. I just…need a second.”

“Of course.”

Ash stood there for long moments, staring across the grass, letting his eyes unfocus until he could only see the blue of sky and the dark hard line of trees seaming the earth to the clouds far distant. Like this, when the entire world was blurred, the wet film of tears masking his eyes didn’t have to be real.

It was just an illusion of the skyline, the strange dreaming curve of the world.

He stayed like that for several long breaths, until he could breathe without tasting salt and his chest didn’t feel like a hollow death’s rattle.

Then he set off across the paved walks cutting the grass into puzzle pieces, Forsythe an ever attentive shadow in his wake.

All was silent inside his father’s cottage, save for that awful wheeze of the respirator—the curtains drawn, the lights dimmed as if already in mourning, the room so tastefully and lushly appointed it looked like a funeral parlor with his father already laid out in state for the wake—if not for the slow, shallow, almost invisible rise and fall of his chest. A nurse in floral patterned scrubs hovered over the bed, adjusting Calvin Harrington’s breathing tube with gentle hands, but as Ash eased the door open and slipped into that terrible rotting death-smell mixed with the desperate scent of cleansers and fresh-cut flowers, she excused herself with an almost deferential nod.

Then the door closed, and it was only Ash, Forsythe…and the thin wisp of flesh in the bed that he used to call his father.

He almost didn’t recognize Calvin Harrington. His father had looked weak and frail when he’d seen him just a few days ago, but now…now he was almost nonexistent, so translucent Ash imagined he could see the rusty color of the sheets shining through his body. His bones were knobs threatening to punch through filmy parchment skin, his cheeks sunken in until the outlines of his teeth pressed against his flesh, his eyes recessed so deep they were just pits, shadows, in his skull.

That wasn’t his father.

That was a skeleton trying to crawl free from its flesh sack, a nightmare trying to come to life.

He still remembered his father standing tall in elegant suits, powerful yet with a casual ease that put people off their guard around him, his graying hair and weathered hands seeming to speak of both wisdom and temperance, kindness and surety. Whatever life had filled that man had fled, leaving behind only this husk like a shed skin.

Ash took one step closer to the bed, then stopped, rooted to the spot. His mouth twisted and trembled in this awful, hurtful way that he couldn’t stop, screwing up no matter how he tried to control it, and a terrible bark coughed up his throat only to catch against his palms as he clapped them over his mouth. Everything turned stinging and hot and runny, colors blurring together until he couldn’t see that terrible thing in the bed anymore. He couldn’t see anything but the colors of heartbreak, melting and running down the inner walls of his chest.

“Young Master?” Forsythe asked softly—tactful inquiry, unspoken question:

Shall I go?

He knew what Forsythe was doing. What he was asking. If Ash wanted to be alone with this; if he wanted to save his pride.

All he wanted was for this to not be happening. Not now. Not yet. Not ever.

And he turned, before he could stop himself…and flung himself against Forsythe’s chest, gripping up handfuls of his suit jacket.

“Forsythe,” he gulped out, burying his face against his broad chest, every breath coming out on a sob. “Brand.”

After several moments, Brand’s arms came around him. Brand was so large, this fortress of a man, and with those arms around him it felt like Ash was on the inside and the world was on the outside and if he just held on hard enough, Brand’s bulk could wall the pain away. Brand enveloped him in solid, quiet, stable warmth, in the scents of cool earth and musky darkness that eased away the scents of death, and for just these moments Ash closed his eyes and let himself hide.

“I know, young Master,” Brand murmured, that lilt to his voice gentle, his breaths stirring Ash’s hair. “I know.”

No matter how Ash tried, he couldn’t stop crying. He’d cried so fucking much since that phone call, but every time he thought he’d emptied himself out some new reservoir of pain inside him punctured and bled out in a fresh wash of tears. Every time he’d cried alone, shoving away from anyone before they could see more than a few faint trickles of tears.

But Brand let him not be alone, in these moments.

And Ash clung to that, for what small comfort it was—until the flood finally slowed. Until he could breathe again without feeling like the stitches binding him whole would snap. Until he could find his voice, and not just another wretched, keening cry of pain. Taking several shaky breaths, he scrubbed his nose against his wrist, then curled his fingers in Brand’s coat again and rested his cheek to his chest.

“Stay?” he whispered. “Stay with me.”

“Of course,” Brand answered—as if there could be no other answer.

Ash didn’t resist, as Brand guided him to the deeply upholstered sofa settled against the wall near the bed. Gently, Brand eased him down, then settled next to him with one heavy arm draped around Ash, holding him against his side. Ash leaned into him, biting his lip, forcing himself to look at the fragile shape of his father in the bed once more—then looking away once more, whimpering and shaking his head in denial and hiding his face against Brand’s side.

He would feel guilty for this later, knowing he had essentially bought the man’s comfort and compassion, but right now he didn’t have it in him to feel anything but the ache of impending loss—and relief that someone, anyone was here, rather than leaving him to face this alone.

Leaving him to stand vigil on his own, when every miniscule breath was like the second hand ticking down, down, down to the hour of his father’s death.

He didn’t know how long they sat there—the only sound the respirator, Ash’s sniffles, and the strong, steady beat of Brand’s heart against his cheek. Ash felt like something was building up inside him, something that would come out as a scream if he didn’t wrench it down into something more tame, more sensible, pressing against the insides of his lips until he couldn’t take it anymore and let it spill out in words.

“I don’t know how to deal with this.” His voice was a scratchy mess, an invasion in the almost sacramental stillness of this death-watch, and he winced, bowing his head, staring down at his knees. “I…I know it has to happen to everyone someday. We’re not immortal. But you imagine this slow thing, you know? Every day they’re a little bit less of themselves, and you have time to cope with them slipping away. Years of grains falling through the hourglass.” He rubbed at his aching throat. “But for me…one moment he was there, and the next his hourglass was shattered with only a few grains left.” His lips trembled, and he pressed them together, fighting against that warning of fresh tears and shaking his head. “It’s too sudden.”

“I know.”

Something about the hush in Brand’s voice, the edge to it, made Ash look up—but the man wasn’t looking at him. He was staring at the bed, at Calvin Harrington, but his eyes were distant behind his glasses, green unfocused and far away, seeing other things.

“Forsythe…?”

Brand shook himself, then looked down at Ash. He looked almost confused for a moment, something strange flickering across his face, before he admitted, “My parents died when I was eight.” He said it with the same blunt calm with which he said everything else—but those depthless eyes told a different story, strange and deep with unspoken thoughts, glimmering. “An automobile crash. I was the only survivor, save an older sister who wasn’t in the car that night.” He hesitated, lips parted in silence for long moments, before he continued, “As you said…too sudden. The hourglass, shattered.” His gaze strayed away from Ash once more, and he adjusted his glasses absently. “It changes your life in an instant.”

“I’m sorry.” As deeply as Ash ached…there was room in him to ache for Brand, too, he found. And he didn’t know what to do, so he did what felt right—and shifted to lean harder against Brand’s side, resting his head to his shoulder. “What…happened after that? If it’s okay for me to ask.”

Brand turned his head toward Ash; his cheek brushed warm against Ash’s hair. “I stopped up with my sister. She was a nanny for the Newcombs.”

“The Newcombs…? Vic’s parents?”

“One generation back, young Master.” A touch of amusement. “His grandparents. His father was one of my sister’s charges, for all that he was older than I at the time. The Newcombs were kind enough to allow her to take me in with no charge for room and board, so I learned to make myself useful around the house.” Brand shrugged lightly, powerful shoulders moving beneath the suit coat, shifting Ash’s weight. “I found comfort, I think, in taking care of things. As if, if I took enough proper care, they would not be taken away from me.”

Ash bit his lip. He didn’t know what to say. Brand Forsythe was a stranger to him; over the past few days he’d managed to stitch himself into the fabric of Ash’s life, but he’d put himself in a role as ubiquitous and yet colorless as furniture, as utensils.

These words—quietly, rawly, yet so freely given—made him a person, rich with life and color.

And Ash didn’t know what to do with that, so he only curled his arms around Brand’s arm, leaning in close, and listened.

“After a time,” Brand continued softly, “it became natural. And when I was nineteen, a young Mr. Newcomb—lost much as you are, soon to be married with no idea what to do with an estate and an inheritance—offered me a formal position in the household.”

“Don’t that bother you?” Ash ventured. “Living for someone else, instead of for yourself?”

Brand smiled faintly. “What makes you think I don’t live for myself?”

“I just…” Fumbling, Ash shook his head. “Isn’t there anything else you’ve ever wanted?”

“Someone to care for.” And then those darkened eyes were on him again—locking on him, holding him, drawing him in until the terrible mausoleum of a room fell away and there was only an unspoken question swimming in eyes as dark a green as a still deep pond at night, glimmering beneath firefly-light. “Nearly everyone I loved was taken from me in an instant, young Master Ashton. Is it so strange that what I should want most in the world is to keep the people I care for comfortable and safe?”

“But…how can your care for people who are paying you to do it?”

“Sometimes it is not about the money.” That warm, reassuring arm tightened around him. “Do you think I would not care for you if you did not pay me?”

Ash’s breaths caught. He—fuck, he was too emotional right now, and this…this was hitting him hard, gutting him in ways he couldn’t handle. He ducked his head, staring down at his lap. “…I think you wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t paying you. It’s your job, and you can’t care for someone you’ve known for three days.”

“I came to you under terms of employment, yes,” Brand countered. “Money would not have been enough to make me stay. Not even for these few short days.”

Something in that rich, velvety voice, something compelling and soft, drew Ash to look up at him again. He didn’t understand Brand Forsythe, when something seemed laid bare and naked on that elegant face—but it was written in a language Ash didn’t know how to read.

“Forsythe…?”

“Brand,” he corrected softly.

“…Brand.” He swallowed back the lump in his throat. “I don’t—”

“…A-Ash…?” drifted across the room—low, creaking, whispery as a ghost.

But familiar as the sound of Ash’s own voice, cutting through him with a knife’s keen edge.

He jerked his head up. “Dad…?” His heart stopped, then started again.

His father’s eyes were open.

His eyes were open, and he was struggling to speak, coughing and choking around the respirator tube feeding down his throat.

“Dad!”

Ash shot to his feet, flinging himself toward the bed, fumbling at the thing in his father’s throat, fingers clumsy, his breaths coming so short and tight he might as well be choking on the goddamned tube himself. Then Brand was there—nudging him gently out of the way, his capable hands gripping the respirator tube, easing it back, slipping it past his father’s lips. Calvin Harrington coughed, his entire body racking, jerking, before he sank to the bed, breathing in deep, heaving, but clean gasps. Ash gripped the edge of the bed rail desperately, blurring beads of wetness turning his vision into burning prisms, silently begging this wasn’t it—the last moment before his father slipped away.

But his father only settled against the bed, blinking muzzily, breathing hard until it began to slow. His gaze darted around, then landed on Ash, a bit cloudy but there, life and presence in dark blue eyes shadowed by the tangle of iron-gray hair falling across his brow.

“…Ash,” he rasped, as if confirming something to himself. His voice was thready, weak, but God, he was talking, making sense— “Where…am I? And why—” He broke off in another cough, hollow and deep, but brief. “Wh-why…do I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck?”

Ash couldn’t help a bark of laughter that was more of a sob as his eyes spilled over, hot trails scorching down his cheeks. “You’re in the hospice center you fucking arranged because you didn’t tell me you had cancer, and you’ve been in a coma for almost a fucking week.”

His father blinked quizzically. “Oh,” he said, rather blankly. “That sounds about right. Explains why you’re looking at me like I was dying.”

Ash grinned. He couldn’t help it. He was fucking terrified, afraid his father was about to close his eyes for the last time right now after a few final words, but God he was awake and talking and lucid, and that had to be something, right?

“You were dying, you dick.”

Calvin Harrington let out a measured sigh, then shifted himself subtly, as if testing his body, before settling. “…not yet, I think. Not if I get a choice. Also, your language is atrocious.” Then he frowned, wrinkling his nose. “Do I have to stay here?”

“I see where young Master Ashton gets it from,” Brand said flatly.

Calvin Harrington’s gaze darted past Ash to Brand. “Who are you?”

“The valet.”

His father arched one dark brow. “So the company’s still in one piece.”

“Hey!” Ash spluttered, then laughed weakly and scrubbed at his cheeks. “Fuck. Barely. You dumped a lot on me, Dad. Including, you know, fucking dying.”

With an amused sound, his father fixed a wry look on Ash, gaze warm, tired. “And I don’t doubt you had it in you to handle it.” His emaciated shoulders bunched beneath his pajamas as he gathered his arms under himself. “But I think the obituary’s a bit premature. If you don’t mind—”

Ash realized he was struggling to get up—and too weak, but still trying, his entire body straining as if he’d snap himself like a twig in his stubbornness. Swearing, Ash gripped his shoulders gently, trying to push him back down.

“Lie down,” he said firmly—but his father only scowled and struggled against him weakly. “Dad, lie down!” Goddammit, he didn’t know how to do this without hurting his father, and he loosened his grip, flinging Brand a helpless look. “Brand—”

Eyes glinting almost in warning, Brand leaned over the bed and gently pressed his the flats of his palms to Calvin Harrington’s shoulders, holding him down with careful but inexorable strength. “Go fetch the doctor,” he said firmly. “I’ll watch your father.”

Nodding quickly, breathlessly, Ash retreated from the bed and darted for the door—but not without catching his father’s sardonically irritated voice drifting after him.

“From my son’s keeper to my jailer,” Calvin Harrington said. “And I don’t even know your name.”

“Brand Forsythe.”

“The Newcombs’ man.”

“Young Master Ashton’s man, now,” Brand corrected.

“I see,” was all his father said—before Ash ducked from the room and pelted across the grass, his heart pumping furiously as he ran for the main building.

Because he was afraid if he wasn’t fast enough, if he didn’t find the doctor and bring her back to tell him for sure his father would be okay…

The man would slip away, and Ash wouldn’t even be there to see him go.