“Just on the phone now with the hospital morgue,” she whispered around her hand.
The elevators opened and a cute man with a smile came over to us with his hand out. He was tall enough to look me in the eye, except he slouched a bit, and his eyes were an interesting sage color, though they tended more toward gray. When he was done shaking with me, he brushed his golden brown curls off his forehead. “Hi, I’m Marshall Wallace,” he said. Soft-spoken and well-dressed, he seemed like the sort of man who would do well with grieving family members.
“I’m River Demchenko, and I happen to know the laws in this state surrounding corpses. He wants to see the one that belongs to him.”
Paxton stiffened at my side and I realized maybe I should have chosen my words more carefully, but I smiled at Mr. Wallace, who actually grinned back.
“I wasn’t going to keep him away from his husband. I don’t work for a funeral home. They’re the ones you have to watch out for because they don’t get paid unless they keep the body—” He cut a look at Paxton, who’d gone pale, and while I felt bad about that, I had wanted to push this through as fast as possible.
“Yes, he wants to see his husband.”
“Come with me.”
Paxton started forward, and I went to follow, but he turned and put a hand on my chest. The raw, wounded expression on his face had me sucking in a deep breath.
“Thank you, but I have to do this alone.”
Nodding, I stayed there and watched until he was in the elevator. It hurt to know he was off to have his heart ripped out of his chest and stomped on, and the way he’d touched me just now… I was the worst sort of asshole for wishing he would do it again.
3
Jayce
The guy from the morgue tried small talk on me, chatting about the weather and the latest win from the New Gothenburg hockey team, but it didn’t help distract me from what was about to happen. I was going to see my dead husband’s body. I didn’t think I could ever truly prepare for it, but I’d nearly drunk myself into a stupor earlier before I decided I needed to see him. The sad fact was, though, all I wanted to do was feel something. Right now, the numbness was debilitating, and I hated it.
“This way, Mr. Paxton.” Marshall, I think I remembered his name as, smiled at me and opened the door to a room that felt like a freezer. Cold air swirled around me as soon as I crossed the threshold and I shivered.
“Sorry about that. We set the temp at around fifty for the bodies. Keeps the smell down.” Marshall winced but held a sympathetic smile on his face as he ambled toward the left side of the room. The drawers he stopped in front of started at hip height and stacked two high, with sturdy handles to pull them out. I’d been in this morgue before, once or twice for cases, but those had been entirely different circumstances. I hadn’t been drunk those times, nearly stumbling as I walked, and I hadn’t been here to seeAlex.
“Your husband is over here.” Marshall tugged at the handle of a drawer and drew it out with the careful consideration you’d expect from someone working at a morgue.
I stepped forward cautiously, my boots squeaking on the freshly polished floor. The light buzzing noise of the coolant system wasn’t as loud as my heart thumping. Fear curled in my gut, low and tight, and I didn’t know if it was because I was afraid of seeing his body, or whether I was scared of feeling nothing again.
Marshall grabbed the sheet covering the still form and folded it back to Alex’s chest. I sucked in a breath. There he was, just as I’d imagined him.
Pale. Bloated from the water. Not the man I’d shared my life with.
His skin had never been that white. Alex had always been tanned, and I was jealous of it. When I’d first met him, I was as white as a ghost, like any other Caucasian British man. He’d teased me about how paleIwas, and we’d laughed about the differences. Even a few years in Miami as a teenager hadn’t tanned me as much as I’d wanted, and Alex thought it’d been adorable. Five years of being in the sun every chance we got changed things for me, though. We swam in the ocean and the Great Lakes, like the same one he’d drowned in. Usually I was with him. I didn’t understand why he went alone this time.
I reached out with shaking fingers and touched his cheek. This wasn’t my husband. These sallow cheeks didn’t belong to Alex, and neither did the bruised jaw. His chest had aYshape cut into it that had been stitched back up, and the sight made me want to vomit.
“How did he drown?” I whispered. I didn’t know if I was asking Marshall or myself. “He was a marine combat diver. He knows how to swim.”
Marshall made a face, like he didn’t really want to answer the question. Was he qualified to give one? I wasn’t certain if he was a doctor or not. New Gothenburg had a coroner, and I wasn’t sure what his qualifications were. “As far as I know, the investigation is still ongoing. However, from the results of his autopsy, we can conclude he drowned. His lungs were full of water.”
“He could swim,” I said. I wasn’t really arguing. If anyone knew how quickly nature could change it was me. In the marines we’d been in rough terrain, including the water. One mission nearly resulted in my own drowning, when the tides changed quickly, but Alex had been there to drag me to shore, just like I should have been there for him.
“The ability to swim isn’t always a saving factor, Mr. Paxton. A strong rip current can surprise even the toughest swimmers. The lakes are hell for it because most people don’t expect them. The body gets tired easily.” Marshall’s lips twitched, like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to smile sadly at me again or not. “It happens a few times every year because people think the lake is safer than it is. I’m sorry for your loss. This must be a difficult time for you.”
I didn’t feel anything, except hatred for myself, maybe, but certainly no grief. I stared down at Alex’s once-handsome face. What kind of husband was I? Had I stopped loving him? No, I could never have stopped loving Alex. He saved me, physically and mentally.
I shook my head, stepped back, and swallowed around the lump in my throat. I could still taste the beer I’d consumed, a thick unpleasant coating on my tongue, telling me that maybe I shouldn’t have driven tonight. It wasn’t fair to lecture residents on drunk driving when I’d done the same thing. In my inebriated stupor, I’d thought about going back to the junkyard, finding Hayden and asking him what the fuck he was thinking by being a King, but I didn’t have the right. I was the one who left my little brother behind. Apparently that’s the man I was, always abandoning the ones who loved me. First Hayden, now Alex.
“What is wrong with you?”
Alex had laid into me a few weeks before he went missing. He’d been angry, face red and upper lip curled in an annoyed snarl. We fought sometimes, so that night hadn’t been anything new. We always made up.
“Is it too much just to ask for some help around the house? Christ, Jayce.”
