He'd gone beyond his player ways for her.
She'd grown beyond her traumatic past for him.
Together, their love was beyond.
Until one fatal accident.
__________
When she loses the love of her life in a car crash, Althea has nothing left in California...
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*ALTHEA'S POV*
October 12, 2023.
This time, he couldn't pull me back, even if I felt the harrowing tug on all my fibers with each step and a tight fist closing over my heart as I collapsed against the closed door, the tears giving way the second I was finally alone.
"Are you okay, sweetie?"
I wasn't—nor alone, nor okay—and when my large eyes shot to the woman's silhouette on the other side of the hallway, the salty drops were already halfway down my cheeks, surely taking down my makeup with them.
I should have packed a waterproof mascara, but how could I have guessed I could have so many tears when I hadn't cried in three years? How could I have guessed I would see Asher again?
"You must be Althea?" The woman approached me, while I wiped furiously my cheeks in search of a smile I could put up, though it ended up as a tight grimace as I muttered,
"I guess news travels fast..."
"Yes, the kids are real tattletales! They wouldn't shut up about the nice and talented Althea. Gracie even showed me the portraits you've helped her draw."
"Oh, I..." I shook my head and the portrait I'd already painted in my mind to focus on the woman in front of me, from her colorful nurse uniform I recognized instantly to her brown bob, passing by the basket of clean laundry under her arm and the few wrinkles around her kind smile.
"And I may have heard about last night too," she continued with a coy shrug as she handed me a tissue packet. "But at least I pulled you a smile."
Indeed, my trembling lips had relaxed into a tiny smile at the memory of the kids, and more than the tissues, I welcomed the distraction she was offering me from the chaos of my own thoughts.
"I'm Carol, by the way, the nurse who was supposed to greet you yesterday."
"Nice to meet you. I hope you're feeling better?" I asked, my voice sounding sicker than hers, and I didn't even dare think about my appearance.
"I am, luckily, because I leave this place for one day, and it's like a tornado happened in here—I mean... I'm talking about the staff room organization, not..."
Not the other natural disaster that had crashed here last night and was still brewing behind my trembling smile as her eyes widened with pity.
"But that wouldn't have happened either if I'd been here... How Oli didn't recognize you? Men can be so blind!" She shook her head, looking me up and down as if was obvious I was the smiling girl all over Mr. Robot's walls, when I couldn't even recognize my own voice.
