If Only (The Willowbrook Series Book 1) by Ashlyn Mathews Page B

toward the comfort and safety of her house, her cheeks stinging from the cold and rain.
    Asa couldn’t tell if he heard her or not, but she thought she detected a trace of bitterness in his laughter, carried to her by the rough wind.
    Past hurts divided them, creating a chasm neither were willing to jump. How to make things right? If she confessed her guilt in her father’s death, she would have to tell Rhys how she truly felt about him, and Asa wasn’t ready to be that vulnerable again.
    Dropping the broken umbrella on her front porch, she fumbled in her coat pocket for the house keys. With his grandma’s death, the chance to settle things between them would disappear. Rhys had no other reason to return to Willowbrook.
    Once inside her house, Asa closed the door, pulled her cell phone out of her coat pocket, and glanced at the time before she set the phone on the small table next to the door. Near noon. Business at the Magic Pages Café was slow, but she had promised the café’s owner and her friend, Eve, she’d return to work after the funeral.
    After grabbing a hanger from the closet by the door, Asa hurried to the bathroom, shrugged off the wet coat, and hung it on the curtain rod. Water dripped off the sleek black material, creating a pool on the linoleum floor. She quickly tossed a towel over the spot and rushed to her bedroom to change.
    The house was small—one bedroom and bathroom—but it was hers, and that’s what mattered. To have something to call her own even if the house was bought with the life insurance money from her father’s death.
    As soon as she was dressed in a pair of jeans and a navy blue hoodie over a gray t-shirt, Asa put on a waterproof jacket, snagged another umbrella from the closet, and darted out the door toward town.
    Ever since the car accident, she walked or used public transportation. It wasn’t because she didn’t have the money to buy another car after her Honda Accord was declared totaled by the insurance company.
    No, her unwillingness to get behind the wheel had more to do with the guilt she shouldered from her father’s death. When her mother had discovered her reluctance to drive again, she suggested counseling, implying Asa was crazy. But she hadn’t budged.
    She wasn’t ready to let go of the guilt, her refusal a constant reminder of her role in her father’s death. If only—
    Stopping, she slanted the umbrella back and lifted her face to the sky. That day, metal had slammed into metal and darkness had swept over her. Later, after she regained consciousness, the news of her father’s death drifted into her haze of pain before the realization sliced her heart in one agonizing cut.
    If only she and her father hadn’t argued at that instant. If only her tears hadn’t obscured her sight as she took that fatal left turn.
    People say when a car accident happens, don’t admit fault. Asa owned and accepted the truth—she was responsible for the wreck. If only she’d spoken those words when they had mattered the most.
    Instead, while Rhys held her hand and said everything would be okay, she had blamed him for her father’s death. He drove too fast, and her father hadn’t stood a chance when Rhys’s jacked up truck rammed into the front passenger side of her Honda Accord.
    After he’d released her hand, he stood and turned his back on her as she lay on the medic’s gurney, her cheeks wet from her tears.
    Since that time, he had dropped by town now and again to visit his grandmother, but rarely acknowledged Asa except for an occasional nod from a distance. To her, his small gesture seemed full of hurt and sadness over their broken friendship.
    Beneath the shelter of her umbrella, Asa stared at the ground and took deep, trembling breaths. Was it crazy to crave the need to feel guilt over and over, to hold onto the fresh pain of loss every time she walked or bused the distance rather than drove?
    Looking ahead again, she realized it wasn’t crazy at all. Her refusal