A Certain Kind of Tenderness
This is what death feels like …
 
Morgan Hillier sat on the cold floor; his body was in a constant state of anxiety. There is only one truth, if Rachel Wharton dies, essential parts of me will crawl inside her and die with her. My life will never be the same, and the man I glimpsed in her presence will lose his way without her as his beacon. Their estrangement was Morgan’s fault. In a fit of alien rage and jealousy, he took his anger out on Rachel in the worst possible way, breaking her trust. Hurt and afraid, she bolted. Morgan’s insecurities about their long-standing relationship finally caught up with him. People around him got into his head, and now Rachel was fighting for her life. 
 
Rachel had never seen Morgan act so out of character; he humiliated her without scruples, but finding Helen in his hotel room, wrecked her. His abandonment was tangible, and she started running, becoming a ghost in plain clothes. When Morgan showed up to apologize, Rachel retreated so far into herself; she was incapable of anything other than being a poor slob in love. She worked to exhaustion and medicated herself with chardonnay to dull her pain. No matter how hard she tried to obliterate him, Morgan dominated her thoughts in a stream of snapshots she carried in her heart. Whatever did or didn’t happen, Rachel decided to captain her future and bring down the wall that separated them – and she was so close – until she crashed, everything faded to black, and the pain stopped.