by Paige James
Before I can even properly analyze it, before I can figure out what to do with it, it’s gone, replaced by this new casual ambivalence he’s giving me.
“I guess I’d better let you get back to your volunteering,” he says with a cool, professional smile. “I’ll be anxious to read the rest.”
I say nothing. I just smile. I imagine the gesture that I force onto my face is every bit as politely indifferent as his seems to be. I watch Ebon walk away, waiting until the door closes quietly behind him before I drop into a squat. I wrap my trembling arms around my bent legs and squeeze my eyes shut. I wonder how much more I can take of this kind of stress and deceit. It’s taking a toll. Maybe not on Sage, but it sure is on Willow. And Willow stopped her meds a while back.
Am I asking for trouble? Can Ebon see something in my writing that I can’t even see myself?
Neither those questions nor the million-and-one others floating around in my head have answers. And tonight I’m too exhausted, too emotionally drained to try and figure out some of them. I just need to sleep. I just need to be Willow—uncomplicated Willow—for a few hours before I dive back into the unrivaled chaos my life has become.
As I collect myself and head back upstairs to re-enter the world of Romeo and Juliet, it isn’t lost on me how tragically similar our stories could be. Love. Obsession. Betrayal. Deception. Ruination.
My name is Willow Masters and this is my life, I think with no small amount of bitter regret. It isn’t until I’m headed home just over two hours later that my phone rings—my Willow phone—plunging me into an even bigger set of problems.
I’m stopped in a turning lane, waiting for a break in the traffic so that I can dart across the road and into the parking lot outside my apartment building. Barely glancing down at the screen, I hit the TALK button and hold the phone to my ear as I hit the accelerator, charging out into the gap between two cars.
“Hello?”
“Willow?”
That voice. I’ve known it all my life. And I’ve never dreaded hearing it more.
It’s Sage. I’m almost to the parking lot when I hear her next words. Almost.
“I’m coming home in two days. Can you pick me up at the airport?”
My foot reflexively hits the break, as though that might help stall the coming storm.
From the corner of my eye, I see a flash of light right before the sound of crunching metal gives way to an ocean of blackness that swallows me whole.
That’s the last thing I remember.
To be continued…
Session Three coming April 22nd.
FROM THE HEART
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