Layla

She finally opens her eyes, but she doesn’t move.

I feel my chest constrict when we make eye contact, because again, I just want to comfort her. But not because I’m mistaking this urge for some wandering remnant of how I feel for Layla—but because I want to comfort her.

Willow.

“I’m sorry you’re so lonely,” I whisper.

She smiles, but it’s such a sad smile. “You’re the one who wrote this song. I’m no lonelier than you.”

Silence slowly descends over the room, wrapping us tightly in its grip.

But I don’t say anything to break it. I soak it up. I soak her up. No one else ever will, and that makes me sad for her.

“She’s really in love with you,” Willow says.

I don’t know why she says that. Does she sometimes feel Layla’s urges to touch and kiss me, the same way I feel the urge to touch and kiss Layla? When she’s inside of Layla, is it as confusing to her as it is to me?

“Her body is really tired tonight. I should let her sleep.” Willow sits up on the piano. “You coming to bed?”

I want to.

Which is exactly why I shouldn’t.

I swallow the yes that’s stuck in my throat and look down at the piano keys. I place my fingers on them. “You go ahead.”

She stares at me a moment, but I don’t look at her. I begin playing the song over again, and when I do, she leaves the room. After she walks upstairs and I hear the bedroom door close, I stop the song. I lower my head to the piano.

What am I doing?

And why do I not want to stop?CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I woke up determined to give Layla all my focus today. Maybe it was guilt. It wasn’t hard to give her all my focus. She was by my side most of the day because the weather outside left us with little else to do.

It’s almost midnight and Layla still hasn’t fallen asleep.

That might be because of the storm. She doesn’t like the idea of being in the middle of tornado alley during a thunderstorm, but I’ve been keeping an eye on the weather. There aren’t any tornado warnings . . . just lots of lightning and rain. And thunder that makes her tense up every time it shakes the house.

I normally find this kind of weather relaxing, but right now I’m just irritated with it because it’s keeping Layla awake.

She’s lying on the couch with me in the Grand Room, scrolling through her social media posts. Her feet are in my lap. I’m trying to finish reading the book I started six months ago—the one about the game show host who claimed to be a spy—but my eyes are just scanning the screen. I’m not soaking up any of the words because I can’t stop thinking about Willow. Layla did agree to give me a few more days in the house, but we’ll still eventually have to leave.

Willow will be alone.

It’s not like I can just come visit her—this place is in the middle of nowhere. It involves a flight, a rental car, hours of driving. It’s an entire day of travel.

I’m going to have to put an offer in on the house if I want to help her find answers eventually. Even if Layla doesn’t want to live here, I would hate for someone else to buy it. I could hire someone else to run the place—turn it back into a bed and breakfast so Willow wouldn’t be lonely. There would be a constant revolving door of strangers. She might enjoy that more than sitting alone in an empty house.

And if I owned this place, it would give me an excuse to come back occasionally. To visit Willow without Layla growing suspicious.

Is that emotional cheating?

Willow is a ghost. It’s not like she could come between me and Layla.

But I guess she has in a way.

Willow and I have grown comfortable with one another . . . to the point that I’m starting to prefer her company over Layla’s. I’m not proud of that. Layla means so much to me, but I’m fascinated—obsessed, even—with the idea that this life isn’t the only one that matters. One would think that would make me feel like this life matters even more, but I’ve felt myself growing distant from this world. I’m being pulled into Willow’s, or maybe she’s being pulled into mine. Either way, we don’t belong in each other’s worlds, but now that we’ve found an easy way to combine them, it makes me disinterested in everything else around me.

That’s not Layla’s fault. There’s nothing Layla has done wrong. She’s the victim in all of this. She was the victim six months ago, and she’s the victim now, even though she’s unaware of it. The only thing Layla did wrong is fall in love with me.