Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 63716 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 319(@200wpm)___ 255(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63716 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 319(@200wpm)___ 255(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
Laurier, I’m getting worried over here. Call me back.
I couldn’t call him. Much as I wanted to hear his voice, I knew I didn’t sound like myself yet. Finally, I settled for texting him back.
I’m fine–will explain everything tonight.
Surely, they’d let me leave soon. I had a headache, but otherwise I felt totally fine.
My mom came back a few minutes later, followed by the doctor. Doctor Girardi was a tall woman with flawless skin and a friendly smile. I relaxed. She wouldn’t be smiling at me like that if everything wasn’t fine, right?
“Can I leave?” I asked her the second that introductions were over. She laughed and said I had to wait on the results of a few tests. They’d check my vision again. They’d make sure my brain wasn’t swelling, that my pupils weren’t dilating. “Once we’re sure you’re both fine, I’ll sign those discharge papers,” she said, patting my leg cheerfully.
I looked at my mom, confused. Did the doctor think that we’d both been in an accident?
My mom shrugged back at me, equally uncertain.
The doctor looked back and forth between us, and then said, “Oh.”
“Oh what?” I asked the doctor, then I looked at my mom again. “Oh what?”
They looked at each other. I saw the question in my mom’s eyes, the answer in the doctor’s. And then they both turned to me, but I knew before anyone said anything out loud.
Despite my best intentions, history had repeated itself after all.
I was pregnant.
26
JULIAN
When Willow was late, I blamed Miller. Then, as the clock creeped up on eleven, I got worried. I called her again, then tried to think of someone else to call. That was the problem with doing this relationship Willow’s way though, I didn’t have anyone else to call. If Camper had had a phone, I might have had his number, but I had no way to get in touch with her parents or her friends. I could call Miller, though, and when midnight came and went without her, I did.
I woke him up.
“You’re not working?” I asked to his groggy, disbelieving what the fuck, Lewis?
“No, I’m not working! It’s fucking–” fumbling as he read the time “--midnight!”
I hung up without explaining, a cold vise squeezing around my insides. Where the hell was Willow? Feeling like I’d been unwittingly cast in a bad melodrama, I began calling hospitals. Not one of them had a Willow Laurier. At two am, I drove to her place. I couldn’t get inside, but her car wasn’t there and her window wasn’t lit up. At three am, running on frayed nerves, I called the morgues. After each one, I felt sick relief, and then the band around my chest tightened again as I dialed the next number. When she wasn’t in any of them, I was left with a numb, creeping exhaustion mixed with confusion and trepidation. Something was wrong. I couldn’t figure out what, but something was wrong.
I fell asleep in the living room. A shitty, half sleep, half listening for her to come through the front door. I woke up too early and called the hospitals again. I couldn’t bring myself to call the morgues. Instead, I called Landon. He’d had to track down a few people in his time. If anyone short of the police could do it, it was him.
He called me back half an hour later. “Willow Laurier doesn’t exist.”
My eyes felt like they’d been scrubbed with sandpaper, and the grit had gotten into my brain. I sat, staring at the phone without seeing it, without comprehending. “Yes, she does,” I said, feeling insane. “She’s been working with Miller for the last four months. She’s been with me every night for the last three. Dana met her. I have pictures–”
“I’m sure the girl exists,” Landon cut in before I could send him proof. “But the name is wrong.”
“I didn’t get her name wrong,” I snapped.
A beat, and then Landon’s voice came down the line, heavy and meaningful. “I didn’t say you did.”
It took me a minute to figure out exactly what he was saying. And then it was so absurd that I nearly laughed. “She didn’t give me a fake name.”
Silence filled the line. Landon wasn’t going to say she had, but he wasn’t going to say she hadn’t. He was just going to let it sit out there.
“Fuck.” I scrubbed a hand over my face, fighting off all the poisonous darts of doubt. They landed anyway.
She didn’t want you to meet anyone.
She didn’t want to go out in public together.
All those times you thought she was hiding something…. she was.
“Fuck,” I said, quieter this time. I was losing the fight.
Landon said he’d look harder and see if he could find some answers. I sat on the couch in the living room, staring out at the small table on the terrace where we’d eaten so many meals. The candle was low in its waxy sheath now. The ocean beyond was shimmering like an endless sheet of blue and green diamond chips, stretching out toward the morning sky.