Page 92 of Still Love You

"Please?"

I sigh again and yank my shirt off, leaving me in just my boxers. She pulls back the covers and we get into bed.

She slings her arm and leg over me and puts her face in the crook of my neck. She smells like strawberries from the margarita, with hints of lavender from the soap she used. The soap reminds me of the shower we'd planned to take, but I force that thought out of my head because I can't have any more blood flowing down there. It's already throbbing.

"Silas?" Willow lifts her head up and I get caught up in how beautiful she is. That long dark hair, those deep brown eyes, those perfectly shaped lips. "I meant what I said." She looks me in the eye. "I love you. I always have and I've never stopped."

"Why don't we talk later?"

She nods, then puts her head on my shoulder. "I missed you when you were away. I told myself I didn't love you so I wouldn't miss you so much. But I still did. I missed you. And I never stopped loving you, no matter how hard I tried."

I hear her sniffling. I reach down and brush my fingers over her cheek and feel the wetness from her tears. I wish this wasn't just drunk rambling. I wish she really meant what she said.

A few minutes later, she falls asleep and I do too. When I wake up, the room is still dark, except for the moonlight filtering through the thin drapes covering the windows.

Willow is no longer laying on me, but I feel her beside me, sitting up in bed.

"What are you doing?" I sit up next to her.

"Drinking some water." She's holding the bottle I gave her earlier. I'd left it on the nightstand in case she needed it.

"Do you feel okay?"

"Yeah. I just needed to sleep it off."

"Do you want me to get you anything?"

"No. I'm good." She seems fully alert now, no longer sleepy or drunk.

I check my phone and see that it's two in the morning. We left the party so early that we probably went to bed around nine. I'm not sure because I didn't check the time.

"Here." Willow hands me the empty water bottle and I set it on the nightstand.

She lies down on the bed.

"Do you want me to go?" I ask.

"No." She tugs on my hand. "Come here. I want to talk to you."

I lie down, facing her. "What do you want to talk about?"

"I need your advice and I need you to be honest with me. Can you do that?"

"Yeah. Go ahead."

She lets out a heavy sigh. "There's this guy...a guy I really like."

She's telling me about some other guy? I don't want to hear this, but I let her continue.

"Actually, I don't just like him. I love him."

So she doesn't love me. Her earlier confession was just drunk rambling. She loves some other guy. Probably some guy she met at college.

"What about him?" I ask, trying to hide my annoyance.

"The thing is...I had my future decided. Everything was all laid out in an orderly plan. I even typed up all the steps and attached them to a timeline and printed it out. I can show it to you later. Anyway, I never included marriage in my plan because the guy I would want to marry wouldn't be happy in this plan. And I want more than anything for him to be happy, so I had to let him go. But now he's back and I don't know what to do."

Wait—she's talking about me! Not some other guy.

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