Page 25 of Back to Willow

But that doesn’t keep her from leaving. Running away from me, once again.

I guess some habits are hard to break.

My hands start to shake in rage, and I clench them into fists while my jaw ticks. After all of this time, instead of being happy to see me, she bolts. I can feel my body tensing in that auto-pilot mode, wanting to go after her and find out what’s wrong. It’s so fucking tempting…but I won’t.

She doesn’t deserve it.

That black hole in my chest pours right open, and all of the anger I have been bottling up inside threatens to come out.

It reminds me that she’s the one who owes me the truth and not the other way around. She’s the one that has to come to me or just stay the fuck away once and for all.

Fuck.I can’t stay here.

“Sorry, Jo. I need to leave. Can we do a rain check?” My voice is strained.

I am barely keeping myself together, and I know this amazing girl doesn’t deserve to be discarded, but I seriously can’t handle anything else tonight.

She nods and stands up at the same time as me.

“How did you arrive here? Do you want me to take you home?” I ask, just to save my conscience. Otherwise, the guilt would assault me later. I am just hoping she drove here.

I am one second away from snapping and breaking something.

“That’s okay. I brought my car. Call me when you’re free?” She gives me an apologetic smile while waving her hand, dismissing me.

“Thank you,” I say in a low tone but strong enough for her to hear.

I bolt out of the diner as if the devil’s on my tail, eager to get in my car.

I can’t even control the shakiness in my body any longer. This dark cloud filling my brain is full of rage, grief, and…hurt.

Just when I was about to accept the fact that Willow is no longer part of my life, she barges right in. Once again leaving me in the eye of a hurricane, cornered with no way out.Why?

The fragile seams of my self-control break and one fist hits the driving wheel. From there it’s a non-stop rage-filled assault on my car as I let it all out.

My hands hurt from the hits but not enough to ease the one raging on the inside. It’s dark and consuming, destroying the rest of my decaying heart.

“Fuck!”

EIGHT

Liam

Seeingherhasbrokenevery little piece that I worked so hard to fix all of these years. Losing my brother was troublesome in itself, but it was something I knew was coming considering everything that was going on, then.

She had been the real problem for me. With time, things got slightly more bearable. The memory of her wasn’t as strong. I couldn’t smell her anymore nor remember the sound of her voice, and most importantly, the pain had become a dull nagging in my chest, giving me the illusion that I was on the right path.

Except, she showed up, sending all of that hard work out the window. And now, I am in this limbo with my brain trapped in the past, overwhelmed by the memories of when things started to crumble.

By the time I was sixteen, things had been awful at home for a while. My parents had always been very strict and set in their own prejudiced perspectives. And for quite some time, they had been extra harsh on my older brother, Mason. Particularly, my dad. Nothing he ever did was good enough or met his expectations.

The continuous pressure, the back-handed comments, and the indifference took a toll on us—on Mason especially. Even with my mother’s futile attempts at diffusing the tension, he started spending less and less time at home to avoid confrontations. Except, that only worsened the short periods we all spent together.

In their eyes, there were only two paths for Mason: become a football player or go study law. When he told them he’d do neither and would take a gap year to figure it out, shit hit the fan.

First, my father cut him off, to force him to decide what he wanted, but instead, he got a job.As a mechanic.My mother almost had a heart attack because of it; I would have laughed if it wasn’t so bad.

She tried everything to get him to quit and come back home, but my dad never gave in to her, telling her my brother needed to learn the hard way.

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