Page 67 of Where Broken Wings Fly

“Is your husband here?” I blurt.

“No,” she answers in a panic. “He’s not here.”

“I see. The kid’s dad?”

Willow nods nervously. “We came here for a fresh start.”

“Well, this is a good place to get lost.”

The way she looks at me sets my teeth on edge with anxiety. I’m so used to running and hiding from everyone to avoid the awkwardness of interacting with them. I hate the way she seems to know everything about me with a single innocent look.

“Are you here to get lost, Micah?”

“Some people don’t want to be found in the first place.”

“I thought I was coming here to get lost,” she reveals with a hiccup. “Part of me wonders if we shouldn’t have come at all.”

“Why?”

Willow shrugs. “It was easier to pretend like I’m fine when I was alone.”

“Because you don’t have to pretend to be something you’re not, right?”

Her eyes flit over to me. “Yeah.”

“I understand what that’s like. Being alone feels safer somehow.”

I have no idea where this burst of raw honesty has come from. I’ve never opened up like this, not even to a professional. Something inside of her calls out to me—dragging the despair from my soul and offering to dance.

“You don’t have to be alone forever,” she whispers.

“Trust me, no one out there wants to be around someone like me.”

“Why not? You’re a good person, Micah.”

I glance up at her, my throat constricted. “I’m damaged goods.”

Her hand tentatively reaches out to cradle mine. I don’t move. It feels weird, letting someone touch me. Her palm is warm and dry, slim fingers hesitantly curling around my own. I can almost feel the anguish pumping through her veins.

“You are not damaged goods,” she says fiercely.

“I don’t need you to comfort me. I’m okay with being alone.”

Her dark eyelashes flutter, intelligence and curiosity writhing in her gaze as her eyes search mine. The bruises on her face are nearly healed after a few weeks, revealing the natural beauty that first ensnared me.

There’s something about the way that Willow wraps her pain around herself, forming an almost-visible armour to keep the world at bay. She looks like a fallen angel, all broken dreams and pain, wrapped into a shell of bittersweet beauty.

I tried to paint her last week, but I couldn’t do it. Her tentative smiles and glimmers of hopeful optimism can’t be reduced to paint on a canvas, no matter how much I want to immortalise my memory of her for when she disappears.

“What about you?” I make myself ask.

“Huh?”

“Are you lonely?”

Willow pauses, biting her plump bottom lip. “Sometimes. I’ve never really had any friends or people close to me. But that felt normal, even if it wasn’t.”

“It was your normal. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

---