Page 10 of Linger

And that...that fear and this fucked-up room we were standing in was why I couldn’t let Tree mean anything to me.

WILLOW

“How long are you gonna keep this to yourself?” my fourth-grade teaching partner, and mentor, asked from where she was lounging on the couch in my classroom. “It really isn’t fair to those of us who need to live vicariously through others.”

A disbelieving laugh left me as I put the finishing, decorative touch on the last of my walls. Cora was one of those endlessly happy and energized women who truly thrived off teaching. She was also incredibly nosey and wildly young at heart, and the entire personality fit the woman who was almost old enough to be my mother.

I’d quickly come to adore her in the time I’d known her.

“Who? People with amazing husbands?” I pointed at her with one of the leftover cutouts. “Was it every day last week, or just almost every day, that he brought you coffee in the morning and lunch in the afternoon? Because I know he did it today.”

She waved me off. “Honey, I know he’s amazing. Still need to live vicariously if it has you looking like this.”

“Who are we living vicariously through?” an unfamiliar voice asked just before a blonde poked her head into my room and sent Cora a wink.

“Do not listen to this one,” Cora said, pointing at the blonde. “She will forever be in the honeymoon phase with her husband. They’re disgusting.”

The blonde snorted as she stepped into my room and went to sit on the arm of the couch as Cora made introductions.

“Willow, this is Aurora—Rorie. Rorie teaches kindergarten.” She looked at Rorie and mock-whispered, “This is the new girl.”

“I had a feeling,” Rorie whispered back before looking at me. “I heard we were getting a new teacher. You’re from Virginia, right? What brought you to North Carolina?”

In an instant, acid spread through my veins like flash fire. Forceful enough to make the room spin and my lungs ache as I fought the sickening images burned into the back of my mind.

“Yes—Richmond,” Cora answered for me before I could even attempt to respond. “And, apparently, Wake Forest is already treating her extremely well, but Willow here won’t give the details on why.”

That had Rorie perking up. Her eyes brightened with excitement and intrigue as I successfully forced away the mental onslaught and took a steadying breath. “Oh?”

A different kind of heat began creeping up my neck and into my cheeks as my nights with Diggs slipped back into my thoughts, overwhelming every cold and horrifying memory that used to drown me so easily.

As if a month with a man could hold that kind of power.

“You can’t keep saying ‘no one’ and ‘nothing’ when you blush like that,” Cora said victoriously, then looked at Rorie when she continued. “She’s been all glowy and walking with her head in the clouds for the last few weeks.”

“I have not,” I argued lamely, even though I was sure she was right.

“I saw you during our first meetings,” Cora maintained. “The girl who first moved here wasn’t smiling the way you are now.”

Embarrassment swept through me when I realized I was.

Not just smiling more, but right then.

But the girl who Cora first met had just packed up her entire life and moved to a small town where she hadn’t known anyone. The girl who Cora first met had felt at once ashamed for literally running away from her demons and slightly hopeful for her future for the first time in a year.

The girl who had been walking around in a daze the past month? The girl in front of them now?

God, I didn’t even know who I was anymore, and I couldn’t begin to grasp the emotions clashing and coursing through my veins.

But this had to be what it felt like to be high.

My body felt light and my stomach was in a constant state of chaos—all fluttering wings and heated needs. And I was buzzing. Like there was this awareness clinging to my skin, even though I felt wholly unaware of everything around me because my every thought was on him.

At the same time, I felt insane.

Reckless and idiotic and confused and—God, what is wrong with me?

“So...” Cora said, drawing out the word and making it sound like a question.

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