I Have Lived and I Have Loved - Willow Winters Page 0,3

was heavy. It felt no different from my own body temperature. I didn’t like that. It should’ve felt different. Because it was Willow’s, it should’ve felt perfect.

I stood in the doorway as I watched myself. And I kept screaming, until suddenly, I stopped. I choked on a sob, and like that, I was back in my body.

My face: dark eyes, golden blonde hair, heart-shaped chin.

My body: slender arms, long legs, and petite frame.

My heart: beautiful, broken, bleeding.

All of it on the bathroom floor in a bloodied pile.

Feeling a weird serenity, I gasped on a breath and moved next to Willow. I sat on the tile the blood hadn’t touched yet. But it would. It was seeping out of her.

I knew she was already gone. Her eyes were vacant, but I wanted one more moment. My sister and me.

I lay down, just like her.

On my stomach.

My face turned toward hers.

My hand on the floor, palm up, mirroring her.

I watched over my sister one last time before we were discovered.

There was a flash of light. Someone was coming in through my bedroom—Mom. I didn’t look up at her. I couldn’t hear much. A dense cloud came over me, dulling my senses, but I heard her screaming, as if she were far away.

She was shaking Willow.

Time sped ahead. Time slowed to a crawl. Time was all over the place, in patches.

When I noticed the sirens, the flash of red and white outside my bedroom window, I reached over and held Willow’s hand.

My face. My body. My heart—it all went with her, because she was me.

My twin sister killed herself on June twenty-ninth.

We would’ve been eighteen the next day.

Chapter Two

“Uh. Hey.”

It was nearing eleven the next night. Robbie and I had been there almost twenty-four hours. I hadn’t left Ryan’s room except to visit the bathroom, and I was currently sitting on his bed, book in hand. He edged into the room, his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched forward.

I should’ve felt all sorts of weirdness, but I was at the point where I’d sit on the roof and not give a flying fuck what anyone had to say. Keeping my finger between the pages, I closed the book and waited.

“Um . . .” He paused, staring right at me.

He had no idea what to say. I could see the floundering on his face, but he shook it clear and a small smile showed. His dimple winked at me. He raked a hand through his hair, leaving it as rumpled as it was yesterday. I knew why those two girls had squealed. He was all sorts of dreaminess.

I waited for the spark to flicker in me. I should blush? Giggle? Sigh?

No. Nothing.

I felt nothing, and then I remembered how it felt to lay in his bed, and I knew that wasn’t true. I felt some peace around him for some reason.

He scooted farther inside, glancing back at the door before leaning against his closet. “The whole my-bed thing . . .” He motioned to where I was sitting. “Did you want the bed again tonight?”

I looked down. I didn’t want to see his eyes when I asked this question. “Are my parents coming back?”

There was silence, and it stretched past the point of not having an answer. He had one. He just didn’t want to say it.

I shook my head, letting the book fall to the bed. Wrapping my arms around myself, I turned away. “Never mind.”

He cleared his throat. “For the record, I’m not supposed to know about your folks.”

I looked back. “But you do?”

The hesitancy and fear I’d seen on his face melted away to reveal the sorrow, and he nodded. “Yeah. I eavesdropped on the call. They’re at a hotel. I guess your grandparents are coming tomorrow.”

“Oh. Okay.” I cleared my throat. “Thank you.”

“Yeah.” He sighed. “You don’t have to thank me for anything, but I do have to know about the bed. I was trying to tell my mom maybe it was me—like, you could sleep when you were around me because of my teenage pheromones or something.”

I cracked a grin. “That’s a new theory.”

“Hey, not all of us are child Einsteins like your brother.”

“Touché, and neither am I. I’m the only normal one in my family.”

But I wasn’t normal anymore.

“Yeah.”

Maybe he thought the same thing because another silence descended over us. It felt like a sullen quiet too, as if maybe we’d both realized the true travesty of this situation. My remark-able quality had gone from being