Layla - Colleen Hoover Page 0,66

hear the bedroom door close, I stop the song. I lower my head to the piano.

What am I doing?

And why do I not want to stop?

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I woke up determined to give Layla all my focus today. Maybe it was guilt. It wasn’t hard to give her all my focus. She was by my side most of the day because the weather outside left us with little else to do.

It’s almost midnight and Layla still hasn’t fallen asleep.

That might be because of the storm. She doesn’t like the idea of being in the middle of tornado alley during a thunderstorm, but I’ve been keeping an eye on the weather. There aren’t any tornado warnings . . . just lots of lightning and rain. And thunder that makes her tense up every time it shakes the house.

I normally find this kind of weather relaxing, but right now I’m just irritated with it because it’s keeping Layla awake.

She’s lying on the couch with me in the Grand Room, scrolling through her social media posts. Her feet are in my lap. I’m trying to finish reading the book I started six months ago—the one about the game show host who claimed to be a spy—but my eyes are just scanning the screen. I’m not soaking up any of the words because I can’t stop thinking about Willow. Layla did agree to give me a few more days in the house, but we’ll still eventually have to leave.

Willow will be alone.

It’s not like I can just come visit her—this place is in the middle of nowhere. It involves a flight, a rental car, hours of driving. It’s an entire day of travel.

I’m going to have to put an offer in on the house if I want to help her find answers eventually. Even if Layla doesn’t want to live here, I would hate for someone else to buy it. I could hire someone else to run the place—turn it back into a bed and breakfast so Willow wouldn’t be lonely. There would be a constant revolving door of strangers. She might enjoy that more than sitting alone in an empty house.

And if I owned this place, it would give me an excuse to come back occasionally. To visit Willow without Layla growing suspicious.

Is that emotional cheating?

Willow is a ghost. It’s not like she could come between me and Layla.

But I guess she has in a way.

Willow and I have grown comfortable with one another . . . to the point that I’m starting to prefer her company over Layla’s. I’m not proud of that. Layla means so much to me, but I’m fascinated—obsessed, even—with the idea that this life isn’t the only one that matters. One would think that would make me feel like this life matters even more, but I’ve felt myself growing distant from this world. I’m being pulled into Willow’s, or maybe she’s being pulled into mine. Either way, we don’t belong in each other’s worlds, but now that we’ve found an easy way to combine them, it makes me disinterested in everything else around me.

That’s not Layla’s fault. There’s nothing Layla has done wrong. She’s the victim in all of this. She was the victim six months ago, and she’s the victim now, even though she’s unaware of it. The only thing Layla did wrong is fall in love with me.

I thought this trip was going to make things better for her. Maybe that would have worked out had I not discovered Willow’s existence in this house. Now I’ve done nothing but allow my fascination with whatever Willow is to drive an even bigger wedge between me and every other aspect of my life.

Layla seems unaware of any of it, though. She may think things are just fine between us. But that’s only because she doesn’t remember the details, and how great it was between us before I essentially became her caretaker.

Not that I would have made any other choice. But regardless of the love behind caring for her, or the good intentions—recovery still takes its toll, not only on the person recovering, but on everyone around them.

“What are you reading?” Layla asks.

I look over at her, and she’s dropped her cell phone to her chest. Her head is tilted and her hair is spread out over the pillow beneath her. She’s barely wearing anything—a silky see-through top that doesn’t even cover her navel. A matching pair of cream-colored panties. I set my phone down on the arm of the