Layla - Colleen Hoover Page 0,72
I wake up. Willow I want to see before I close my eyes. Willow I want to spend all my time with during the day.
I prefer Willow over Layla now, in almost every way, and it’s a heavy, appalling, shameful realization.
I hear the water running in the bathroom sink. I open my eyes and Layla is brushing her teeth again. She swishes the water around in her mouth and then spits it into the sink. She wipes the back of her hand across her mouth and smiles with pride. “Did I leave you speechless?” she says, laughing.
I have no idea what to say. I’m sorry wouldn’t be appropriate.
“That was intense.” It’s not a lie. Intense isn’t necessarily a good thing, and I don’t want to lie to Layla anymore. It doesn’t feel good.
She saunters back over to me and tucks me back into my sweatpants. She leans in and kisses me gently on the cheek, leaving her mouth on my skin when she says, “Go back to work. You can return the favor tomorrow night.” She backs away and takes off her shirt with a grin, and then finally gets in the shower.
The water has been running this whole time.
I walk into the bedroom and stare at our bed. The same bed I was on when I first began to fall in love with Layla.
Falling in love with her was weightless, like air was breezing through my bones.
Falling out of love is fucking heavy, like my lungs are carved from iron.
I walk over to the bed, and I drop down onto it. I don’t go back downstairs. I can’t face Willow tonight. I don’t even want to face Layla.
I just want to sleep.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Why do you think I’m able to touch things?”
Her voice rips me from the claws of a deep sleep. I open my eyes, and Willow is facing me, lying on her side. I don’t know what time it is, but it’s still dark outside.
I rub my eyes with the heels of my palms. “What do you mean?” My voice is still heavy with sleep.
“I can move things when I’m not in Layla’s body,” she says. “I can touch things. But you can’t see me, and I can’t even see myself, so I’m not made of matter. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe you’re made of energy. And you somehow channel that energy into something as dense as matter.”
She sighs and rolls onto her back. She stares at the wooden beam over the bed. “You’d think if that were the case, I wouldn’t be as strong as I am.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can move big things too. I did it once. Moved every piece of furniture in the Grand Room around in the middle of the night.”
“Because you were bored?” I ask.
“No. Because I hate Wallace Billings and I wanted to scare him.”
She has my full attention now. I lift up onto my elbow. “Who is Wallace Billings?”
She cuts her eyes to mine, and there’s a mischievous grin on her face. “He owns this place. I’m the reason he put it up for sale a few months ago.”
She looks proud of whatever she did. There’s a gleam in her eye, and I kind of find it fascinating. I’ve been wondering why this place was put up for sale.
She sits up, wrapping the bedsheet around her to cover herself. “You know how I can’t remember how long I’ve been here?”
I nod.
“Well, I know Wallace inherited this place right before I showed up. Just based on conversations I’ve heard him have. His mother owned it, and it passed on to him when she died, but he wasn’t sure what to do with it. If he should keep it open or sell it or move in. After a while, he started to lean toward moving his family here. And I know this is terrible, but I couldn’t stand him. He was such an asshole to people. His wife, his kids, anyone he spoke to on the phone. I couldn’t imagine sharing this place with him for however long I was going to end up being here.”
“What did you do? Haunt him?”
“No,” she says, shaking her head. But then she looks up and to the right. “Wait. I guess what I did could be defined as a haunting. I’ve just never really identified as a ghost, so to me, I was just pranking him.”
“What’d you do?”
She tucks her chin against her chest a little, looking at me somewhat embarrassed. “Don’t judge me.”
“I’m not.”
She relaxes