I let out a breath as I step away from the front door. I’m safe. I’m okay.
Maybe settling into my normal routine will help ease the haunting sensation covering my skin. You know what? A cup of tea—yup, a cup of tea will settle me right down. But first, I need a shower with so much steam it covers the mirrors and water that is piping hot.
I run to the bathroom. Locking the door behind me, I wash my face and then step into a much-needed scalding-hot shower. Maybe I’ll sweat out my panic? Oh my goodness, I forgot I don’t have an untouched pair of underwear in my drawer. I can’t trustthat a pair has gone untouched. You know what? It’s okay. I’ll have to go without. It’s probably better to go without sometimes, right? Maybe? Gosh, I don’t need to justify anything; I need to forget everything and move on. It could be nothing, could be all in my head.
I let the steam cover me and the mirror as I wash my body. My bathroom is my safe place, with no windows, one door with a lock on it, and four solid walls. I can breathe in here. I try to distract my mind by thinking about the book I’m reading right now, but I’m seriously failing. My billionaire cowboy lover fell to the back burner as the echoing ring of my phone nearly makes me jump out of my skin.
Peeking through the shower curtain, I see it is an unknown number coming through. I don’t want to answer it, not that that is anything new. I never want to answer the phone. How I work as a personal assistant who is always having to make calls is beyond me. Still, the phone rings, and I have no idea who is on the other line. My eyes are stuck on the unfamiliar number on my phone. Could it be the person that broke in, wanting to scare me more? I shouldn’t answer, but my gut is telling me to. Would the person who broke in really be calling me? With a racing heart, I step out of the shower and press the green button with wet fingers.
“Hello?” I answer as I pull a fluffy towel around my body. I sit on the lid of the toilet seat, confused by the silence on the other end. I’m about to hang up—maybe it was a prank call? But a familiar voice fills the line. One I never thought I’d hear again.
“Willow?” The voice is low, questioning, and feminine.
“Layla?” I ask as I wrap the towel closer around my body. Is she in trouble?
“You answered?” Layla mumbles as if she’s called my number before. Maybe she has, and since she doesn’t have callerID, I never answered, or maybe she thought I would have caller ID and was avoiding her. Who knows?
“Layla, are you okay?” I ask. I haven’t spoken to Layla in five years. It has been five long years since the man I was going to mate, Milo Barrow, was killed. Layla was his little sister and, commonly, our third wheel. She is someone who I once thought of as family. Layla never calls me, though, even before I broke off contact with the Barrow family. Layla was a young teen at the time and a huge texter. Which confuses me even more as to why she is calling me out of the blue.
“Did you kill Milo?” Layla asks, her voice coming out hushed and rushed and even then, the words dropped like heavy weights on my chest. I cut the shower off as silence fills our conversation. The phone has suddenly gained ten pounds, and I’m having a hard time holding it up to my ear, but I persist.
“What?” Fresh hurt and old memories rush into my mind. How could I kill my mate? My one true love. What would make Layla think I killed her brother? “Why would you even think that of me?—”
“Willow, don’t play with me right now.”
“I could never—I could never hurt Milo,” I say, balking at the very real conversation I’m having right now. “How did you even get my number?” When I went no contact, I truly went no contact. I moved out of town, changed my number, and deleted my social media—everything. I didn’t want to remember Milo and anyone who was part of my time with him. I had an impossible time moving on with my life. I didn’t have friends for a while, let alone date. I mean, how could I? I had found my soul mate, and he slipped right through my fingers. Milo was my one chance at love, and he is dead. He was my everything; we were getting ready for our mating ceremony, for Pete’s sake. How could Layla believe I killed him? If anything, his death killed me.
“Then why did you disappear?” Her voice rings through the speaker, and I drop my phone. It clunks on the ground. I’m sure it’s cracked, and I leave the bathroom. I can’t do this. Not today, not ever. How dare she ask me, accuse me, of killing the one person I am destined to love and be with for the rest of my life? I can’t do this. I can’t take this right now. I don’t bother picking my phone up, let alone ending the call. Like a zombie, I crawl into bed—no clothes, no lotion, no bonnet—and close my eyes, praying this day will end already.
2
WILLOW
The dayafter my break-in isn’t any easier than last night was. Here I am, sitting in my car at the grocery store parking lot, freaking out about going inside. I’m gnawing on my bottom lip, and my fingers are shaking slightly. I hate leaving the house, and after having an intruder in my apartment, this has only intensified. I awoke this morning and found that I didn’t have a single tea bag in my whole apartment.Did my intruder steal my tea bags too?I had to rush to get ready so I could make it to the store before work, and now I don’t want to get out of the car.
I hate grocery stores with a passion. I walk in there and get distracted. Each extra minute I spend in the grocery store has me hearing the swoosh of money flying out of my bank account.
I only need one thing. I need tea bags, and I refuse to go another morning without them. I have no choice but to go into the too-loud, too-bright, and too-crowded store. This store is on the shifter side of town, and because of that, it’s open twenty-four hours a day and is always busy since paranormals don’t need as much, or any, sleep.
Tracing the stitching along my steering wheel, I stare at the gaudy lettering of the store name. I count the minutes that itshould take to walk in and grab my tea. Five if there are long lines, three if I use self-checkout. Sighing, I get out of my car. The quicker I go in, the sooner I’ll be at work and can forget this ever happened. I huff at the thought of everything that has happened in the last twenty-four hours. Having my home broken into and then running out of tea bags??I mean, there is only so much a girl can take.
Dread doesn’t cover my body as it normally does when I think about the break-in, but it sure does find a cozy little spot at the base of my neck. I haven’t loved being in my apartment for a while, and the break-in solidified the urge to move. I don’t want to move to a new town, though I should, but at least to a new apartment. Nothing about my apartment screams home anymore. Maybe I should have grown closer connections with my neighbors or kept in contact with my family, so I would have somewhere else to go when I needed change.
I snicker as I think about my family—in reality, I’m not sure they would have my back.Come on, Willow, don’t be stupid.They’d cast me out before I even made it to their front door. They showed me how much I meant to them, and they couldn’t be bothered to show an ounce of empathy to a woman who lost her mate.?That kind of love was never extended to me.
Maybe I would’ve gotten it from Layla and I probably would’ve gotten it from Milo too, had he not died. Those two were the only good things I had when I lived in Kaler City. I first met Milo, my soul mate, in high school. It’s rare to find your fated mate so young; in fact, we’d never heard of someone finding their mates in high school before. What were the chances I did?
Our creator, the Moon Goddess, created each paranormal species in her light. When she created us, she gave each of us a blessing, a person who would be our perfect match in love, our soul mates. Typically, each paranormal gets one mate; rarelywill someone have more than one, but polyamorous mates have happened before. Every person has one person in the world that is destined for them, and I had found mine in high school.
Little did I know, while Milo was destined to spend the rest of his life with me, I was destined to live a life alone—and for that, I could nearly curse the Moon Goddess. How could she bring this fate upon me? What evil have I done to deserve this?
She’s supposed to give us light and hope, and yet she’s taken mine away. What hope is left for me in a life where I’m destined to be alone?
It’s rare for someone to not find their mate—it’s one perk of living such long lives, but living beyond a mate’s death is rare. Typically, you die with your mate. You’re together even in death. But I didn’t die, and I have no idea why.
Were we wrong about the Moon Goddess, or am I an exception?
And Layla—how could she have called me last night to accuse me of killing my mate? Did she really mean that? I’m surprised she hasn’t called me back since I hung up on her... maybe I should call her and give her a chance to explain. My cracked phone weighs heavy in my hand as her last question races through my mind. Why did I leave her?
