Chapter Thirty-Seven Willa

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Willa

Now: Sunday, 8:12 a.m.

I cry until my head pounds and my nose is rubbed raw by tissues, and still it doesn't feel like enough. My heart is a black hole. It has obliterated every part of me. There's nothing left but tears and snot and regret.

Here I thought I'd reached rock bottom, resenting Delaney so much that I justified sleeping with her boyfriend. He was supposed to be mine. We'd connected at that party. We'd had something. But then his cousin Noah died, and I wanted to give him some space. When we started school again in person in March, he was dating Delaney.

She wasn't good for him. I was. I am.

But he chose her. He always chooses her.

"Hey" comes a low, soothing voice at the door, and the soft click as Piper shuts it behind her. "I thought you would be in Eden's room. How are you doing?"

I raise myself up on my elbows, turn onto my back, and give what I'm aware is a petulant pout. "I hate Delaney." I don't bother to explain the reason I'm not back in the main suite. It's too pathetic that I couldn't bear to climb into the bed Liam and I had shared only a few hours ago.

"I'm sure you do." Piper's side-eye is full of pity. "I didn't expect him to grovel and go back to her so immediately and spectacularly, either. Liam's a coward, Willa. You deserve better than that."

She's saying Liam is weak, but even now I want to defend him. I love him.

Nausea rolls through me, and I collapse back onto the pillows with a groan.

Piper rustles around, I think getting changed. It takes a while and there is some cursing. I breathe in the fresh linen scent of the detergent on the pillow and will my mind to clear itself of all the horrible thoughts running rampant.

"Did you and Liam ever take a trip?"

Piper's query breaks me from my stupor. I sit up and find her hovering by the dresser, something in her hand.

"What?"

"Like a weekend thing? Somewhere with trees and strawberries?" She shows me what's holding her interest so acutely. It's one of the candles. I squint to read the label: Romantic Escape .

"I was thinking…," Piper says, putting the candle back on the dresser, "the card deck was rigged, so why not other things? I thought the candles in our welcome box were really random." She crosses the room, over to the desk under the slanted window cut into the eaves.

She holds up the other candle, and my stomach dips.

"This one is called Accidental Chemistry. What kind of candle name is that?" She reads the scent profile from the label. "?‘Notes of popcorn, butter, and smoke.'?" Piper screws up her face. "Did you and Liam have a meet-cute at the movie theater? Maybe it's referring to you two."

I shake my head. "No way. Liam and I were really careful."

Piper does not appear convinced. "Not careful enough if your secret made it into the cards. If Camille found out about Eden and the drugs from Declan, maybe that's how she knew about you two as well. Liam and Declan were tight, weren't they?"

"You think it's really Camille?" I glance at our locked door, realizing she's only across the landing.

"I don't know," Piper replies. "It could be. The pieces fit."

She sits on the edge of her bed and slips her feet into a pair of tennis shoes. "I can't stay cooped up in here. Will you be all right?"

I nod feebly, already halfway to a nap. Why am I so tired?

Piper pauses in the doorway. "I'm sorry Willa. It's really shitty what happened. But you'll be okay. There are other guys. Better guys."

I lurch over to the door and lock it behind her.

Instead of returning to bed, I'm drawn to the window and the crackling candle with the off-putting scent. Popcorn, butter, and smoke on one sill. And strawberry, pine, and cardamom wafting from the other direction.

Yes, Liam could have told his best guy friend about us. He's already proving not to be the person I thought he was.

But I'm not the person I pretend to be, either.

I'm a very bad person, actually.

Piper may be right about these candles, placed in our welcome box to mess with my head.

Romantic Escape for the post-Thanksgiving weekend trip I took with Liam to Big Bear.

And Accidental Chemistry for my deepest, darkest secret and the worst thing I have ever done.