Page 30 of I Never Stopped Loving You

“Come on, try a bite. You’ll love it.” He slides the plate closer in front of me.

“I don’t know…”

“Trust me, Willow.”

The way he says my name makes my heart race faster, and a strange sensation flows over my entire body.

I pick up the quarter of the burger. The cheese is all gooey and melted. The sauce is slathered on and drips down the side onto the plate. It smells good, but the thought of peanut butter on a burger just confuses me.

“Come on, Willow. Just. One. Bite.”

He ticks his tongue, annunciating the word bite, and it’s the final push I need. I take a bite of Purgatory and my eyes close. I can’t hold back the small moan from the taste of the burger. It’s honestly probably one of the best and most confusing flavors I’ve ever tasted. Because it shouldn’t be perfect, but it is.

“Holy shit,” I say with a mouthful of burger.

When I open my eyes, he’s leaning forward on the table with his arms crossed. I quickly cover my mouth, and Noah laughs. He’s watching me with that devilish smile of his that’s causing a warmth to spread through my chest.

“I told you that you’d love it. You just had to trust me.”

CHAPTER 15

WILLOW

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO

“Come on, sweetheart. We have to go,” my mom says quietly as she shakes my shoulder.

“I don’t want to,” I whine as I pull the sheet over my head.

“Come on, Willow. We need to go now.”

“Where are we going?”

She doesn’t answer.

I slowly sit up and stretch, glancing around the darkness of my room. My mom moves around my room slowly and it’s making me nervous.

“Mama? What’s going on?” I ask as I click on my bedside Little Mermaid lamp.

The room suddenly lights up in an ocean blue with shapes of seashells and dolphins on the ceiling.

“Mama?” I say a bit louder.

“Shh.”

She quickly comes and sits on the edge of my bed. Her face looks wet, and her eyes are really red. There’s another dark bruise under her eye that wasn’t there yesterday. Daddy must have had a bad day at work again. He’s always mean after bad days, especially on Fridays when he comes home from his friend’s house.

“Where’s Daddy?”

“Sleeping,” she whispers as she glances back at my door.

It’s closed. Daddy says my door is never allowed to be closed.

“Where are we going?”

I glance at the floor by my desk. My suitcase is packed, and my mom has my open backpack in her arms. A few of my books are still in the backpack, and I can see my drawing book and some colored pencils.

“I’m so sorry this has gone on for so long, baby.”