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I froze, uncertain if the voice I heard was from within or from outside of me.
“Willow, was it? Is something wrong?”
I slowly unfurled from the tight ball I was holding myself in, sat up straight, and looked across the little clearing to the bench on the other side.
Luke Lancaster was sitting there with a book in his lap and a backpack next to him.
“Oh, hey,” I said and drew in a trembling breath as I regained my composure.
“Well, is it?”
“Is what?” I asked.
“Is something wrong?”
I didn’t know how to answer him. Luke hated me for whatever I’d done to his sister or for being responsible for her disappearance. I couldn’t tell. All I knew what that his eyes filled with disgust when he saw me, no matter where it was on campus.
“No, nothing’s—”
I wanted to say nothing was wrong, but my throat clenched tightly, and my words got all tangled up on the back of my tongue.
What ended up spilling from my lips was, “Nothing’s… well, everything’s wrong.”
And then I began to cry. For real this time, not the panicked breathing while squeezing tears through my eyelids sort of crying. I mean the ugly cry where I moaned and shuddered as I lost control of myself and my emotions.
“It’s all so fucked up,” I moaned and curled over again, my shoulders folding in, so I felt like I was a bird trying to hide in the deep grasses. “I don’t know what anything even means anymore.”
“This place is fucked up, not you,” Luke said. “There’s something deeply wrong with the Academy, and maybe you’re finally noticing it.”
I sniffled and nodded my head in agreement. Apparently, it took me getting my head almost smashed in before I paid attention.
I tried to reply to him, but I couldn’t. Tears were caught up in my mouth, and I couldn’t form words without them turning into sobs.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Luke said, and I heard him stand up and cross over to me. He sat on the bench beside me and ran his hand down my back. I could feel the weight in it and the warmth. He was a tall man, and his hands were huge, comforting, offering an anchor that immediately pulled me back down into my body and tethered me in place on the earth.
“You’re gonna be all right,” he said and kept rubbing my back until my tears began to dry up, and I believed what he was saying. “This feels weird because you hurt your head. Don’t worry. You’ll be back to the regular bitchy Willow in no time.”
He chuckled, and I laughed, but I also secretly hated it. It disgusted me that I’d been the kind of person who made a man like Luke despise her.
The Luke I felt I knew was kind and funny, generous, and…
An image of me under his body as he slid his thick length into my dripping wet heat filled my mind. It sprung up, completely unbidden, only a sliver of a half-formed memory but something solid and seemingly real.
“Did we ever?” I asked and drew back enough to turn and look him in the eye with meaning.
“Ever what?” he replied, raising a single eyebrow.
He was gorgeous, and I didn’t think he knew it yet. He would one day, the older he got. Eventually, he’d be one of those confident older men who had women swooning and panties melting everywhere he went. Not yet, though.
But with me, already, I was feeling it. And I knew I’d felt him before.
“You know, did we ever do…?”
And he caught on. He practically choked as he laughed and said, “Oh, god, no!”
I recoiled at that and pulled away.
“I was just curious,” I replied. “No harm intended.”
