Novels by Willow

Chapter 5 ELENAThe morning of my discharge, everyone on the floor moved differently.I noticed it before I understood it. The guards outside my door stood straighter. Even the air in the room seemed to have changed temperature."Big day," the nurse said. "You'll want to look presentable.""For who?"She didn't answer. She just smoothed the collar and stepped back.I sat on the edge of the bed after she left, my hands folded in my lap to keep them from shaking, and watched the door the way you watch a pot you know is about to boil over. I'd waited three days to know his name. Three days of half-sentences and swallowed words and people flinching at a pronoun. Now the waiting had a shape to it, close and inevitable, and I hated how loudly my heart was beating for a man I didn't remember loving.The door opened without a knock.He filled the doorway the way I imagined he filled every doorway he ever stood in — not because he was especially tall, though he was, but because of how he ca

Chapter 4 ELENAI woke to find my things already gone from the side table — the small stack of nothing they'd let me keep, a cup, a spare gown, a paperback someone had left behind that I'd started reading out of sheer boredom — all of it cleared away, and a nurse folding fresh linens onto a different bed."What's happening?""You're being moved. New room." She didn't look up. "Bigger, better view. You'll like it.""Nobody asked me if I wanted to move.""It's already arranged.""Arranged by who?"She paused just long enough that I knew the answer before she gave it. "Those are his instructions."I sat on the edge of the bed while two orderlies wheeled in a cart and packed up a room I hadn't even had time to think of as mine, and I felt something in my chest curdle into something colder than fear. I wasn't being treated. I was being handled."Why does he get a say in my room?" I asked, to no one in particular, to everyone in the room who wasn't going to answer.The nurse gave me a look

Chapter 3 ELENABy morning I had a plan, small and stubborn: I would ask everyone who came through that door a straight question, and I would keep asking until someone slipped.The first to come through was a new nurse, older than the one from the night before, with silver hair pulled back tight and the brisk, unbothered energy of someone who had worked too many years to be rattled by anything. I liked her immediately, mostly because she looked like she might actually answer me."What's his name?" I asked, before she'd even finished checking my blood pressure cuff. "My husband. Just his name. That's all I want."Her hands didn't stop moving, but something in her shoulders went rigid. "I'm not really the person to ask that.""You keep saying things like that. Everyone keeps saying things like that. Who is the person to ask?""The case manager will be by later today." She unwrapped the cuff, avoiding my eyes with the practiced ease of someone who'd clearly been briefed. Briefed — that

Chapter 2 ELENAThe doctor's footsteps hadn't even faded down the hall before I was already trying again."Can I at least see a photo?" I asked the nurse when she came back to check my IV. "Of him. Of anyone. My parents, my friends, anybody."She didn't look up from the monitor. "I don't have access to anything like that.""Then who does?""That's really a conversation for—""For who?" My voice cracked on the word, frustration bleeding through the panic. "Everyone keeps saying that. A conversation for who?"She finally met my eyes, and for half a second I saw something honest there — not unkindness, but caution, the kind of caution you learn, not the kind you're born with. Then it was gone, folded back behind her professional calm."I'll let the case manager know you have questions," she said, and adjusted something on my chart instead of answering.I lay back against the pillows, breathing hard, and tried a different angle. "Can I use a phone? I want to call someone. Anyone. I must

Chapter 1ELENAThe light was the first thing — white and too bright, humming somewhere behind my skull like it lived there. My head throbbed with every beat of my heart. I blinked hard, trying to place the ceiling, the smell of antiseptic, the stiff sheets against my skin. Nothing fit. Nothing felt like mine.I tried to sit up and the room tilted. A woman in scrubs appeared at my side, pressing a gentle hand to my shoulder."Easy. You've had a bad concussion. Just breathe.""Where am I?" My voice came out cracked, unfamiliar even to my own ears."Sacred Heart. You were in an accident." She checked something on a monitor without quite meeting my eyes. "Do you know what year it is?"I opened my mouth to answer and found nothing there. A blank space where the answer should have been. I reached for the last thing I remembered — a rainy afternoon, a coffee shop, an argument with someone about nothing — and came up empty past that point. Like a photograph album with the last third of the p