“More than what?”

Willow shakes her head, her eyes suddenly growing more serious. “Never mind. I shouldn’t be sharing her thoughts with you. It feels wrong.”

Willow finishes her food, but I can’t help but wonder what the sudden change in her demeanor was about. What was she about to say?

She clears off the table and walks to the kitchen entry. She looks over her shoulder at me. “Come play me a song, Leeds.”

I hesitate, because I don’t know that I want to. I like the memory of playing a song for Layla in the Grand Room. I’m not sure I want to create that memory with anyone else. It feels like a betrayal.

Willow has already gone into the Grand Room. She’s waiting in there for me. I hesitate for another few seconds, but then I ultimately leave the kitchen and walk across the hallway.

I pause in the doorway to the Grand Room because Willow is lowering the lid to the grand piano. Then she proceeds to climb up on top of it. She sprawls out across the piano on her stomach, stretching her arms out over it. She sees me eyeing her with perplexity. She smiles gently and says, “I want to feel the sound. I never get to feel things without a body. It’s nice.”

As much as I want to preserve my memory of this room with Layla, I feel equally bad not playing a song for Willow. She doesn’t get to interact with people outside of me. That has to be lonely.

I reluctantly take a seat at the piano bench. “What do you want me to play?”

“Play the one you were writing earlier, on your laptop.”

“I thought you weren’t in there when I was on my laptop. I tried to talk to you.”

She lifts her cheek off the piano. “I didn’t want you to stop writing, so I pretended I wasn’t there.”

I thought she might have been in there. I don’t know how. Sometimes it’s like I can feel her in the room with me, but I don’t know if that’s because I know she’s in this house or if she really does have a presence.

Willow lays her cheek against the varnished wood again, patiently waiting.

I look down at the piano keys and try to remember how the song begins. “I haven’t finished writing it yet.”

“Play what you have, then.”

I start fingering the keys, and when I look back up at her, she’s closed her eyes. “This one is called ‘No Vacancy,’” I say quietly. Then I sing it for her.

I showed up rich while feeling poor

I didn’t knock but they opened the door

Throwing stones, they pierce my eye

Leave tiny cracks all down my spine

We were royalty without a throne

Our castle didn’t feel like home

Echoes of “I love you” in the halls

Our words absorbed into the walls

I checked us in so we couldn’t leave

Thought maybe time would make me believe

If I took us back to the starting line

We’d never cross the finish line

My hands may not be red

But my heart, it feels the bleed

If my soul had a neon sign

It would read No Vacancy

If my soul had a neon sign

It would read No Vacancy

When I’m finished playing all the parts of the song I’ve written, I look up from the piano. Her eyes are still closed.

She remains pressed against the piano, like she doesn’t want the feeling to end. She seems sad . . . sort of regretful. It makes me wonder if she’ll miss this when we leave. She’ll be alone with no one here to talk to at night, no one here to play music for her, no one here to give her something to do to pass her time while she just floats around in nothing.

She finally opens her eyes, but she doesn’t move.

I feel my chest constrict when we make eye contact, because again, I just want to comfort her. But not because I’m mistaking this urge for some wandering remnant of how I feel for Layla—but because I want to comfort her.

Willow.

“I’m sorry you’re so lonely,” I whisper.

She smiles, but it’s such a sad smile. “You’re the one who wrote this song. I’m no lonelier than you.”

Silence slowly descends over the room, wrapping us tightly in its grip.

But I don’t say anything to break it. I soak it up. I soak her up. No one else ever will, and that makes me sad for her.

“She’s really in love with you,” Willow says.

I don’t know why she says that. Does she sometimes feel Layla’s urges to touch and kiss me, the same way I feel the urge to touch and kiss Layla? When she’s inside of Layla, is it as confusing to her as it is to me?

“Her body is really tired tonight. I should let her sleep.” Willow sits up on the piano. “You coming to bed?”

I want to.

Which is exactly why I shouldn’t.

I swallow the yes that’s stuck in my throat and look down at the piano keys. I place my fingers on them. “You go ahead.”

She stares at me a moment, but I don’t look at her. I begin playing the song over again, and when I do, she leaves the room. After she walks upstairs and I hear the bedroom door close, I stop the song. I lower my head to the piano.

What am I doing?

And why do I not want to stop?

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I woke up determined to give Layla all my focus today. Maybe it was guilt. It wasn’t hard to give her all my focus. She was by my side most of the day because the weather outside left us with little else to do.

It’s almost midnight and Layla still hasn’t fallen asleep.

That might be because of the storm. She doesn’t like the idea of being in the middle of tornado alley during a thunderstorm, but I’ve been keeping an eye on the weather. There aren’t any tornado warnings . . . just lots of lightning and rain. And thunder that makes her tense up every time it shakes the house.

I normally find this kind of weather relaxing, but right now I’m just irritated with it because it’s keeping Layla awake.

She’s lying on the couch with me in the Grand Room, scrolling through her social media posts. Her feet are in my lap. I’m trying to finish reading the book I started six months ago—the one about the game show host who claimed to be a spy—but my eyes are just scanning the screen. I’m not soaking up any of the words because I can’t stop thinking about Willow. Layla did agree to give me a few more days in the house, but we’ll still eventually have to leave.

Willow will be alone.

It’s not like I can just come visit her—this place is in the middle of nowhere. It involves a flight, a rental car, hours of driving. It’s an entire day of travel.

I’m going to have to put an offer in on the house if I want to help her find answers eventually. Even if Layla doesn’t want to live here, I would hate for someone else to buy it. I could hire someone else to run the place—turn it back into a bed and breakfast so Willow wouldn’t be lonely. There would be a constant revolving door of strangers. She might enjoy that more than sitting alone in an empty house.

And if I owned this place, it would give me an excuse to come back occasionally. To visit Willow without Layla growing suspicious.

Is that emotional cheating?

Willow is a ghost. It’s not like she could come between me and Layla.

But I guess she has in a way.

Willow and I have grown comfortable with one another . . . to the point that I’m starting to prefer her company over Layla’s. I’m not proud of that. Layla means so much to me, but I’m fascinated—obsessed, even—with the idea that this life isn’t the only one that matters. One would think that would make me feel like this life matters even more, but I’ve felt myself growing distant from this world. I’m being pulled into Willow’s, or maybe she’s being pulled into mine. Either way, we don’t belong in each other’s worlds, but now that we’ve found an easy way to combine them, it makes me disinterested in everything else around me.