She took in the freckles that peppered his cheeks, the soft frown lines on either side of his lips—his red, plump lips. There was a crease in his forehead from how much he furrowed his brow, and the specks of gold in his irises made her heart skip. And she wished that he was hers. That he belonged to her solely, but there were pieces of Willow everywhere, splintered into his heart, into his life and she feared there will never be room for her. Ever.
And she saw that look in his eyes that told her everything that she’d always known and feared.
“Lilia . . . ” he started.
“I know.” She nodded, once and then again.
God, she knew.
But he wasn’t hers.
And he never would be.
Willow Montgomery lived on in each of them, a ghost that would haunt them for the rest of their lives. Never leaving, never wavering—a demon of the past that had ruined them forever.
Chapter Nineteen
November 19th, 2022
The Harvest Festival
“We are in way over our heads here. This has completely gone from slightly normal—albeit insane, to absolutely nuts. We have to go to the police.” Delilah paced back and forth, twisting her hair with her finger, over and over. It was a nervous habit that she had picked up in grade school.
“We can’t?—”
“What other choice do we have, Augustus?” Delilah snapped at him.
“I can’t look at this anymore.” Eleanor pushed away the photograph of McCall and Willow, her voice tight with frustration.
Delilah stared at the picture again before speaking. “We need to take it to the police.” She wasn’t wavering.
Sebastian raised his brow over his coffee cup, his lip curling into a bitter smile. “The police are in the photo, Delilah. What good would it do?”
“We shouldn’t even be looking at this right now. You should’ve taken it to the station as soon as you got it.”
“Maybe we should take it to your dad, Gus,” Eleanor suggested, her voice softer as she looked at him.
Augustus leaned back in his chair, running a tired hand down his face. His eyes clenched shut momentarily, before opening again. “Do you seriously want to explain to any of our parents why someone would even be sending this to us in the first place?” His tone was sharp, and the question hung in the air like a challenge.
The group went silent, each of them lost in their own thoughts.
“Okay, so what do we do?” Eleanor finally broke the silence.
“We confront him,” Augustus said. “He’s been trying to pin Willow’s murder on us for the past month and a half. This entire time it was probably him that killed her in the first place.”
“That’s a huge assumption to make from a photo.” Delilah scoffed, “Do we seriously think that he’s the mystery guy?” She glanced around at her friends. “I mean come on? All we know is that they were together at some point that night. It could’ve been for something entirely different. An accusation like this could ruin someone.”
“You mean in the same way that he’s been trying to ruin us?” Augustus shot back.
“They could’ve just been talking. Why would he have a motive to kill her anyway?” Eleanor added.
Augustus groaned, his head falling back against the chair. “We’re grasping at straws. We’ve got nothing.”
“Maybe Gus is onto something,” Lilia said, finally breaking her silence. She hadn’t spoken a word all morning. “Maybe we do need to confront him, ask him what he was doing with her and why? I’m not saying he’s her secret lover, but he knows something.”
Eleanor looked over at her. “The first thing you say all morning and it’s that? Seriously?”
“What else are we supposed to do?”
