13. Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Thirteen
W illow rested her head against the cold tiles of the bathroom wall, catching her breath. Confident she would not retch or faint again, she gingerly stood up. It was a panic attack, that was all; thankfully no one had seen, not even Mrs Marley, who she expected would materialise once she registered the flat’s spike in energy. Her panic receded as she forced herself to focus on her surroundings and the present, a technique taught her by Marian when panic attacks and nightmares were a daily occurrence. She was safe. The Enchanted Emporium would keep her safe. Splashing her face with icy water, she caught sight of her deathly pale reflection in the mirror: the dark purple bruise on her cheek and her short hair stuck up in spikes.
I preferred your hair long, Goldilocks. A simple generic comment in contrast to the vitriol of others, but that sent her hurtling to the past. He’d found her. After two decades and three continents, Rafe had found her. Why hadn’t she stopped the photograph being taken? Cocooned in her shop, she’d become complacent and expected time, a name change, and drastic hairstyle to be enough to remain hidden. It hadn’t been enough.
Her mum always called Willow’s hair her crowning glory, and she basked in her admiration. Inherited from her father, the blonde curls were the only connection she had with the unknown figure. She’d always assumed she’d always wear her hair long. Her most cherished memories of her childhood were her mum standing behind her, taming her ringlets into two plaits for primary school, or into a French braid as she got older. While her friends moaned about their mums babying them and independently experimented with their hairstyles, Willow loved those moments. It was time to catch up with news and discuss upcoming events or woes. Even when roles reversed after her mum’s diagnosis and Willow washed and combed her mum’s dark hair when her body was too weak, they enjoyed the time. Neither mentioned its thinness or the increasing number of strands the teenager fished out from the plughole that no spells could reverse. Her mum cried the day Willow shaved her hair in solidarity with her mum’s chemo journey and made her vow to never do it again. A promise she didn’t keep until she met Louise and the tight-wound anger and grief hidden behind dyed cropped hair uncoiled notch by notch. By the time she’d headed into her globetrotting adventure, her freshly reclaimed blonde locks curled past her shoulders. Glancing in the mirror again, Willow touched her short hair. Her mum would hate her current hairstyle.
Willow had cried the night when blunt scissors hacked off her ringlets, sending them tumbling to the floor with her identity and her past. She sat numb when gentle foreign hands slathered dark dye into her scalp. A sacrifice needed in exchange for freedom. No one would ever call her Goldilocks again.
Except now on her phone, in black and white, they had.