Bent Right To Your Wind (The Willow’s Saga #1)

PROLOGUE

“That fateful night”

Maya

My body was shaking, cold, and sweaty—a tacky feeling that made me want to crawl out of my skin. My eyes were looking at the ceiling, but I was still in the nightmare.

I looked to my right; my husband was sleeping with a little frown and a pout on his lips. I wanted to touch between his brows and remove the frown, but I felt dirty. His chest was rising and falling, his breath even, his dark hair falling messily over his forehead.

I moved closer, my hand stopping just when I was about to touch him. I wanted to wake him up and ask him to help me deal with my nightmare, to help me deal with my new reality, but that was just selfish. He did all he could in the morning to help me, even when I wasn’t the most cooperative person. He needed to sleep.

But I needed him to tell me everything would be alright. That my nightmare wasn’t real, that he was fine. My eyes started to fill with tears.

Damn it! Crying wouldn’t solve a thing.

The truth was, he couldn’t tell me that my nightmare wouldn’t become real.

I so vividly saw and felt him just … shut down in front of me in the nightmare. It wasn’t real, but my body didn’t get the memo. My heart was hurting like someone was beating it up.

I rose from the bed quickly and closed my eyes shut.

He was lying on the ground, his eyes lifeless, no pulse pounding, his color whitening to a sickly pale.

I opened my eyes.

I crawled on the bed until my husband was below me. My fingers touched the skin on his neck; his heart was beating in a way that was soothing. His skin was warm, and he had a little color on his freckled skin.

He was fine; he was breathing next to me. His pulse was good. He was alive.

I repeated it over and over so my body could start relaxing, but I just couldn’t shake the feeling off.

After not feeling anything during the last weeks, I realized I preferred the numbness over this pain.

I knew I was having a panic attack. Aaron had explained to me years ago what to do with them.

He was a great professional, and I was sure that he could help me in some way if I just woke him up, but I didn’t want that. I just wanted this to go away, to go back to how my life was two weeks ago.

I felt my breath getting quick and uneven. The walls were getting closer, and I felt out of control. I touched the neck of my pajama shirt and tried to get it far from my neck. It was suffocating.

There was a trick that Aaron taught to help with anxiety.

I needed to check my surroundings.

I reluctantly tore my gaze away from my husband and focused on the bluish walls next to the bed. Then, on Aaron’s nightstand, he had a picture of us at our prom. We were both smiling at the camera with our arms around each other. My eyes watered. I blinked fast and kept looking for a lifesaver.

The moonlight shined upon the wooden dresser. On top of it was the laundry my husband had folded this morning while I watched him from the bed.

My gaze stopped on the sports leggings. I could also see a peek of one of Aaron’s old sweatshirts. The gold thread with the Darlington Academy crest.

I grabbed the idea that swam through my mind like it was my anchor.

I grabbed the clothes, wrote a note for Aaron, and left the house with only my keys, phone, and earbuds.

The night was chilly, only the traffic lights illuminating the route.

I started to run—to run as fast as possible. When my breath started to even out, and the cold was burning my lungs, I focused on running with better form. I put on the earbuds and started a playlist. Aaron would be livid if he saw me out this late, running alone without focusing on the outside noises.

Aaron.

The name was like a hit to the chest. I started to run faster, my feet hitting the asphalt, trying to focus on my body’s movement and uneven breath—anything but the nightmare.

Since what happened two weeks ago, I just couldn’t. I felt raw, and my head hadn’t been in the best place. I didn’t know where I would be without my husband. He had been my lifeline and my family.

He forced me to eat and shower, snuggled on our bed, and asked me to tell him what was going through my ‘beautiful’ mind. He was so gentle and loving. My eyes watered.

Fuck.

The truth was, nothing was going through my mind at that point. I just felt numb, and my head was blank. It was the first time in my life that I wasn’t thinking five steps ahead. I didn’t even have the strength to speak; I was doing things robotically—until tonight. My body was feeling the sudden activity after being bedridden for two weeks.

It was like something had clicked after this nightmare, like my body had just woken up from a long, restless hibernation and decided to do as much as possible—turn everything on and go to the maximum setting. My body was complaining about it, but my mind didn’t care.

I stopped when I felt like my body was about to give up on me. I tried to breathe and relax my body, but it needed time.

I checked around and saw that I was on one of the main streets in town. The shops were all closed with no one around. I removed the earbuds and focused on the silence. I hadn’t seen this street at night since I worked the night shift at my waitress job almost ten years ago.

I hadn’t worked there since I left for college, thinking that I would never come back to this damn town. How mistaken I was.

I started to walk through the streets.

Where had all my youthful strength and energy gone since I was a teenager?

Even in college, I could face everything thrown at me, but now, at twenty- eight, I felt exhausted and jaded. And the worst thing was that I didn’t feel like that just fifteen days ago, but now I felt life as I knew it was over, even if I wanted to hang tight to it.

I passed through the central part of town and found myself in front of the old big willow tree, and I stopped in my tracks. It looked the same as it did eighteen years ago, that fateful day that I met my husband.

It was summer back then, and in my mind, the trees were bright green, and the sun was high in the sky. My heart started to beat furiously when I touched the trunk. Aaron’s shy, young blue eyes looked at me curiously, a soft smile on his face. His hair was coiffed, trying to tame the mess, but some strands were rebellious.

I rested my head on the tree.

What would have happened if I had never met him?

Would it have been more painful if I had never met him than what I am feeling right now?

Would he be happier if he never met me?

It felt horrible to think this way. Guilt gnawed at me, but the pain in my chest was excruciating. Everywhere I looked, I had some memories with Aaron. He was everywhere in this city.

I needed to get out of here.

I started to run back home, new energy found in needing to run from unwanted, happy memories. But everywhere I looked, I found memories—eighteen years of knowing a person would do that.

I put some music on and focused on my steps, since that helped a little earlier. The song was from an indie band that Aaron—

Trying not to think of Aaron, I grabbed the phone from my pocket and changed the song.

The next one was one that Aaron loved to sing in the car.

Change.

The next was from Aaron’s favorite album.

It was clear our lives were interconnected.

Change.

With this song, I always blushed. I remembered that this song was playing when Aaron did—

This was not working.

My breath was uneven, and my heart wanted to escape from my chest.

But once I entered this sphere, I just couldn’t stop. It was like a flood; all the water was coming for me without any stopping.

Maybe it was the tiredness. Maybe it would have happened anyway.

I didn’t feel like I was in control of my body—I was somewhere else, deep inside my memories. They forced me to float away and sank me deeper and deeper within myself.

My lungs hurt, and my heart was throbbing.

I needed to get home, to get back into bed with my husband. To check that he was still alright, that he was still breathing. But I just couldn’t; I’d never felt tiredness like this. A sob ran through me as everything crashed over me at once.

Our first meeting in the old tree’s park.

Our first day of class together.

Prom.

Our wedding.

Those soft touches and murmurings late at night.

Our first lazy morning in our house—

It was all so painful.

The loud, the quiet, the good, the bad, the ugly, the fights, the make-ups.

A pain hit my heart, my steps faltered, and I fell on my knees. I needed to get up, to keep moving. I was not like this; I needed to stop this pain to get home.

Just get home.

Just get home.

You can check on Aaron.

I rose from the ground. The feeling of a cold tear ran down my cheek.

Then another.

It hurt everywhere.

Another flood came, and I fell to the bottom.

If only I could get back to fifteen days ago.