Layla (Cheap Thrills #9)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Layla

“L ayla,” my own personal Voldemort clipped behind me again.

Seeing no reason to turn around and even acknowledge him, I moved on to the next platter, spooning way too much macaroni onto my plate.

“Layla, damn it,” he hissed, finally crossing the line by grabbing my bicep to get me to turn around.

Dropping my overflowing plate onto the table and knowing one of my brothers would grab it up, confident that God was smiling on them by providing an already served meal at a buffet, I yanked my arm away from him.

“To hell with this.”

“No,” Mark said firmly, moving now to stand in front of me and blocking my escape route. “You don’t get to ignore me. We’re talking about this right now.”

I’d been back in Piersville for three months, and in that time, he’d done everything short of kidnapping me to get this conversation out the way. The thing was, it never needed to happen. I didn’t need to rehash old history. I didn’t want to ‘clear the air’ right now. I didn’t care that the Montgomerys and Townsends were such close friends that I’d never for the rest of my life be able to not see him.

I wasn’t having the conversation, and that was final. I wanted to, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Veering to the left to go around him, I ignored his repeated attempts to get me to stop and focused on my escape. I was going to go back to my house, get in my car, and I was going to drive until I found somewhere interesting to stop. I didn’t care where so long as it wasn’t near him.

And most importantly, I wouldn’t come back until one of my sisters-in-law texted to tell me the coast was clear.

When my brothers had first started getting married, I’d loved the women, but I’d been sure it’d be a ‘me and them’ situation, with me being on the outside. Instead, I’d gotten sisters who had my back and didn’t mind helping me out, even when I didn’t ask for it, like now. No one knew the real reason I’d left and gone to college further afield when I’d been adamant that I was going to one near Piersville so I could live in my own house. And, if I had my way, no one ever would.

“Layla,” Mark said loudly. “You don’t get to continue acting like this and ignore me.”

Those were the words that changed my intentions completely.

Spinning around, I poked him in the chest as hard as I could. “Don’t I? So, you’re saying only you get to do that?”

Rubbing the spot my nail had just left an impression, he scowled at me. “I never did that to you. I came home, and you’d decided to move on without telling me. I tried to get you to talk to me, but you just packed up and left.”

How could one asshole—admittedly an insanely hot one—rewrite history?

“Are you out of your mind?” It was a serious and genuine question. I mean, I came from a family with questionable sanity, so I knew the warning signs.

“Not that I’m aware of, or I wouldn’t get to do the job I do.”

Taking a step closer to him, I hissed, “For two weeks, you withdrew from the relationship or whatever it was we had going on. I told you I was pregnant, and all you said was ‘damn.’ There was no reassurance, no horror or excitement, no support.”

When he opened his mouth to interrupt, I held my hand up. “No, you’ll let me finish recounting our story because mine is spot on, unlike your version of what happened. You went to Vegas for that bachelor party, likely sat in a strip club and did God knows what, while I sat at home and bawled my eyes out when I found out it’d been a false positive.”

Taking a step even closer, I added, “I texted you to tell you, expecting just a modicum of sympathy, empathy, or even just an ‘are you okay,’ but you never replied because you were too busy having a good time while I sat at home with a broken heart. Oh, no, stupid me, you did text to say, ‘oh.’”

Shaking my head, I blew out a breath and tried to calm down. “Was it really a shock when you never contacted me once that weekend, not even to explain the photos being posted all over social media by your buddies, that I decided to move on?”

Leaning down until his nose was only an inch away from my own, Mark ground out, “Yeah, it was a shock. I told you when I got back and got a new phone that I’d lost the other one at the airport. I apologized, but you didn’t want to hear it.”

“And you couldn’t have borrowed one of your friends’ phones to text or send a message on Facebook?” I asked in disbelief, mentally kicking myself for even getting into this conversation with him. It was the exact same shit he’d said back then and didn’t need to be rehashed.

Before I could turn and walk away, though, he threw his hands up in the air. “None of them were friends with you on there, so it would have gone into that weird non-friend message folder no one ever checks, and who remembers numbers nowadays? You store them in your phone and just hit the name.”

“Listen, I need some more time, okay? I just—“

“It’s been four years! Do you need a whole decade?”

Shaking my head, I did what I should have just continued doing a few minutes ago and turned back to walk to my car.

“No, you don’t get to walk away from me, Layla,” he growled loudly, uncaring of the family members watching us now.

“Yeah, I do.”

When he wrapped his arm around my waist to stop me, effectively slamming his front into my back, I lifted my foot and stomped it down on top of his, getting the reaction I wanted when he let go of me, cursing as he hopped around.

“Layla, I’m warning you.” Still ignoring him, I pulled my keys out of my pocket and unlocked my vehicle, refusing to break into the run I desperately wanted to. “Last chance.”

“There’s no reason for me to talk to you, Mark. Leave me alone.”

“Oh, there’s a huge reason for you to talk to me,” the asshat pointed out loudly as he jogged up behind me.

“And what’s that?”

If I’d thought he’d been talking loudly before, I’d been mistaken because what he said next was almost bellowed.

“ Because I’m your husband !”

Who knew four words at that volume which didn’t involve threats or bodily harm had the power to stop my heart, but they did. They also had the ability to stop Mark’s heart, too, because I just knew my brothers, Dad, and Gramps were already planning how painful his death was going to be and where they’d bury the pieces of his body.

Well, they could start by putting his penis in a matchbox, one of those tiny ones. Did they make replica versions for doll houses? That’d be all the space the tiny appendage needed.

Yep, my coping mechanism when it came to Mark Montgomery was lies and denial, and what I’d just said was a colossal lie… but not as big as his d—

“You’re a dead man!” one of my brothers roared, just as Gramps yelled, “Get outta my way, woman. I don’t care if this knife’s bamboo, it’ll just take a little longer to do the job.”

Figuring I’d use his disembowelment to escape, I reached for the door of my car, only to shriek when someone picked me up and threw me over their shoulder. Unable to see anything other than a denim-covered ass, I kicked out, hoping to catch them in the nuts, perfectly okay with the potential brain damage I’d sustain when they dropped me afterward. It seemed a small price to pay.

Just to add some fire to the nut cracking, I yelled threats of my own at my victim, pissed all over again that I couldn’t make them anything other than general ones, given that I had no clue whose shoulder I was hanging over.

I’d love to say I was that aware of my surroundings, but a pair of jeans and a gray t-shirt didn’t stand out in a group of men who all wore something similar. I also never stared at my brothers’ asses—we weren’t from that part of the country—so that wouldn’t be something I’d recognize, either.

Just as I threatened to give the person a superglue enema, they stopped walking.

“Right, she’s back now,” I heard Dad say as the blood pooled around my brain. “You stole the pride and happiness I’d have had walking my only daughter down the aisle to hand her over to get married.” Each word was ground out, making them sound disjointed, and it took my brain a couple extra seconds to make sense of them. Then again, that could be due to the increased blood flow to it as I continued to hang upside down.

“Yeah, my only granddaughter,” Gramps added, getting cut off by my cousin, Ariana, yelling, “ Hey !”

“Oh, sorry, baby girl,” he called, sounding sheepish. “Love you to the edge of space and beyond.”

Because she was standing behind us, as I pushed up using the belt around my captor’s waist, I caught her scratching her forehead with her middle finger. “Yeah, yeah. If you were my favorite grandpa, I’d be hurt. However—”

His gasp cut her off. “Take that back.”

“No.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him take a step forward, putting him into my line of vision. Just. “Take it back, Ariana. I’m being remarkably good natured about that little slight of yours.”

Shrugging, she crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t see why, you only have one granddaughter.”

He had the good grace to wince. “I was caught up in the heat of the moment. Did you not hear? That-that- that—” he gestured behind him in our direction before taking a glance over where the kids were all watching us and hissed, “that ruffian says he’s married to Layla, your ten-year-old cousin.”

Ten?

“I’m twenty-six,” I tried to shout, but it was weak thanks to the pressure in my head from gravity working its evil magic on me.

“Of course you are, sweetheart,” Gramps cooed, sounding like he was talking to a kid. “One day you will be, but you need to enjoy your childhood for another sixteen years before you can say that.”

Lifting up higher, I searched for Grams and found her watching us all like she was going to kill someone.

“Deal with him,” I said seriously. “You promised.”

Her eyes moved to the side as she thought about it, and finally, she sighed and nodded. “I did, didn’t I.”

Then, before anyone could say anything else, she grabbed him by the ear and dragged him toward their house.

“Woman, let go of me.”

“We’re going to the doctor, won’t that be fun? You can sit in the front of the car and listen to whatever music you like. And, if you’re a good boy, the doctor will give you a sugar-free lollipop and a sticker like he did last time, but you’ve got to do as he says.”

“I’m not a kid, and I’m not sick. Lindee, for the love of God, let go of my ear.”

“Of course you’re not sick,” she said, using the same tone of voice on him that he’d just used on me. “The doctor’s going to have a look inside your head, and then he’s going to test your hearing. Maybe we should get him to check your prostate, too. You’re not acting like yourself, and your memory’s going. A full checkup will let us know what’s going on.”

It was hard to laugh when I was hanging over someone’s shoulder, but I managed it all the same, not even caring when it made me feel even more lightheaded than I’d been before.

“I don’t need my head and hearing examined, and my brain’s not up my ass,” Gramps yelled, digging his heels in, but she was determined. “I don’t want to go.”

Spoiler alert: he went, not that he had much choice in the matter.

Unfortunately, that still left me facing my current predicament, albeit upside down—Mark Montgomery, a group of pissed-off brothers, some pissed-off cousins now standing behind them, and two pissed-off families. Everyone was pissed, including me.

“Now, I think you owe us an explanation,” my brother, Cole, told Mark. “And it’d better be one that we want to hear.”

Gently lowering me to the ground, he spun me around once my feet were steady and anchored me to his front with both arms. With my head tipped back, I watched as he raised an eyebrow and looked back at Cole, unfazed.

“And what do you want to hear?”

“That you were lying. Maybe you even lost your mind for a moment. Who knows? Temporary insanity gets thrown around in courts all the time, why shouldn’t it happen today? Maybe it’s the heat or dehydration?”

Not even taking a second to think about it, he shook his head. “I’m sorry, I can’t do that. We got married four years ago in Vegas.”

Cole took a deep breath, trying to calm himself down.

And that’s when all hell broke loose.