Chapter 55
I just tried to stay present.
I just tried to keep one foot in front of the other.
I just tried not to think about what the hell might be coming.
What had Morgan told Layla? For that matter, how had Morgan run into Layla? Given that he despised her, what the hell had he said to her that had caused her to want to meet me one on one?
Didn’t he hate her guts? And yet Layla sounded…
Around me, New York City seemed to have reached an unusual calm.
What little vegetation there was slowly had begun to show signs of winter approaching, but the skies above still remained bright blue with few clouds.
A gusty chill had settled into the city, forcing me to wear my thicker jacket.
Taxis didn’t roar quite as much, which wasn’t to say there was no traffic—just that I had happened to pick the rare occasion on which the city would not blare at me so early in the day.
I came to the bar that we had spent the night before and was not surprised to see it closed.
Nearby, two people who looked like they had drunk too much the night before lay on the ground, stretched out, drool coming out of their mouths.
If I didn’t know any better, I would have said that it looked like the beginning of a zombie movie.
“Chance.”
I turned around and say Layla coming my way. She looked like she had just come from the gym, wearing long leggings, a hoodie, and some gloves. She had thrown the hoodie over her head.
“Hey,” I said, not really feeling in the mood for jokes at this hour. “What’s—”
“Come with me.”
I followed her, feeling more than a little suspicious of what was going on. But then again, if this was a trap or a game on her part, she was playing it rather poorly.
I just hoped what she had said about Morgan didn’t mean that Morgan was suddenly playing games with me too. Unlike Layla, he had something that he could use to hurt me. He could devastate me if he wanted to.
Even as I followed Layla, the city remained in a kind of peaceful calm that felt like the eye of the hurricane.
I had just emerged from far too much chaos the night before and had woken up only to find the city at its calmest during the day that I had ever seen…
which probably meant that at any minute now, shit would pick back up all over again.
Layla ducked into a side street, 59th Street, without any traffic at all. She went up to a building, opened it, and led me inside. We walked up to the second floor, came to her apartment, and opened it up.
“Welcome to my home,” she said. “I know here we can speak freely.”
“OK, just what the hell’s going on,” I said.
“Well, might as well get right to it, huh? Morgan texted me this morning and asked me to meet you outside your apartment while he walked.”
“Walked where?”
“I couldn’t say. Somewhere south, but my place is south of yours anyways.”
That told me absolutely nothing. It could have been anything to Wall Street to Times Square to some tiny Chinese restaurant that only Morgan knew about.
“In any case, though, it was an easy request to fulfill since I quit my job this morning.”
“What,” I said, my jaw dropping.
I knew that Layla had contemplated such a move for some time, but hearing that she’d actually pulled the trigger surprised me a little bit. Good for her. Uncle is a creepy asshole. She had to do it.
“Yep, I called my uncle and said I couldn’t ethically work for him any longer. He yelled at me but I just kept the phone a safe distance from my ear and it worked out surprisingly well. Not too much drama, anyways.”
“I see,” I said. “What are you going to do now?”
“I’ll figure that out over the next few days,” she said. “I’ve got enough cash to live on my own for a year, and if I really need to, I can find relatives or friends who aren’t sickos.”
Like me. But don’t offer that right now. Not with everything going on.
“Makes sense,” I said. “Well, congrats. It sounds like it was the right move.”
“And an easy one at that. But anyways, I saw Morgan. He said he didn’t like me but that he felt I was someone you trusted.
I said that was true and that you had good reason for doing so, even after everything that happened.
Morgan snorted at that and didn’t seem like he quite believed me, but he went with it.
He told me then that he had to take care of some things for you guys but that he couldn’t tell you about them because he knew you would overreact. ”
Morgan was damn right I was going to overreact, but not because of what he might say—rather, it was the fact that he didn’t feel like he could tell me instead of Layla.
“He wanted a third party to know that what he was doing was in the benefit of you and he said to make sure you knew that no matter what, he was on your side.”
A long pause came. I couldn’t even make sense of any of this. So Morgan was speaking in code now to my former lover? What was… what did any of this mean?
“As if this couldn’t get any more bizarre,” I said, sighing. “I don’t even know what’s truth anymore.”
“Welcome to my childhood,” Layla said.
I looked up at her and let my eye gaze encourage her to continue speaking.
“My uncle loved to twist games with the truth,” she said.
“When you’re that young, you don’t have the confidence in your truth so you just go with what you are told.
Even if you note that something is a lie, you get told so adamantly that it’s the truth that you just start to accept it at some point.
I feel like it took until this morning for me to unravel that my uncle had lied to me about so much. But it mind fucks you.
“Because when you think about it, you have no idea what’s real and what’s not.
I know I helped play a role in that for you, Chance, and I’m sorry.
You probably think I’m fucking with you right now.
I am not. I am telling you everything I know and am trying to avoid interpreting anything for you, fearing it might lead you down the wrong thought train.
Maybe that’s crazy, but I just can’t let myself guide someone as poorly as my uncle did. ”
I felt like I was in a trippy dream.
“Morgan didn’t say anything else?”
“No,” Layla said. “All he said was make sure that you found out about this and that you were told this alone. He was adamant that I tell you in private. He was extraordinarily careful about when he spoke to me on his walk. That’s what he said so little on what felt like a relatively long walk.”
He’s definitely dealing with Edwin Hunt, then. But in what way? Why can’t I just know?
That eye of the hurricane metaphor now seemed apt, because I could see the oncoming wind from the wall of the hurricane making its way back over to me.
I could see the winds of chaos making their way toward me, and it would hit me before the day was done.
If Morgan was coming back to my place, then shit would surely go down as soon as I saw him.
“I am so fucking confused,” I said.
“Are you scared?”
I bit my lip.
“I don’t know that scared is…”
No, that was a lie. For losing Morgan, that was very much an appropriate word.
“Yes,” I said.
To my surprise, Layla came up to me and gave me a gentle, tender hug.
It wasn’t much, and it definitely did not have any sexual connotations to it, but on the heels of what had happened the night before, it was a nice reminder that I wasn’t as alone as I might have feared.
Claire was gone, Sarah wasn’t messaging me, and Morgan was now on some weird adventure, but at least Layla was still giving me her support despite me running off of her.
“I was wondering if you would ever admit such a thing,” she said.
“Yeah, it takes something like this for that to happen.”
Layla just gave a quick snort and a gentle laugh. She pulled back and put her hands on my knee, but that also seemed more comforting and less innuendo.
“You’ll be fine,” she said.
Then, as if to prove otherwise, my phone rang. I looked down and saw Morgan was calling me. I guess it was time for the moment of truth.
“Hey, bud, where are you?” I said, trying to hide my obvious paranoia and discomfort.
“Hey, Chance, come to Hunt Industries. I’ve made a deal with Dad.”