Chapter 59
I reclined on Layla’s plush, green couch that I had made myself, wondering when the last time I had actually been on this couch was.
Or, perhaps better said, if I’d ever been on her couch clothed.
For the most part, I had always taken her back to my place.
She’d kept her distance from me coming into her place, perhaps knowing what she did about what she was going to do with her uncle.
Time and space had allowed me to forgive her for such actions, but the immediate time and space prevented me too much from going back to the way things were.
And, in any case, everything over the previous few hours had been spent not talking to her and more talking to myself.
I tried to encourage myself that things would be fine.
I’d gotten through some awfully humiliating situations before, like being publicly embarrassed in the Burnson Investments fiasco, and come out on the other aside in one piece.
I’d survived the shame Edwin Hunt liked to cast upon me, and had emerged stronger because of everything that he would try to throw my way.
There was nothing like this, though. Nothing to compare to being homeless, jobless, and broke.
I didn’t have access to the trust fund money that Morgan did, a terrible break in fate given that Morgan already had access of sorts to a different type of trust fund in ridiculously well paying job at Hunt Industries.
I just had my guile, my wits, and a lady that wanted to sleep with me but whom I could not be with.
Well, that was not quite completely true.
“OK,” I said, my head in my hands. “What all do you have?”
I grabbed a pen and paper to write this down, the better so I could visualize it on paper.
I had Rising Sun, although that was in a worst spot than two hours after the Titanic had struck the fatal iceberg.
I had Virtual Realty, which was a nice grab, but the problem was Edwin would take over MCH very soon, and that would scuttle many of my plans.
I suppose I could have tried to get a way to get half from Morgan before the completion went through, but I wasn’t even sure if I could pull that off, legally speaking.
It wasn’t overlooked, I’m sure, by Edwin that when he took over Morgan’s half, Morgan would not sell anymore shares in the company until the completion of the sale.
And while I could fight Edwin in a lot of ways, through a legal quagmire was not one of them.
That was a battle that being a billionaire made you the equivalent of the old Roman Empire, largely unassailable until your own arrogance or squandering of resources did you end.
And in any case, that all ignored one major problem.
I wasn’t going to speak to Morgan or to Edwin any time soon.
Certainly, I never desired to speak to Edwin Hunt, the miserable curmudgeon of a man who would rather win a thousand bucks than spend a hundred on a gift for either Morgan or me.
I never had any attachment to him, and he was not particularly shy about addressing me indirectly, always speaking to Morgan and never me.
But Morgan?
Fuck, man. What had happened?
One minute, I had gotten Morgan to leave his old man’s firm, set out on my own path, and to start becoming a different kind of Hunt. If ever there was someone I could have depended on for my entire life, it was Morgan.
And then it all proved to be one massive trap, one massive way for Morgan to upend everything in my life. With one betrayal, one move from partner and co-founder of Morgan at most, she had some fitness classes that she didn’t have to go to.
“Tell me what you’re talking about,” I said. “Seriously. There were a lot of things said.”
Layla bit her lip, looked down at the couch, as if the green would enlighten her mind on how to best frame her words to me, and then looked up to me with intensity that seemed to come from nowhere.
“I asked you to make a promise,” she said sternly. “I asked you ‘promise me you’ll love me no matter what happens.’”
A long pause came as I knew what the follow up question was. I was already bringing my legs up, putting my feet between me and Layla.
“Do you still believe that?”
The instinctive answer was no. That was the easy answer, the one that would push her away, perhaps forever, and allow me to focus on getting myself back up to level ground. That was the one that would give me what I wanted in that moment—solitude.
But was it fair?
And for that matter? Was it true?
“Honestly?” I said, using the silence that followed to stall.
I didn’t get much, though, because Layla’s lean forward and her wide eyes told me I had to hurry the hell up.
“I have no idea,” I said. “I really don’t know.
I’m not trying to bullshit you, but I lost my house and my company today, Layla.
The company’s going down in the tubes as soon as the sale from Morgan to Edwin becomes official.
It’s just a matter of when, not if, on that one.
And… well, is that any time to figure out if you love someone? ”
“Is there ever a good time?”
Fair enough. But for me, right now, this really isn’t, it really, really isn’t.
“What about for you?” I said. “Do you still love me?”
She bit her lip.
“Yeah.”
Well, shit.
“I know what I did to you was bad. I know that the fact that I’m even here right now, able to have this conversation, is nothing short of miraculous. But yeah, through it all, I love you. Still do.”
As sweet as those words were, and as promising as that might have made the future look, it was for precisely this exact reason that I was here on the couch.
It clearly would take no effort to go to her bed, make the kind of love that would go down in the history books as the best ever, and then do it all in the morning.
Frankly, with the way I was getting hard, this was something that I was giving more thought to in the moment.
But that specific feeling wasn’t love. It was lust.
And more than that, for all of the self-talk I’d just given about having better self-control, about being a better individual, about not letting my emotions and feelings dictate everything I did, it sure would look really shitty if I went through all of these thoughts and then fucked Layla right after thinking it was a bad idea.
“Layla…” I said. “Don’t take this the wrong way.
I’m grateful for your love, and there may come a day very soon in which I realize I feel the same way.
But right now? What I just said is proof that I need to sleep out here.
I don’t want to go in there and make you feel a certain way when I’m not sure I feel that way, especially given our history. I’m… I’m sorry.”
Layla just shook her head, her voice becoming tight, soft, and annoyed.
“There’s nothing preventing you from coming to me,” she said. “I know where you stand. You’re honest with me. You don’t think I can handle your honesty?”
I decided against answering that, thinking that it was designed to be an explosive question, the kind of thing that could get her to lash out at me.
“Chance…”
But she couldn’t say anything else. She leaned toward me for a second, but I scooted back, as if to make the point. Admittedly, the feeling of just saying “fuck it” and going to her was extraordinarily strong.
You know what was stronger, though? The desire to prove that I was a changed man and that I controlled myself at the appropriate times; the desire to prove that to myself.
“I’m sorry, Layla.”
Her eyes, even with nothing more than a single lamp lit, seemed to water with such clarity it was as if one could see a rainstorm approaching from the top of the mountains.
But before the tears could fall, she stood up, walked back to her bedroom, and closed the door, not quite a full slam, but definitely not a gentle tug, either.
I collapsed into the couch, placing my arm over my eyes as I tried to figure out a way out of this.
The biggest problem, however, was that I wasn’t sure which way I wanted to exit—the way of love, or the way of declining her.
And what had just happened tonight, what had just done down between us, was not going to make things any clearer. If anything, the confusion had only doubled or tripled because of my true but completely maddening answer.
I didn’t know.