Chapter 16
Layla
I look forward to the pull of sleep when Russell drives us home after my eight-hour shift, closing my eyes immediately after settling into his truck. I should probably make conversation and profusely thank him for being so sweet and patient with Gauge the whole time, but I’m leashed to a black cloud hanging over my head.
Except this time, sleep doesn’t come, so I play pretend. My mind is pure chaos, thinking of Russell’s son. Our ages. Our achievements. Our successes and failures in life. I’m unreasonably envious of the opportunities handed to Paul that have never once been within my reach.
I loved my dad more than I loved anyone else in my life until Russell, but I catch myself wondering how I would have turned out if Dad had been more like him. If I’d have ended up as smart or driven as Paul. If I would have ever looked twice at Steven and moved to this town, met Russell and fallen in love with someone so much older than me.
Probably not . At least, not the first part.
That’s the real, ugly, honest truth. Though I certainly would have felt worthier of Russell’s attention. Instead, I feel…trashy. Uneducated. Pathetic. Undeserving.
Russell should never have looked twice at me.
Without waiting for Russell to open my door, I’m out of the truck as soon as he parks in front of my unit beside Max’s car. I startle when Russell lays his hand on my back from behind while I struggle to unbuckle Gauge from his car seat without waking him.
“Come here, darlin’.”
I shake my head, twisting Gauge’s baby blanket in my hands. “We should get him inside. I’m sure his parents are worried.”
Russell gently grips my elbow to turn me around. “Come here,” he urges again, drawing me into his chest and encouraging me to lift my arms over his shoulders.
As soon as I do, the floodgates open, and everything I’ve stuffed deep down inside myself forces its way out. I grip the back of his neck, rolling up as high as I can on my tiptoes.
“Oh, darlin’, you’re breaking my heart here.” He’s as upset as I am when his hands drift lower to my bottom, hefting me up easily.
I wrap my legs around Russell’s waist, my dress skating higher up my thighs immodestly. With no one around to see us in the dark parking lot, he could push my panties aside and fill me with half his cock in this position if he wanted to. Distract me with an orgasm or two.
See? Trashy .
“Put me down.” I drop my legs and let them hang loose. “Please.”
Russell does for half a second, and then he hooks his hands lower around my thighs, lifting me again but keeping a firmer hold. He bumps the back door closed with his hip and hops into the passenger seat with me straddling his lap, shutting us inside.
He cups my face with both hands, forcing me to look at him. “I can take a guess at what you’re thinking. Feeling. But I want to hear it from you.”
It all comes out in a rush. “Why me? Why do you love me? How can you love me ?”
“Christ, darlin’, I didn’t know it was that bad. I love you because you’re you . Sweet, beautiful, inside and out.” He kisses my lips once before continuing. “Patient, with a kind word for everyone, even when they treat you poorly. You work hard, putting yourself last because you have such a big heart—though I wish you were more selfish. You give and you give, and you give some more and never expect or want anything in return—though I wish that weren’t the case, either.”
“If you’re trying to make me feel better, you’re not doing a very good job, wishing I was different,” I say, trying to twist off his lap and climb over the center console.
He grips the back of my neck, his other arm banded around me to hold me in place on his hard thighs. “I’m not trying to make you feel better. I’m telling you the truth—what you need to hear. You are good through and through. So good that you hurt yourself in the process. You’re too good for this world. With a soul as beautiful as yours, how could I not love you?”
“But you’re always frustrated with me when I won’t take your money or quit my extra jobs. I don’t get it.”
“I get frustrated because you refuse to take care of yourself or let me—”
My voice is too loud for the small space when I cut him off and ask, “So, because we’ve been together for all of two days, I’m just supposed to let you take care of me from now on? ”
“Yes,” he says decisively. “I’ve been trying to for over three years, and you know it.”
“Well, don’t! Three years and I’m still a mess. I’m not as smart as Paul—don’t even know if I’ll ever finish school or be able to do anything more than a few crappy jobs.” I clutch my stomach, shaking when I tell him, “And I can’t give you anything your ex-wife did, either.”
His mouth drops open momentarily before he says with a hoarse voice, “So, you are scared.”
“Yes! If we ever got married, which is crazy talk, I could never be as good of a wife as her.”
“Darlin’…there’s no competition for who could be a better wife. She and I—we didn’t work. That part of my life with her is over, and we’re both happier and better off for it. I want you .”
“But you shouldn’t! It’s not right or fair to you.”
“Says who? Your dad?”
The tone he uses when he says your dad makes him sound like Steven, and it raises my hackles. “Don’t. Don’t do that.”
Russell’s jaw hardens with each question. “Don’t tell you that you were raised with some effed-up notions of what a woman or wife is supposed to do? That you’re never allowed to accept a gift, or that, for some reason, you don’t deserve any compassion, any slack? That you can never, not once, complain or speak up when you’re exhausted or in pain? That you can’t rest for one millisecond, let someone take care of you, or else you’re taking advantage of them?”
I press my lips in a thin line, trying to pull his hand away from my neck. He firms his grip, though he’s still careful not to hurt me. I’ve never seen him so upset before, and his voice is the one too loud for this space now .
“Do you think you would have stayed with a piece of crap like Steven if your dad hadn’t raised you to believe that if you sleep with a man, you have to stay with him, no matter what? Overlook or forgive him every time he hurt you? Years and years of abuse—”
Temples throbbing with a headache as the air in the truck becomes stifling, I whisper-yell, “It wasn’t abuse! He never hit me!”
“Your dad or Steven?”
“Neither!”
“So because they never laid hands on you, that means what they did was ok? That they didn’t verbally or emotionally beat you down?” Ducking his head to look me in the eye when I try to turn my face away, Russell asks, “You don’t think it’s unfair or wrong that your dad raised you to believe that if you don’t break your back ‘contributing’ financially, then you have to—” He swallows hard, and I know I’m going to hate what comes out of his mouth next. “You have to do so literally on your back for a man ‘whenever he wants’? Made you believe you can never say no?”
“I did say no sometimes,” I manage to say through a dry throat, no longer fighting Russell’s hold.
Lowering his voice, which has gone rough and scratchy, Russell rubs his thumb up and down my neck and asks, “And what happened when you did, Layla? Were you punished for it? Have to work extra hard to make up for it?”
I catch a sob with my hands over my mouth, blinking fast, breathing as hard as if I were running a race from one side of Texas to the other, unable to answer. Old memories I’ve tried so hard to forget or ignore threaten to crush me—my dad coming out of his room with his belt buckle undone, ranting about my mom; him making me run laps or pull weeds for hours in the summer heat until he felt I’d learned a lesson; of dreading Steven coming home because I knew what he would want from me as soon as he stepped through the door. I did all of it without complaint, rarely ever saying no , just like I was raised.
“Since you were fifteen, darlin’. Fifteen ,” Russell stresses, squeezing his eyes shut for a long moment. “It kills me what you’ve been through.” He switches to holding my face again, our foreheads pressed together. “It’s not right. You hear me? It’s. Not. Right or fair to you . I don’t expect or need you to give me anything other than your heart, darlin’. You already have mine.”
“You have it,” I say with the barest whisper, crossing my hands over my chest. “It’s yours.”
His lips meet mine, soft and tender at first, then deepening between my sobs when I wrap my arms around his neck. But when I start crying so hard that I can’t kiss him back, he combs his fingers through my hair after taking my claw clip out with my cheek lying on his shoulder. After rolling down the window to fill the truck with fresh air, banishing the old, he kisses my temple from time to time while I fall apart on his lap, never rushing me or shifting in his seat, uncomfortable physically or mentally.
And when the last of my energy seeps from me and my body slackens with sleep, he continues to hold me and the heart that belongs to him together.
* * *
Russell
I wake Layla long before I want to when Gauge cries from his car seat. I finish sending a text to Elliott from Layla’s phone, then erase it before helping Layla sit up and get out of the truck. My legs fell asleep long ago, and I have to stomp my boots on the ground to wake them up.
Layla’s cheeks pinken. “S—”
“Nope. No apologizing. I told you I wanted you sleeping on top of me every night, and I got exactly what I wanted.”
She smiles shyly, and I’m comforted to see a small semblance of her usual self returning, knowing that she was able to let go of at least some of the pain she’s been carrying on her back for most of her young life.
Layla takes Gauge inside while I unlatch the car seat and follow behind her into the apartment, setting the base down on the floor beneath the window.
“Oh, heck. It’s like a bomb went off in here,” I say through gritted teeth.
Layla huffs. “It’s ok. You can curse. I want to.”
I bite my tongue anyway since she doesn’t need the added stress with her apartment being stressful enough. Max and Cora appear to have moved in while we were away, as I feared, and made themselves right at home, currently taking a shower together. Max’s moans are louder than the running water.
Layla eyes the clothing spilling out of the open suitcases on her bed and the food wrappers and dirty dishes on the counter with distaste. How they made such a mess in such a short amount of time is a mystery.
She looks sick in the face when Max hits a particularly high-pitched note when he moans once more, and she holds Gauge up for me to take. “Kitchen first,” she says, moving toward the sink.
“They’re old enough to clean up after themselves.”
“It’s ok. You know I don’t mind cleaning.” She even gives me a wink, which is why I feel comfortable saddling up behind her to kiss her neck and wrap my arm around her waist.
“Too bad they’re here and the baby’s awake. If you wanted to— only if you wanted to—I’d…”
She drops her head back, slipping her fingers between mine and pulling my arm tighter around her. “You’d what, Daddy?”
When she arches her neck, I kiss the edge of her jaw. “I’d pay you to wash the dishes after taking off your sexy little—”
“Pay her for what?”
“Heck.” I turn, finding Max scrubbing a towel over his wet hair with the shower still running in the bathroom, which is why we didn’t hear him come out.
“Nothing. It was a joke,” Layla says, giving Max a strained smile while loading the dishwasher.
“Sure.” Max tosses his towel on the bed and then digs through his suitcase, pulling a gray T-shirt and black athletic shorts on over his boxers, which I really hope were clean and not the ones he’d been wearing all day. “You don’t need to do all that,” he says to his sister. “Cora will take care of it.”
“Or you could, since it’s partly your mess,” I challenge with a raised brow.
Max laughs as if I said something outrageously funny. “Yeah, sure, I’ll get right on that.”
Cora comes out next, buck naked other than the towel she’s patting across her chest to her armpit. “Oh, shit,” she squeaks, quickly covering herself. “I didn’t know y’all were back already. ”
I immediately turn around, having never wanted to see any woman other than Layla naked for the rest of my life.
“What were you thinking? Get back in there and get dressed,” Max snaps at Cora, his earlier humor gone.
For a split second, Layla’s face falls, but then she locks down her reaction and starts tidying the rest of the kitchen silently.
“Speak up, darlin’,” I encourage.
She drops a plate too hard in the dishwasher. “It’s fine.”
“You know it’s not.”
She holds my gaze for a beat, twisting her hands before saying to her brother, “Don’t snap at Cora. It’s not her fault.”
With Cora tucked out of view in the bathroom, I turn to see Max’s brows shoot up, taken aback, confirming what I knew within minutes of meeting him—Layla wasn’t the only one whose head was filled with their dad’s bullcrap.
* * *
While Layla and I sit on her bed with our bowls of the Tuscan kale soup I made for dinner, Cora gets up from the table every few minutes to bounce Gauge around the apartment—all ten feet of available space. I’d feel guilty about letting him nap so long in the truck, disturbing any sleep schedule they might have, if I hadn’t had to babysit him at the diner for so long.
Layla looks at Max several times, as do I, wondering when he’s going to jump in and take a turn as Cora’s soup grows cold. When he doesn’t, Layla quickly finishes her bowl, then reaches for Gauge. “You sit and eat. I’ve got him.”
“Thank you,” Cora says with genuine gratitude, shooting Max an annoyed look but ultimately remaining quiet.
I rinse mine and Layla’s bowls and spoons, then turn to lean against the kitchen counter with my arms and ankles crossed. “This isn’t going to work.”
“It’s fine,” Layla says, flashing me wide eyes, silently telling me to stop. She might have spoken up earlier, but she won’t be able to deconstruct everything she was taught in one night.
“I meant the apartment. Not enough space for everyone.”
Layla is quick to say, “I can make a pallet on the floor. I don’t mind.”
“You’re not sleeping on the floor, darlin’. Now that Jake and Jack have been taken care of and the bedroom door has been replaced, we can move back to our house.”
She frowns down at Gauge. “I really don’t mind.” Of course, she doesn’t. She doesn’t want to leave her nephew .
I rub my hand down my face, tugging on the end of my beard before I reluctantly offer, “We have plenty of bedrooms to spare if you want them to stay with us.”
By the tone of Max’s voice, you wouldn’t guess at his feelings, but those agitated fingers of his drumming on the tabletop are a dead giveaway when he asks, “You’re already living together? That was fast.”
It was agonizingly slow , actually . But I don’t have the energy or desire to explain our timeline and relationship to Max when it’s none of his business. After all, he’s not Layla’s dad, either, and it’s hypocritical considering he and Cora are technically living together, too.
Layla cradles Gauge in one arm and rolls up onto her tiptoes, pushing her fingers into my hair. I lean into her hand, wishing we were alone so I could close my eyes and truly enjoy her touch without an audience.
“That was really kind of you,” she says softly, pulling me down for a kiss. “Thank you. ”
“Ew.” Cora’s mouth twists, her cheeks flushing when Layla gives her a wounded look. Cora drops her chin as if she’s sharing a secret when she whispers, “Sorry. It’s just…he’s so old, and you know…” I’m assuming she’s referring to my weight when she waves her hand up and down my form.
Though I shouldn’t care what she or anyone else thinks of us, it’s still a punch to the gut. It’s ugly how I punch back when I ask, “And how old are you?”
“Eighteen,” Cora answers.
Narrowing my eyes as I study her smooth, rounded features, I ask, “How long have you been eighteen?”
“Long enough for us to fall in love and start a family,” Max answers before Cora can, gripping her hand on the tabletop, giving his girlfriend a charming smile that has Cora mooning over him.
I see right through it. “Is that right?”
“Yup.” Max pops the P. “‘Sides, I’m sure you agree age is just a number, what with Layla being over half your age.”
I fist my hands, barely keeping myself from throwing a punch at his face. “Is that why no one stepped in when Layla moved in with Steven when she was still a kid? Age was just a number?”
Max’s charming smile melts into pinched lips. “She made her bed,” he says, leaving the so she had to lie in it unspoken.
I straighten, fury pulsing hot in my veins. “She was fifteen!”
Layla gets between me and her brother, sliding her hand up my chest with a plea in her eyes. “Please, drop it. Please. It’s in the past.”
I grit my teeth and shut up with no intention of “dropping it” for long. I want to revoke the invitation to let Max stay with us if only to get Cora and Layla away from him. But if I did that, I’d hurt my little darlin’, which I’m not willing to do.
Ever.