Chapter 40
Layla
BOOKISH BITCHES
CINDY
I’m sorry but that was the worst thing I’ve ever read
LAYLA
BELLA
about time you finished it
CINDY
I’m sorry Miss 2.0 Speed
some of us enjoy the scenic route
LAYLA
but not this specific one
CINDY
my god no
THAT WAS GOD AWFUL
BELLA
the second he followed the woman into the stall I wanted to puke
LAYLA
I hate the cheating trope
CINDY
DISGUSTING
it has me wanting to castrate fictional men
Asher’s taking me to a rage room
he says I need an outlet
BELLA
HAHAHA
take the book with you and whack it
Light streaks across my face, forcing me awake. It takes a moment to find my bearings, to realize my legs are cramped and my neck stiff because I’m not in my bed at home. Emmy is beside me, out to the world; looks like we both fell asleep reading again.
It’s happened the past two nights Kieran’s been away. Emmy never complains about me sleeping in her bed but my neck sure does.
Slowly sitting up, I stretch this way and that, cracking my neck to the side—
I all but jump out of my skin when I see a hulking frame sitting in the recliner chair in the corner. Placing my hand on my beating heart, it’s a miracle I didn’t scream and startle Emmy awake.
I slide out of the bed and tiptoe over to the chair.
What the hell?
I check my watch. It’s six in the morning. Kieran wasn’t meant to be back until late this evening.
I’m a little concerned I didn’t hear him come in. For all I knew, he could have been an intruder, but now that I think about it, maybe my dream last night where he was murmuring things in my ear wasn’t a dream after all.
To be frank, I brushed it aside because he’s been a starring role in my dreams every night for the past three weeks.
Cocking my head to the side, my heart aches a little.
You’d expect his face to be free of worry in sleep but even now his brows are slightly furrowed. I swear they’ve been permanently stuck like that since that night.
The god-awful night my heart dropped when he walked out of that room, and it hasn’t returned to its rightful place since. I think it’s still trying to chase after him, beckoning and pleading my mind to go to him.
Kieran doesn’t even know how close I’ve come to giving in.
How many times I’ve parted my lips to say we can try and date. But every time, as if my body wants to remind me just how ruined it is, I would get obliterated by a wave of tiredness, or like three days ago, a burst of dizziness, black spots dancing across my vision.
My body has been punishing me, reminding me of the very real reason why bringing another person so intimately into my life will destroy theirs.
My parents are still working when they should be looking at retirement. My mom can’t have her phone on silent without borderline having a panic attack. My dad freaks out when I get cramps from my period because he thinks I’m relapsing.
Even Bella has my specialist’s number on speed dial, the closest hospital route mapped out, and I swear the girl has an emergency hospital bag packed for me in her car. It wouldn’t surprise me—my best friend is as type A as they come—but to know she thinks about all this when we go out crushes me.
That’s not normal. The people around me shouldn’t have to carry my burdens like this.
Then there’s my boss.
Kieran, who thinks he can handle it but deserves a life that’s full of happiness and not hospitals and colorless waiting rooms. Because the more that time goes on, the more my life is slowly bleeding back into what it used to be.
And I seem to be the only one aware of it.
It’s utterly terrifying me what my body is doing at the moment. No one can figure out why my medication has stopped working. My tests are coming back as if I’m okay but my symptoms say otherwise.
I’m not well.
I won’t ever be one hundred percent healthy but I was hoping the medication would last longer than this.
I was blessed to experience it for a short while but the universe seems to have other plans for me. Maybe my body got used to the medication?
With so many unanswered questions circulating, I’m keeping it a secret, hiding the lack of sleep. Hiding the way my ears ring and my vision blurs when I stand. Hiding…everything.
The body aches.
The arthritis-like symptoms.
The lethargy.
The nightmares.
The panic.
The nausea.
I’m hiding everything from everyone around me and that is why I never take that step toward Kieran.
Even if it kills me, even if all I want to do is lean forward and smooth the furrow of his brow and kiss him, even as my fingers physically ache from the desire to want to run through his hair…I remain at a distance.
The thing Kieran hasn’t realized yet is that as much pain as I can see him suffering, it’s killing me more.
Gently shaking him awake, with my heart still lost somewhere in the depths of my stomach, I breathe deeply through my nose to steady myself as those long black lashes flutter, his ocean depths sucking me in.
No amount can steady me though.
“Layla,” he whispers, as if I’m a prayer answered.
“What are you doing back early?”
He blinks. “I missed my girls.”
Blunt.
Honest.
Direct.
And it utterly breaks me that I can’t say that I missed him too. That he takes the joy and warmth from the house with him when he goes.
When he’s here my life is full of a radiance I’ve only ever experienced with him. It’s full of energy and such happiness that when he leaves, my world is suddenly gray, as if Kieran is the color of my vision.
But I’m not like Kieran, I can’t put my heart on the line. Because I never have. I stopped trusting others the day doctors told me that it was all in my head and my friends dropped like flies because they didn’t believe me either.
He smiles but it’s not in his usual cocky manner. It’s full of sadness and reluctant acceptance.
“It’s okay, sunshine.”
I close my eyes at the nickname.
That goddamn nickname.
He stands, forcing my hand to drop from his body and my eyes to open as he crowds my space. “I’ll keep waiting,” he whispers.
That’s when I notice what’s in his hands.
He holds it out to me, the pieces of paper I put together last night on a whim when Emmy asked me to read her a bedtime story.
“Did you write this?”
I take the paper from him, averting my eyes. Oh my god, I’m mortified. I can feel how flushed my cheeks are.
“Y-yes,” I force myself to mutter.
“It’s amazing, Layla.”
The honesty strikes me. Snapping my eyes away from the artistic designs of tattoos on his arms and instead to the soulful depth of his eyes, I find such an encouraging smile on his face it makes my heart skip a beat.
“I didn’t know you wanted to write children’s books.”
I wrote this story for Emmy, one about her and her dad, how he loves her and cares for her, how he was searching for someone to pour his love into and found her.
She adored it, especially the moments that were about Kieran, the parts I wrote about his best qualities, all the things I tried desperately to stop myself from falling for.
“Never thought it was something worth mentioning,” I mumble honestly.
“Everything about you is worth mentioning.”
My eyes shutter closed.
“You should ask Bella to illustrate it, help put your work out into the world.”
My eyes snap open at that. “No, it’s just a hobby.” Shrugging I go on. “Besides no one would want to read my words.”
Kieran’s lips suddenly graze my ear. “I want to read your work, don’t stop writing Layla. People deserve to have your light shine in their life too.”
He walks out of the room as if he didn’t just give me the most hope anyone ever has for a dream I’ve kept buried close to my soul.