Layla (Cheap Thrills #9)

Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Layla

I was emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausted. I also had bruises on my arms and legs from trying to pull my family off Mark yesterday, and I was pissed. No, not merely pissed, that didn’t cover it. I was enraged.

“Whoa,” Evie gasped, coming to a stop just inside the room I worked in at Delicious Divas. “I’m not sure who put that look on your face, but I swear I didn’t do anything if it was me.”

After an hour of listening to the men rant and yell, I’d walked away from it all, locked myself in my house, and turned off my phone.

Unfortunately, I also had a landline, so I’d had to unplug them all and had taken the old fashioned one I had in my bedroom off the cradle. The noise from the receiver had driven me insane until I realized I could pull that one out of the wall, too. It’d only taken me three hours of screaming at it to make that realization, which meant I also had a voice like a ninety-a-day smoker today.

Fucking fantastic!

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Hearing the rasp, Evie’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s sexy as fuck. Well, unless you’re sick, and in that case, stay the hell away from me.”

Waving a hand through the air, I looked at the screen on my computer, showing which appointments I had today so I could get what I needed ready. “I’m not sick.”

That’s all I had to say about it. I didn’t want to even touch on the very tip of the shitberg that was my life. I might be angry at Mark, he may have broken my heart, but I still loved him, and seeing the reactions of my family members had torn my heart in two.

How did you protect the person you were in angry love with while being pissed at the people you loved? It was an oxymoron of emotions if that could even exist, and I was hurting because of it. I was also sleep-deprived and hormonal.

In short, I was a dangerous woman today.

I heard the door close behind me and assumed Evie had left, but when I spun my chair around, she was sitting on the electric chair I treated most of my patients on.

“Wanna talk about it?”

I’d already covered that in my mind, but she was so sweet I couldn’t keep my shitty attitude in place. “No, but thanks.”

Tilting her head to the side, she stared at me for a moment. “I see heartache in those beautiful eyes, Layla. In all the time I’ve known you, I don’t think I’ve ever seen that.”

No, she hadn’t, but if she’d been here four years ago, she’d have seen devastation for the forty-eight hours it’d taken me to pack my stuff up and move to a different city. My family had been confused, but I’d told them I’d made a mistake and wanted to finish my nursing degree.

Fortunately, I hadn’t told any of them that I hated nursing with every fiber of my being—and I meant every fiber. I was okay with syringes and needles, they didn’t impact me at all, but put me next to someone with an open wound or in an operating room, and I wanted to scream or pass out. I was a pro at fake it ‘til you make it, though, so no one had been any the wiser. But the second I graduated, I’d moved straight into getting what I needed to be an aesthetic nurse and had also taken night classes to be an esthetician.

People looked at plastic surgery incorrectly, in my opinion. My cousin, Ariana, had gotten her breasts done and had a nose job years ago because she’d had body dysmorphia. It’d affected her mental health so badly that she’d contemplated suicide. That was the side of plastic surgery that people should base their opinions on.

For many, it changed their lives. Accidents that’d impacted someone’s appearance, surgeries that’d gone wrong and the person couldn’t look at their body, features that people hated so much that they wanted to die. Those were just some of the good that plastic surgeons brought to the world.

One woman I’d met had an A-cup sized breast on her left side and a DD-cup on the right. For a woman, something like that would be embarrassing and would stand out. Going to the beach, being in the pool, and everyday life would be impacted by it. Sure, you could stuff your bra or get a chicken cutlet, but what if it came out? What if you fell in love? Yes, the other person should love you for who you are and whatever way you come in, but more often than not, the patient didn’t love themselves and was reluctant to even open the door to let someone else do it.

People like that were what I based my small contribution to it on.

Absolutely, Botox and fillers were typically used to help with aging, but on the flip side of that coin, they also helped people who had issues they didn’t want or couldn’t afford surgery for. The non-surgical nose job—injecting filler to help even out bumps or fix what was bothering the person about their nose. Even though it wasn’t permanent and needed to be redone, it did the job, and the person didn’t have to have their nose broken and an anesthetic. Non-prominent/receding chins could also be fixed, as could jawlines. Botox was used for a plethora of non-cosmetic problems, too.

Surgeries could go wrong, and they were also terrifying for people and not always financially feasible, what I did wasn’t. There was some pain during it that I tried to help with numbing cream, but other than that, within a few days, they had the issue resolved, and all we had to do was maintain it with some upkeep here and there. Boom, job done.

Then there were the women who just wanted it to stop aging—I didn’t begrudge them that one bit. Some people were happy to let age do its thing, but not everyone was the same or wanted it to be as severe as it was. Hell, our bodies fell apart with age anyway. If we could change some of it, why not? I couldn’t say I’d do that when I was past the age of forty or fifty because I wasn’t there but never say never.

The one thing I wouldn’t do is give someone an excessive amount of filler or Botox. The over-inflated lips and plastic-looking face weren’t something I was happy to do.

And I got to use what I’d worked hard for and had paid a small fortune to achieve—my degree.

The added benefit being that I got to do that without having to see inside someone’s body or watch as their skin was sewn up. I also didn’t have to fight back the tears as I watched people say goodbye to their loved ones, both young and old.

I’d seen a woman give birth to a stillborn in my last year, and that’d cemented my determination to move into a more cosmetic line of medicine. I couldn’t hack ever seeing that amount of devastation, watching as someone’s months, if not a lifetime of their hopes and dreams, be taken away from them as they held the tiny body they’d carried inside them.

I couldn’t do that, but I could give people happiness in my own way.

Just not myself, apparently.

If my issues could be fixed by injecting something into my body, I’d do it that second, but sadly for me, it wasn’t that simple.

“Layla?” Evie called, getting my attention back onto where she was smiling at me sadly. “You know, not all problems need to get out into the world. Some of them we have to carry around inside ourselves for a while before we’re ready to talk about them because saying the words makes them real. I get it, but just kno—”

“I’m married, and my family found out and beat the ever-loving shit out of him yesterday. I think my dad even bit him.”

The words came out of me in a rush and would have been hard to understand, but I couldn’t make myself say them more slowly. I got what she was saying, but, Jesus Christ, wasn’t the truth already out there?

Evie’s mouth opened and closed as she stared at me, her shock blatant. Then again, who wouldn’t be shocked?

“You’re married?” she whispered, her hand covering her mouth like she was trying to keep it a secret from someone else in the room, even though it was just the two of us.

“Yeah.” My voice was so quiet I doubted she heard it, but her head nod said otherwise.

“Holy shit.” She swallowed loudly. “Your family beat the shit out of him?”

This time I just mouthed the confirmation.

“Holy shit.”

“Basically.” I managed to get this out a bit louder, but the rasp in my voice distorted it.

“Your dad bit him?” I nodded. “As in, Jack? That dad?” she checked.

Yeah, I was still shocked by that, too. Normally Dad was calm and sane-ish, well, saner than my grandpa and most of my brothers.

There were no ‘shits’ this time from her, just pure shock. “I can’t even picture that happening.”

I huffed out a fake laugh. “Well, knowing my family, someone probably caught it on camera, or they’ve managed to find it on one of the security cameras. Maybe someone in the Blink or whatever systems we have’s offices is watching it at this very moment, wondering how much they’d get if they posted it online. Would it be worth losing your job and getting a shit reference? Maybe aye, maybe no.”

I was rambling now, doing everything I could to stop myself from crying again .

“In five minutes, people might start coming in to talk about the video. We can order some sandwiches and munchies and make it an official viewing. Maybe we can even charge, like a pay-per-view type of thing.”

It wasn’t until Evie wrapped me up in a tight hug that I realized I was sobbing out the words. I’d never understood how that was possible, yet here I was, proving it. And, damn, I hated crying. I rarely gave in and did it, so it was irritating me even more that I couldn’t stop.

“Hey, if anyone comes through that door and says anything about it, we get the videos taken down, and we fight back. Your heartache isn’t for anyone to benefit from, be it financially or just for shits and giggles.”

I scrubbed my face with my hands, not giving a crap about my makeup and the mess I was making of it. I’d just opened a new mascara that swore it was waterproof, so I guess now was as good a time as any to see if it was bullshit or not.

“Why do we say shits and giggles? I’ve never laughed when I’ve shat before.” I winced and blushed. “Sorry, that was crude. I blame my brothers for the fact farts, burps, and shit don’t bother me like normal people.”

“Shit happens,” Evie shrugged. “I blame my lack of issues with the subject on my son. God knows I’ve had to deal with enough of his to be numb to it for life. Well, apart from his farts. Those things are toxic. And don’t get me started on Alex.”

“My brothers made me immune to it, as well as Dad and Gramps. If you ever see a male Townsend come out of the bathroom, don’t go into it for two hours—life lesson.”

“Well, this sounds like the type of conversation anyone would want to walk in on,” Jacinda said dryly from the doorway. “But just in case you were interested in knowing, the Klein males are also a sensory risk after they’ve been in the bathroom. You only make that mistake once, trust me.”

Evie snorted as I shuddered, slightly heartbroken at that news. “That’s a lie. The Kleins are akin to the elk of Regé-Jean Page, Chris Hemsworth, and Brian Tee. They don’t go to the bathroom, and if they did, it’d smell like angel’s feathers.”

Both women looked at me like I was nuts, but it was Jacinda who replied, not surprisingly. “I recognize only one of those names, but trust me, their shit most certainly does stink, and they do go to the bathroom like the rest of us mere mortals. Unlike Shemar Moore, who most certainly was created by angels and poops roses and diamonds.”

I made a dismissive noise before I realized we’d moved from my trauma to celebrity bathroom habits. Maybe I was as crazy as the rest of my family?

“Anyway,” Evie drawled, “we were just talking about any videos of Layla that might be circulating today—”

“Girl, you did a sex tape? I didn’t realize you had it in you,” Jacinda breathed, looking at me wide-eyed. “It’s always the quiet ones that surprise you. Then again, you’re a Townsend, so I guess it shouldn’t be that much of a surprise.”

I glared at her while Evie gaped.

“What? No, it wasn’t a sex tape….” Evie squinted at me. “Or was it?”

“You think my family would share a sex tape of me around the town?”

Both women stayed silent for a moment, actually needing that time to think about it. Christ, I missed the anonymity I’d had while I’d been away from here. Most people hadn’t heard about my family—although a surprising amount had—so I hadn’t had to contend with situations like this.

Finally, Jacinda sucked in a breath and shook her head. “Nope, I don’t think they would. At least, not intentionally. Knowing your family, it’d be a case of an accidental finger tap on the screen in the wrong place, and they’d send the video to every Piersville occupant.”

Sadly, she wasn’t wrong.

Something Evie agreed on. “I don’t know how they manage to do things like that. Aren’t two of your brothers in Mensa?”

“Yup.”

Tom and Cole were exceptionally smart when it came to certain things. On other things, stuff the average person could do without breaking a sweat, I swear they’d struggle to walk and breathe at the same time.

Jacinda cringed, but her curiosity hadn’t been assuaged. “So, what video are we talking about?”

“Apparently, there was an issue at a Townsend family gathering between Layla and Mark. He may or may not have revealed something that pissed off the family, leading them to jump on him, which prompted his family to enter into the fray, too,” Evie explained, trying to keep the information as neutral as possible.

“Oh, you mean the news that Layla and Mark got married in Vegas just over four years ago, right?” Jacinda raised an eyebrow at me.

I groaned and covered my face with my hands just as Evie mumbled, “That about covers it.”

The sound of something screeching across the floor signaled that Jacinda was dragging a chair closer to us.

“I found out from Canon, who found out from Reid,” Jacinda said. “Gotta say, I didn’t see that coming. I figured there’d be a wedding between you two at some point because, man, the atmosphere is charged between y’all.” I peeked between my forefinger and middle finger to see her fanning her face. “But I didn’t think you’d already be married.”

“I found out from Alex and Cody. Alex found out at work, and Cody overheard it when he was there and the guys were all talking about it last night,” Evie disclosed.

“However, like you, I just assumed they’d get married at some point.” Seeing that I was looking at her, she shrugged. “Sorry, but as Jacinda said, there’s an atmosphere.”

Dropping my hands, I thought about what they’d just said. “Hang on, how did Reid and Alex find out?”

Evie blinked. “Uh, all the guys at P.V.P.D. know about it.”

“What?”

“Yeah,” Jacinda agreed. “Mark told them all.”

“Sure did. Alex said he went in and, all proud like, got up on his desk and announced he was a married man.” I stared disbelievingly at Evie. “What?”

Misreading me, Jacinda winced. “Oh no, did you have a boyfriend at college? Listen, I can’t stand the thought of cheating—I would literally skin Canon alive—but your circumstances weren’t normal.”

I swear they could hear my teeth grinding together. “I didn’t have a boyfriend. Mark was my—is my—” I broke off and rubbed my forehead, damning the headache I hadn’t been able to get rid of since the shit had hit the fan. “We were each other’s… well, you know.”

“Booty call?” Jacinda asked, tilting her head to the side.

“Dirty secret!” Evie cried.

“Worst idea ever?” Jacinda pressed.

They shouted possibilities back and forth until I wanted to pull my hair out.

“ Firsts . We were each other’s firsts. He’s also the only one I’ve….” I waved my hand in a circle, not wanting to say the words out loud and hoping it’d get them connecting the dots themselves.

Unfortunately, luck wasn’t on my side still.

Evie watched my hand, then guessed, “Married?”

Jacinda smacked her on the shoulder. “Of course he’s the only one she’s ever married because they’re still married. Layla’s not a bigamist.”

Turning to face me again, she clapped excitedly. “I’m enjoying this game. Okay, lemme think. Is he the only one to ever give you an orgasm? That boy sure looks like he’d be the primo of orgasm primos.” When I shook my head, both of them looked back at me, disappointment evident on their faces. “He didn’t make you come?”

Evie covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, that’s awful. You know, you think you have someone figured out, but then you find out they’re like a map app when you need it the most, and it sends you on a wild hunt for the address across fields and tries to get you to go along pedestrian walkways.”

Jacinda glared at her. “I said I was sorry. I heard it was the best app, that’s why I recommended it when you had an issue with the Apple one.”

“Wait,” I called, holding a hand up. “Why didn’t you just download Google Maps? And how does anyone have a problem with the Apple one? It’s the easiest thing to use out.”

Evie blushed and looked over my shoulder at the wall behind me. “Both apps hate me.”

Jacinda chuckled and shook her head. “She keeps trying to put in her current location first and wonders why it won’t let her put in the destination.”

“It says location,” Evie snapped.

Jacinda just grinned at her friend. “Sure it does. Anyway, we’re not talking about your crappy luck with map apps and how you almost got arrested and nearly drove into a lake, all in one trip.

“We’re here to talk about Mrs. Montgomery and have just been informed that Mr. Montgomery’s shit in bed. No wonder she didn’t find someone else to do the deed with. That’s like when you go to a restaurant after hearing amazing reviews, but the food you get is shitty. You don’t want to go back and risk having another shitty meal, so you steer clear of the restaurant.”

She leaned over and grabbed my hand, giving it a squeeze. “Or, in your case, shitty penises.”

I refused to let any of the pleasure I felt at hearing her refer to me as Mrs. Montgomery show on my face. Instead, I glowered at both of them.

“I didn’t say he was shit in bed or with his penis, I said he was my first and only. I was his first, too.”

I swear both women’s jaws hit their knees. Jacinda immediately curled up in a ball on the chair, meaning her jaw did hit her knee because it was right under her face.

“You’re shitting me,” Evie breathed.

When I shook my head, Jacinda made a choking noise. “You were Mark Montgomery’s first ?”

Seeing my nod, both women began fanning their faces, and Jacinda even got up and began pacing around my room before running over and closing the door tightly.

“Lord have mercy, girl. I don’t… How—” she stopped talking and looked almost pleadingly over at Evie.

Apparently my other friend wasn’t going to be much use to Jacinda either because she just shook her head. “I got nothing.”

Looking between the two with a frown, I asked hesitantly, “What’s the big deal? Everyone has a first.”

“Sure they do,” Evie whispered, “but a man like Mark would likely have gotten his out the way the second he realized what a penis could do. I can picture all the girls at school throwing themselves at him while he tried to get his social studies book out of his locker.”

Jacinda was nodding, but then she asked, “Why social studies? Why not biology?”

“Okay, biology, then,” Evie snapped back. “Jeez, the point I’m trying to make is that for a guy who looks like him to have waited for one woman—the one he’s married to, no less—that’s huge, Layla.”

“Huge,” Jacinda agreed, emphasizing it by holding her arms out as wide as she could.

“You’re talking like I don’t know that. I spent years watching the girls throwing themselves at him. It didn’t matter what grade they were in, they tried everything they could to get his attention.”

Jacinda retook her seat and added, “I’ll bet you anything some of the teachers did, too. You can’t tell me he’s changed that much since he was in eleventh or twelfth grade.”

She probably had a point.

A memory hit me. “You know, at one of our football games, the head cheerleader, Bryony Smith, flashed him on purpose. She wasn’t wearing any underwear and knew she’d be in front of him during a lift and that he’d likely be the only one who saw it.”

Both women shuddered and cringed.

“Yeah, except the girls holding her in the air looked up and saw her naked twat, screamed, and forgot to catch her after she made this jumping jack type move. She fell, but on her way down, gravity took over, and she flashed everyone.

“Mark was standing roughly seven feet away from it when it happened. Instead of thinking it was hot or reacting in a way that could be deemed positive—like, at all—he gagged and moved away, shaking his head.”

“Were y’all together by that point?” Evie asked, just as Jacinda said, “Did she break her vagina? Her ass? Did any of the guys think it was hot?”

Looking at Evie, I mumbled, “Kind of. We’d made out a couple of times and texted as often as we could.”

Then, addressing Jacinda, I snickered, “I don’t think she broke them, but she walked awkwardly with a limp for a few weeks. I don’t doubt some of them thought it was hot, but I don’t think she was up for much action while she recovered, so it likely didn’t do what she thought it would.”

Evie’s face softened. “He’s gone up in my estimation. Mark liked you so much that he walked away and gave zero reaction to a vagina whooshing through the air right in front of him.”

Jacinda shrugged. “Doesn’t hurt that he reacted like that, to be honest. As Evie said, he had a naked girl wonderland right there—” she held her hand up in front of her face—“but he didn’t react. I’m also kind of stuck on the fact she got her karma. The poor cheerleaders under her must have had some sort of post vaginal trauma thing going on.” She shuddered. “Do I know Bryony?”

I had no clue. I hadn’t kept up with what everyone was up to. With how Piersville had changed in the relatively short amount of time I’d been away and the number of new inhabitants and property owners, it was hard to know who still lived here and where.

“The name isn’t familiar,” Evie shrugged. “That story makes me wonder what Mark’s been up to since you left—female wise. A guy who would wait for one girl to be ready during the biggest peer pressure sex-wise time of his life, who’d ignore the head cheerleader wafting her fandango right in front of him, and one who’s looked as happy as Mark has since you moved back? I don’t think he’d fuck that up for all of the vagina in the world.”

I expected Jacinda to disagree, but instead, she nodded her head rapidly. “Agreed. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him go out on a date or heard of him being with anyone.”

She put her finger on her chin as she thought about something. “Nope, not even once. I could always ask Canon or Reid. Canon’s friends with him, and Reid works with him. If anyone knows the juicy details, it’d be one of them.”

“I could also ask Alex,” Evie offered. “That place is like gossip central. They’re worse than a ladies’ tea group when it comes to spreading secrets and information. Well, unless it’s about work,” she muttered, her eyes moving to the side. “Trying to get him to tell me work-related secrets is like trying to get Bob Ross to stop being an asshole.”

I blinked. “Didn’t Bob Ross die?”

Jacinda looked at me like I was nuts. “Um, don’t you think we’d all be celebrating if he had?”

That was harsh. The guy had been one of my favorite TV shows when I was a kid, and I’d have killed to be able to paint like he had.

“I was sure I’d heard he had years ago.”

“No, if that cock had a happy little accident, I’d be planning the town’s biggest party,” Jacinda said firmly. “Three days ago, I had to go and drop off some paperwork for Evie. You left to go and take Cody to his doctor’s appointment,” she reminded Evie, who was looking a bit perturbed by the conversation.

“Anyway, I went around the back like she said to do, and that little mother clucker had gotten out of that big cage thing again.”

The pieces all fell into place about which Bob Ross we were talking about.

“So, I’m at the back door and sliding the file through the gap when I feel this pain in my ankle and then in my foot. I thought a snake had bitten me, so I jumped up and screamed.

“That bastard with his funky feathered head opened his wings and charged at me, and the damned bouffant got even bigger. I had to run for my life around the side of the house—almost trapping him in the gate to the backyard—and get into my car before he could get me again. Look!”

She held her foot out for us to see, and sure enough, there were two nasty looking cuts.

“Just to make my day worse, when I got home, that fucking cat of Canon’s started doing his Jackie Chan shit, and now my foot looks like morse code.” She lifted her pants leg for us to see, and sure as hell, she had scratches and puncture marks all down it.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with that chicken,” Evie sighed. “I’ve tried love, I’ve tried tough love, I’ve tried yelling… He’s just evil, and that’s just wrong when he’s named after Bob Ross.”

“I don’t know much about the man apart from his art,” I admitted. “He always seemed nice on television, but they always do, right?”

“Right,” Jacinda agreed. “Maybe we should look up Bob Ross and see if you’ve given that little shit a name that jinxed him?”

Evie waved her hand through the air. “Y’all can do that, but I can’t rename him now. He’s grown up being called Bob or Bob Ross, it’ll just confuse him. Anyway, we need to think about Layla’s situation.”

I’d really prefer we didn’t.

“True. So, where does this leave you? Do you want to know if he’s dated? How would it make you feel if you found out he’d made up for lost time and had screwed his way through the town?” Jacinda asked. “If it were me, I’m not sure I’d want to know.”

I felt sick even thinking about it. “I don’t think I want to know. Ignorance is bliss, right? Sometimes it makes situations tolerable if you don’t know the finer details.”

“I think you need to give him the benefit of the doubt,” Evie argued. “Given what he was like through all those years with you, do you honestly think he’d mess it up, knowing or hoping you’d come back? It was almost one hundred percent guaranteed you’d return to Piersville—meaning he could fight for you—because of your family. I don’t see him cocking that up.”

Jacinda and I both turned to stare at her.

“Cocking it up?” I asked slowly.

“You’ve been spending time with the delightful Cyn, haven’t you?” Jacinda snorted. “I kinda like that expression.”

Evie stood up, a strangled noise coming from her as she did it. “Will the two of you just freaking focus? We need to get Layla and Mark back together again.”

I held my hands out in front of me and wheeled my chair back. “Uh, no, no. There will be no getting back together for me and that man. That ship’s sailed.”

I was lying out of my ass, but after what’d happened with my family, I was a bit raw still about it all.

Both of them turned to look at me, and I couldn’t say I liked the look in their eyes.

“Oh, yeah?” Jacinda drawled, leaning forward with a smug look on her face. “In that case, why didn’t you divorce him? I also haven’t heard you say that’s what you plan to do.”

Oh, shit.

Evie crossed her arms over her chest and raised an eyebrow at me. “Yeah. Instead, you’ve thought about the possibility of him being with someone else and admitted you wouldn’t want to know, which means you have enough positive feelings for him for that to hurt.

“I mean, I don’t give a shit about my ex being with someone else. Well, so long as they don’t mess around with my son’s emotions. His dad’s done enough of that to last a lifetime, and we’re only just sorting it out.”

She had a point.

“Do you…” I licked my lips nervously. “Do you think I should get a divorce?”

“Fuck no,” Jacinda cried, throwing her arms up. “Haven’t you been listening? That man was head over heels in love with you for years . He didn’t dip his wick in another candle”—both Evie and I gagged at the analogy— “because he was waiting for you. You don’t divorce that level of commitment, you grab onto it and iron out the creases so you can live happily ever after.”

I made the mistake of taking my eyes off her and staring at the floor while I thought over what she’d just said. The reason it was a mistake was that seconds later, a sharp pain hit me in the middle of the forehead, jolting me out of my musings.

“Did you… flick her?” Evie asked incredulously.

“I did. It was a softer and less violent way of knocking some sense into her. Now, you need to think long and hard about your shit, Layla Townsend. No,” Jacinda yelled, “Layla Montgomery.

“With that name ringing in your ears, think about watching Mark with other women for the rest of your life. Some other woman getting the title of Mrs. Montgomery, going home to him every night, holding his hand, celebrating anniversaries and special occasions with—”

“Okay, okay,” I interrupted, holding my hand up to get her to stop. “I get it.” I hated those scenarios.

She also wasn’t lying about the name Layla Montgomery ringing in my ears. She’d yelled it so loudly that I had a faint ringing in them. “There’s a lot of hurt and issues that need to be sorted out, though. That stuff doesn’t go away overnight.”

If it had, I never would have been able to stay away from him as long as I did. That hurt was real, and it was deep, like a knife constantly stabbing me for four long years. After all of the emotional hell our families had gone through back then, Mark hurting me had been the last blow my heart could handle.

“Things aren’t always what they seem, Layla,” Evie said softly. “You know your side, but do you know his?”

I winced. “No. Well, not all of it.”

I expected her to deal the final blow; instead, it came from Jacinda. “In that case, beautiful girl, I think you need to spend some time thinking about all of it. What caused you to run, the relationship you had back then, what’s happened since, and what it would be like living with all of the possible scenarios of your choices.

“There’s no way in hell you can just let go of the past and the hurt without discussing it with him and making your peace. But you also can’t be expected just to give in and do that immediately.”

She wasn’t wrong there.

“You need to get yourself to a place mentally and emotionally where that discussion can happen, and you’re open to hearing his side.”

Evie wiggled her head like she was agreeing-ish, and I braced myself for what she was about to say.

“But, you also need to consider what this is doing to Mark. Let’s say he has a good and honest reason for what happened and that his feelings are still as strong for you now as they were back then. Being away from you, unable to tell you his side, will be tearing him apart. Take your time to get to where you need to be, but also consider Mark at the same time.”

Fuck! Why did they have to make sense?

“What if it’s as bad as I assumed it was? What if I can’t live with what he tells me?”

“It’ll be hard,” Jacinda warned, “but then you join the First Wives Club and live your life until you find someone you want to spend the rest of it with. I didn’t see myself being with Canon, and the guy tried for years to get it to happen. If I hadn’t given myself a kick up the ass and made some choices I never thought I’d want to make, I wouldn’t be where I am today.”

“Me, too,” Evie added. “People say once bitten, twice shy, but that’s not always the case. There are exceptions to the rule, and you just have to give yourself a chance to heal so that you can find the exception.”

“I genuinely don’t see you having to find your exception, but you have to open up and face what you didn’t want to before,” Jacinda said quietly. “It’ll happen.”

Before I could reply, my phone’s obnoxiously loud ringing made us all jump, and an embarrassing squeak came out of me. Picking it up, I almost hit ignore when I saw Mom’s name. She wouldn’t call me at work knowing I could be with someone, even though I didn’t have any clients for another twenty minutes, if it wasn’t important.

And it was because of that I answered and found out that the shit had hit the fan… again.