Chapter 9
The ride home in Joey’s car was all a blur for Layne. She leaned on him as he walked her inside her house. After he got her upstairs into her bed, he took a seat in a chair in the corner of her room. Leaning over with his elbows on his knees, he buried his fingers in his dark blonde hair. A shaky breath escaped his lips as Layne lay there quietly breathing while she slept off the sedative mix she had ingested.
He dropped his hands down to hang between his legs as he lifted his gaze to watch Layne’s chest rise and fall. A grim darkness of realization slid across his pupils while he clenched his teeth together, and a series of thoughts plagued his mind and conscience.
The hours passed and soon the sun chased away the night. Joey was still seated in that very same chair. His jacket draped over the arm of it.
Layne was beginning to stir, her feet kicking at the sheets wrapped around her legs. When she cracked a look and caught sight of him, she slowly sat up. “Have you been sitting there all night?” Her hand rubbed the sleep from her eyes.
He looked at her and blatantly ignored her question. “What the fuck are you doing?” A simple and direct question.
It was a hell of a rude way to be spoken to when you were just waking up.
Layne popped up an eyebrow at his question, confusion shifted across her face. “Waking up on the wrong side of the bed apparently. Christ.”
He rose from the chair and came to stand at the foot of her bed. Joey reached into his pocket and pulled out her prescription bottle that had been in her purse. “What. The. Fuck. Are. You. Doing?” Each of his words punched out with a level of irritated sternness and demanded an answer from her.
Deep down, she knew what he was asking, but hell if she was going to make things personal between them. Layne was still set on trying to get him back out of her life as quickly as possible after their business together was over.
She scooted to the edge of the bed, stood, and reached out to take the bottle from his hand. He held it out of her reach.
“You went through my things?” She scowled at him. “You need to learn how to mind your own damn business.” She attempted to grab the bottle from him once more, unsuccessfully.
“Layne, I don’t know what the hell you are thinking, but this?” He shook the container, rattling the pills inside. “This ain’t going to fix it.”
“It seems to fix everything just fine.” She glared at him wondering what the hell he knew about what she needed fixed in her life. He had been God-knows-where for the past year, and now he wanted to act like he had a right to give his opinion on how she handled herself.
He then laid down a demand. “You’re going to stop with this bullshit. It’s not you.”
She outright lifted both brows before she laughed. “That’s hilarious coming from you. What would you know about me? A person can change a lot in a year. You’re just pissed because I’m not tripping over myself and landing on your dick.”
Suddenly, the prescription bottle went flying from his hand and crashed into the wall where it popped open and the pills scattered across her bedroom floor. Joey reached over, grabbed her by both of her arms, and pushed her up against the back of her closet door.
His eyes flashed with a mixture of unfamiliar emotions, even to Layne. Staring up at him in shock, she didn’t even resist as he held her still.
“This isn’t a fuckin’ game, Layne! If I thought I could fuck some sense into you, I would already have you bent over and taking my cock until you couldn’t remember your own goddamn name.”
“Maybe you should try anyway.” Her voice set on making it clear she was just trying to push his buttons.
He growled as he gripped her jaw with the strength of his hand and tilted her head up towards him as his mouth fought the temptation to consume her despite being a breath’s distance away. “I’m not going to so much as put my mouth on you until you start listening to me like the good girl I know you can be.” God knew he wanted to, though.
Stubbornly, she glowered at him. “Well, if you’re not going to at least do that, then get your hands off of me.”
He didn’t budge as he silently stood there for a moment while his eyes gazed over her face while he struggled with his thoughts about the destructive path she was on.
There was a trickle of frustration as he murmured, “Were you just going to let him fuck you last night?”
A slap to her face would have been less of a surprise than this very personal inquiry. “So, that’s what this is really about?” Her temper was already on a low simmer, but now he had just added fuel to her fire.
“You’re all pissed because I’m giving someone else the time of day? Well, fuck you! If I want to go around screwing half of Manhattan, that’s my business. You had your chance!” She jerked herself against his grasp.
He willingly let go of her but didn’t back away. “Layne, this isn’t you. None of this is.” His tone softened as it was made clear that his brute force methods weren’t working.
“Why? Because fucking a guy that isn’t you is so hard to believe?” Layne rubbed her fingers against her temple as her head began to ache at the unexpected stress so soon after she had woken up.
Joey realized that she was going to dig her heels in on this, making it an uphill battle. He had made a promise to her once, to never let her lose herself. He needed to make good on that promise. He took a moment to find a little more calm within himself before speaking again.
“Look, why don’t you go downstairs and get yourself some coffee? Then, we can talk about next steps with Ellis.” He wasn’t going to apologize for confronting her, but he knew when things were going to be on an unproductive path. The last thing he needed was to push her further in that direction.
She looked skeptically at him as he began to backpedal on everything that had started this argument. Layne deeply questioned her sanity in not just telling him to shove this favor up his own ass without an ounce of lube.
Not saying another word, she spun on her heel and left her bedroom to head downstairs.
Once she was gone, Joey drew his hand back ready to smash it into the wood of her closet door. Pulling back in restraint last minute before contact, he gently rested his fist against the hard surface and leaned forward, pressing his forehead to the door as he squeezed his eyes shut. Feelings of guilt, helplessness, and frustration weighing down on him.
A few minutes later, he picked up the mess of pills from her floor and flushed them down the toilet. He knew it would only be a temporary solution, but it was one band-aid on the dam that was about to burst. If there was going to be any hope of pulling her back from the ledge, that band-aid was going to have to be enough for now.
When he got downstairs, the smell of freshly brewed coffee filled the air. Not finding Layne in the kitchen he wandered from room to room until he noticed her sitting on her back patio. Moments later, he arrived with his own mug and took a seat in the cushioned chair next to her.
Layne had her legs tucked up underneath her to the side as she cradled the steamy beverage between her hands. Her eyes didn’t even lift from watching the curls of steam rise from the top of the hot liquid.
He cleared his throat, deciding to break the silence and push past the awkwardness hovering between them. “Once we get inside at the party?—”
“He wants to merge our organizations.” She cut him off with her matter-of-fact statement.
“What?” Joey blurted out at the tidbit she just dropped on him.
She felt the heavy air enter her lungs as she breathed it in, and the weight remained even after she exhaled. Swallowing down a small sip from her mug, she finally looked over at him. “It’s a cutthroat business, you know that. So, why don’t you start by telling me what you need to get in there for?”
After setting the mug down on the small table in front of him he sat back in his seat. “Thought you didn’t want to know?”
“Want and need are two very different things, Joey. I don’t have the luxury anymore of choosing what I want.” And it was slowly killing her from the inside out, one shitty situation at a time.
She sat back and thought about each time she had to take another hit to her sanity. Over the past year alone, she had been dealing with betrayals left and right, deaths, and escalating tensions not just between her and Liam but across business relationships as well. There had been no reprieve in sight and no way out as she felt her world closing in around her. Some days, she thought about how she wished someone would just hire a hitman to come find her.
Immediately, she pushed the morbid thought back into the deep recesses of her mind and tried to get her head back in the game. That’s what her father would have expected, right?
His face grew solemn as he thought about what he had been hired to do. “Eric’s into some epic shit. I mean, this goes beyond just the city limits. At best, it’s statewide. At worst? Potentially international.”
This was just turning out to be a spectacular fucking morning, wasn’t it? “He’s an overachiever? Not surprised.” Making light of the situation was the only tool she had at the moment not to crumple in on herself.
“That’s why I need to get in there, my client needs to know how widespread things are. The things that they’re claiming he’s done, and what he is doing…” Joey shook his head visibly disgusted.
“I will get you in the door, but you keep things discreet. I don’t want this coming back to haunt me in a week or even a year.”
“Discretion is my middle name.” In fact, they both knew it was not. It was Elliot.
Attempting to circle back to their discussion upstairs, his hand reached out to rest on her thigh. “Layne, I know a lot has happened since last year.”
She looked at her watch seeing that it was time to avoid getting into her mushy feelings. “I have work to do today. I don’t have time to sit and talk about the weather.” Layne stood, allowing his hand to fall away from her leg.
His dark brown eyes were still glued to her trying to figure out how to get past any imperfections in the invisible wall she had constructed around herself. After a resigned sigh and running his hand over the back of his head, he rose from his seat.
“Call me if anything changes.” He didn’t mean just with Eric either. “I’m never far away.”
She simply nodded at him and watched as he walked back inside to see himself out. The second he was out of sight, she flopped right back down into her chair trying to suppress the quiver tugging at her chin. Layne drew her knees up in front of her and buried her face into them as the tears began to leak from her eyes.
After taking a few minutes to coil back up her self-control, she firmly pressed her lips together to start locking her feelings back down. Lifting her head from her knees, pulled out her phone to see a few missed messages.
Eric
Thought about you all last night.
I haven’t been able to focus on anything else this morning except what you’re doing to me.
I will see you again soon, little harpy.
She stared at the screen, her fingers hovering over the onscreen keyboard. She shook her head and locked the screen. That could be dealt with later, just like everything else in her life.