2. Layla
LAYLA
Nine years ago…
“What are you doing here?”
I stare into forest green eyes that flare with shock as they meet mine, his brows collapsing together a beat later.
He’s not happy to see me.
I knew he wouldn’t be.
However, I was going to force myself through this because I’ve practiced everything I wanted to say for days beforehand.
But now that it’s here, after a four-hour car ride, I can’t.
I want to.
But…I can’t.
Briggs looks over to his right, at his fellow baseball players waiting for him to take off after practice, but he doesn’t move.
Not yet anyway.
“How did you get here?”
“Drove.”
He snaps his neck back to me. “Drove what?” I bite down on my lower lip, fully ready for his reaction, and he scowls. His sharp jaw hardened in sheer irritation. “You drove that broken-down Chevy through the damn mountains, Layla Jean?”
Yes.
I begin fidgeting with my fingers, fighting the nerves threatening to get the better of me. “Well, I couldn’t afford a plane ticket—”
“So, you risked breakin’ down in the middle of nowhere?” I open my lips to answer that I wanted to see him—in any capacity—but he cuts me off again. “Your uncle know?” I shake my head, and he scowls. “Of course, he doesn’t.”
“I had to see you, Briggs. After everything…”
His nostrils flare because the scenario is bright and still vivid in my head, too. I’m fully aware he wouldn’t be forgetting it soon, either. “You mean like when I caught you with Cruz again?”
I shake my head even harder, so much so that I feel like my brain is slamming against my skull. “I told you it’s not like that.”
“He keeps saying it’s like that.”
“Briggs, I told you,” I argue weakly. “We fake-dated, so I could—”
He slowly cocks his head to the side, menacing almost, as if I defended Cruz again, he’s never going to speak to me again. “Is that why he kissed you at Norris Abbott’s party? To show everyone you were fake-dating?”
“We were faking dating.”
“Why’d he kiss you then?”
Now, I’m scowling at him because I can’t even count how many different times Briggs and I have talked about this.
This boy is as infuriating as they come.
Cruz was the only guy in school that Uncle Ben liked. The only guy who just happened to play baseball with Briggs, so I could easily see his games. To go to every party, dance, social event, bonfire, you name it, Cruz was my ticket in, and Uncle Ben asked zero questions.
However, it began to take a turn for the worse because Cruz started to notice how much it bothered Briggs. Even though Cruz was already holding my hand in school to play his role as boyfriend, kissing my cheek to try to keep any suspicion down, he began doing it more.
And making a show of it.
I had talked to him dozens of times to stop messing with Briggs, he’d agree—for about a week or two—then go right back at it.
Especially when Uncle Ben started inviting him over for dinner.
Then there was the famous Norris Abbott party, where Cruz pulled me into his chest and had a full-on make out session with me.
In front of everyone.
Briggs included.
And that finally sent him over the edge.
“I told you what it was,” I reply in the calmest tone I can muster. “After you asked me a million times—”
“And then I hit him, and you coddled him like the babyback bitch he is. I’m done with that shit, Layla. You don’t want me, fine, but—”
“I never said that—”
“But you won’t tell your uncle that you want me. You’ll date Cruz but not me. You’ll play both of us but not risk his wrath—”
“I’m not playing both of you. I want you, Briggs.”
“Not enough. And this weird in-between thing we’re doing, Short Stop? I can’t keep doing it.”
He waves a dismissive hand in the air and bends over to pick up his duffel bag, and I notice the blue bracelets I made him two years ago still wrapped around his wrist.
For good luck.
Because I wanted to talk to him, and it was my excuse to do so.
“You still have them.”
Briggs straightens his spine, his height towering over me, but not in the comforting way it used to.
No, he left Magnolia Ridge and me behind over a misunderstanding, but it would’ve happened eventually. Briggs got picked up by the MLB, and he’s in their Low-A program now.
However, I wanted him to say goodbye first without any tension between us. I wanted to wish him luck. I don’t want us fighting with nothing resolved because it makes his absence worse. It makes me believe that he hates me now over something I did to be with him.
“Still have, what?” he asks with a sigh, pulling his strap over his shoulder. Then he follows my gaze, lifts his arm, and is seemingly irritated again. “Yeah.”
Nothing more.
Nothing less.
But it means something.
It means he doesn’t despise me.
It means he couldn’t give me up so easily.
And I can’t either with him.
Uncle Ben would kill me if he knew I was in Tennessee to see Briggs, but it’s been weeks since he’s been gone, and I can’t take it anymore.
He blocked my phone number, and it’s been crickets ever since. I’m giving off crazy-girl energy, but I can’t help it.
I love Briggs, and it can’t end like this.
“C’mon, Briggs,” one of his teammates calls out impatiently. “Let’s go, man!”
I want Briggs to wave them off, but he doesn’t. The reality is, he doesn’t want to be here, and he doesn’t want to see me.
“I gotta go,” he says, shifting to make a move to leave, but then stops and mutters, “Where are you staying?”
“I dunno. I…”
My heart is breaking, and I shouldn’t have come here. I should have talked to Fallon, and she…still would’ve talked me into it.
“You drove here and didn’t book a hotel?” I shake my head, tucking my chin into my chest and feeling more and more stupid with each second that ticks by. “Fuck, Short Stop, why do you keep doin’ this shit to me?”
Tears flood the back of my eyes, threatening to spill and hit my cheeks, and I close them. Warm palms gently cup my face, then one of Brigg’s thumbs follows my heated skin, and his touch is everything.
It’s been three months since I’ve had it, and it’s literally everything to me right now.
“You need to go home.”
I clench my eyes tighter. “I know. I—I miss you.”
“Don’t.”
“I do, though.” I pry my eyelids open and look up at him, his face appearing pained and troubled, an opening that this isn’t easy for him either. “I miss you, Briggs. You never said goodbye.”
“I can’t.”
His answers are immediate because he doesn’t want to string this along.
String me along.
“I just wanted to be close to you. I didn’t mean to upset you by coming here but I was working with what I had.
I don’t want Cruz like that and—” His lips crash unforgivingly into mine in response, maddening and rough, not soft and patient like I wish he had been to me when I wanted to explain everything that happened before he took off.
Briggs Kerrigan stole my heart, and I wish he had never taken it.
But that’s only the beginning of our story.
The rest is just as mind-numbing and emotionally exhausting. It’s thrilling, exciting, and heartbreaking.
I never should’ve left Magnolia Ridge. I should have listened to Uncle Ben when he warned me against this boy.
But Briggs was someone who coaxed me to break all the rules, even if he didn’t verbally say to.
Because my heart had a mind of its own.
It only wanted Briggs Kerrigan.
It didn’t matter what else we would’ve gone through to make it a reality.