Chapter 71
B y the time I returned to the apartment, I was unbelievably angry. Angrier, I think, than I had been since Layla had ruined the deal with the Taylors for me. Not that I held her culpable still, but in that moment, my anger was unlike anything I’d felt.
Until now.
Morgan’s departure had pissed me off, but the liberating feeling that had followed shortly after had quelled that one pretty well. No, there was nothing to contain my anger right now. Anger that Morgan would meet up with me, then give me stock answers about how things would be better soon.
And then to have the fucking gall to ask for the recording of Andrew getting reamed by Edwin!
That was ballsy, I suppose I should give him credit for that.
To ask the enemy for incriminating evidence in such a blunt manner…
it was so unlike Morgan, but maybe that was the idea.
Maybe by making me think he was acting out of character, he was secretly on my side.
Yeah, fat fucking chance of that happening. Most likely, I was just being led to the goddamn gallows.
When I got back to Layla’s apartment, I saw her in the kitchen, cooking herself some breakfast. She looked at me with a gentle smile, but I couldn’t bear to see her face.
I didn’t want to see the smiles of anyone happy right now.
I was in a dark, fucked up place, and the last thing I needed was a reminder that other people could have brightness in theirs.
I went into her room, the only place where I’d be hidden from her, and slammed the door behind me. I took off my hoodie, curled up to where I had slept, and fumed. God, how I wanted to fucking kill Morgan for that little stunt. God, how I wanted to kill Edwin for everything.
God, how I wanted to… how I hated myself for getting to this spot.
How I hated my own paranoia, turning me into a crazy man like this.
How I hated that even with that paranoia, there might have been a justifiable reason for thinking like this.
How I hated that I had led my life down this path… if I could have just kept my raging hormones to myself when I first met Layla at Burnson Investments…
None of this was her fault. But ever since I had failed to keep control of myself…
“GodDAMNIT!” I yelled, punching the bed in an attempt to release some fucking anger. “Fuck! Fuck! FUCK!”
I shook my head. It was pointless. There was nothing to fight with Edwin Hunt.
All of the news in the world would just drive him to kill me.
All of these reports coming back wouldn’t faze him; he was Edwin Hunt, not someone with a soul or a conscience.
All this would do was affirm how awesome he was and how much money he had made through the years.
Layla was right. I did have to get out of the city. Melanie had been kind enough to give me a “get the fuck out of town and start over” gift. A million bucks, so long as I didn’t move someplace like San Francisco or London, would last me for quite a while as I got myself situated once more.
And I had to do it soon.
The door creaked open. I didn’t turn back to look at Layla, partially out of embarrassment at what I had become.
“Chance,” she said, not so much a question as a statement. “Chance, talk to me. What happened? Where did you go this morning?”
“I’m fine,” I growled. “You should eat your breakfast.”
“Bacon can wait,” she said, curling up behind me and hugging me tight. “I want to know what’s going on with you. Are you OK?”
For the longest time, I just stared at the wall, hoping that Layla would eventually give up. For just about any other girl that I had known, they probably would have for how stubborn I was.
But goddamnit, Layla was just as stubborn. The longer I stared at the wall, the longer she held me. It was like… it was like…
Like she really does care about me.
The thought had hit me before, but this particular moment seemed to resonate with me on a far higher level than anything ever had before. It was easy to be intimate and caring in an erotic moment or on a date or at the top of the Empire State Building. This was…
I didn’t know how to describe it. It was, honestly, a little bit like love.
That was my best guess.
“I saw Morgan,” I said, my voice shakier than I had hoped it would be.
I took a couple of seconds to take some deep breaths so I wouldn’t sound like a whiny embarrassment to Layla. I also didn’t want to cry in front of her and make myself look even worse.
“I played for him a recording that Andrew Patel, a client of mine, had sent over. It has Edwin basically berating the hell out of him, out of me, and all but admitting to illegal behavior. It’s really quite something else. I was so fucking stupid, though.”
“You’re not fucking stupid,” Layla said, kissing my back and my neck to soften me. “What did Morgan do then?”
“He…”
I sighed.
“He asked for the goddamn fucking recording,” I said. “And when I said why, he basically said things would be good in a couple of days.”
I made sure my eyes weren’t watering and rolled over to face Layla.
She had on very little makeup right now—none, in fact—but that just made her more naturally beautiful.
I didn’t want to see the dolled-up, sexed up version right now.
I just wanted the real Layla, the one whom I…
whom I… who was there with me right now.
“I just feel like I’m being told I’m going to a happy place but I’m really about to be executed,” I said.
“Ideally, not literally, but I think Edwin wants to deliver something of a finishing blow to me. I know so much of this is in my head, but goddamnit, Layla, I just… fuck! You know? What if I die over this?”
Layla could have said something dismissive like “you’re not going to die” or “don’t be so silly” and she would have been absolutely right in her statement to me.
To her credit, though, she just squeezed me, kissed my forehead, and hugged me against her chest. It was, admittedly, a nice respite from the chaos in my head.
“I’m here to help however I can,” she said. “Know this, OK?”
I looked up at her, and from what I saw in her eyes, perhaps as watery and as emotional as mine, I knew that she was telling the truth. For as much as I doubted Morgan’s face, I knew that I had zero of that with Layla.
“Promise me you’ll love me no matter what happens.”
Suddenly, I realized just how much Layla meant those words. By the look she had on her face, she certainly loved me as much as she hoped that I loved her. That’s why she said that, I realized. Because she never stopped loving me.
If I had thoughts about what this meant for our long term future or what the road had ahead of us, I didn’t spend much, if any, time dwelling on it.
Because seconds later, so overcome with emotion, I did the only thing that felt right.
I leaned up and I kissed her.
But just as last night’s kiss at the top of the Empire State Building had not been erotic, so, too, was this more of a tender, gentle, loving kiss than the one that we usually shared.
Unlike the Empire State Building, though, we had very little clothes on now and a complete privacy that the building did not have.
I shifted my body in between her legs, and she eagerly spread them, wrapping them around my hips as her hands went to my face. We exchanged no words, because words would have failed what the moment was—a chance to show our feelings for each other instead of saying them.
I wanted to give my thanks to Layla first by going down on her. I started to kiss her neck and moved to take her shirt off, which slid with ease. She did the same to me, and now we were in nothing but our boxers.
And I swore if anyone tried to call me in that minute I was breaking my damn phone in half. There was no amount of emergencies worth interrupting most especially this moment. The building could be burning down, and I wouldn’t care. I’d die in Layla’s arms.
I again worked on moving down on her, kissing her breasts and drawing soft gasps of pleasant feelings from her. But just when I got to her underwear and took it off, she pulled me up to her. She reached down, pulled my boxers off, and stroked my cock.
Now, there was officially nothing to stop us from having sex.
“Just make love to me, Chance,” she said. “I want you to feel it as I feel it.”
It was so sweet and so kind, I couldn’t find the words to say so. So I just positioned myself right over her pussy, hovering, gently sliding up and down her clit as she let out more gentle cries of intensity.
After a few seconds of this, I decided enough was enough. I put myself inside her, going inch by inch, hearing her let out gasps of moans as I fill her until I could go no deeper. I just hovered there for a second, appreciating this moment, realizing what it meant.
This girl…
I liked her.
I really, really liked her.
So much so, in fact…
“Oh, Layla,” I said as I very gradually picked up a rhythm.
The rhythm was nothing more than to make sure I wasn’t just stationary inside of her. I wanted to take the full Layla in right now—no makeup, no emotional shields, no pretense of erotic dates. I just wanted Layla in her full natural, waking state.
“Chance,” she said breathlessly.
We lost ourselves into each other’s eyes, as if falling into a portal into the other’s soul.
I saw Layla’s pain, but also her joy—I saw the feelings she had about her family, but also of me.
I saw how she felt about leaving her uncle’s family, but also the stress she had from leaving her secure job.
I saw her fears and her hopes, her past and her desired future, and everything in between.
It was unlike anything I had ever had. It was a little terrifying to realize just how much I could pick up from a moment like this, but it was also incredibly uplifting to know that Layla had this much soul to her.
Slowly, I started to pick up the pace, in part because I was scared of going too deep into her soul at the moment and part just because of the physical sensation, but I knew that this wouldn’t be the last time that I dove so deeply into her like this.
The moment was just too profound and too…
dare I say special for me to not want to pick it back up.
The sex that followed was nothing special physically, but I couldn’t shake the feeling—not that I wanted to—that it truly was the best sex I had ever had.
It didn’t feel like I, Chance Givens, was having sex with Layla Taylor.
It felt like we were one entity, bonded together in this moment.
Even though I had pulled myself back from gazing too deeply into her eyes, I still felt that the connection had been made, and it would be all but impossible to shake it.
I shuddered when I realized some time later—it all went by in a blur, frankly, given the emotional rush of it—that I was very, very, very close to coming. In that moment, Layla was on top of me, leaning forward, and I was thrusting into her.
“Layla, I’m so close,” I said.
She positioned her head by my neck and kissed me gently.
The rush of a release that came… it was indescribable.
I held on to Layla for dear life as it felt like I was pouring my entire life into her, a sort of placement of a part of me inside of her.
My arms wrapped around and held her close, very much living up to the idea of just one entity between the two of us.
I collapsed into her, giving some minor thanks that I was not looking her in the eye for how emotional and overwhelmed I felt in that moment.
The world might be going to shit around me and my brother might have abandoned me, but no one could fake what I had just felt with Layla.
I had her, at least, and there wasn’t anything that seemed to change that.
“Oh my God…” Layla said in awe, as if she had actually just seen God. “Chance…”
“I know,” I said, adding nothing more.
Layla then slowly got off of me, but that was only so she could then get to the side and cuddle with me.
For what felt like a nap’s worth of time, we didn’t say anything, just being two people who, dare I say it, loved each other and wanting to stay close in a turbulent time in the world.
I didn’t see anything wrong with it, and I would fight anyone who dared to fucking argue with that point.
“Would you do that again?” Layla finally said, barely having the strength to lift her head.
I gently brushed her hair as I spoke to her.
“Of course,” I said. “You’re the one thing stable in my life.”
“Baby,” she said, kissing my chest and then looking at me before kissing my lips.
I let out a long sigh when she finished, tilting my head to the ceiling and closing my eyes.
“Just hold tight. I promise things will get better soon.”
Wait. What?
I looked up at her as I realized that those were the exact same goddamn words that Morgan had said to me at the coffee shop.
“Listen, I have another interview to go to right now,” she said as she slowly rose, putting on her clothes. “But don’t go anywhere right now, OK? Don’t leave here.”
“Uhh, OK,” I said, somewhat in a fog from the great sex and also wondering what the hell was going on. “Layla?”
“Yeah?”
“What’s… happening?”
She just smiled.
“Just stay here, OK? I’ll tell you how the job interview went.”
What the…
“Do you trust me?”
“Yes,” I said immediately.
“Then stay here. It’ll be best for you.”
She left shortly after, but two things told me that she was not going to an actual job interview.
One, she didn’t bother to finish her breakfast. Layla never liked to leave on an empty stomach.
And two, she didn’t bother to put makeup on, something she had almost never done in a professional setting.
What the actual fuck was going on?
And why did I suddenly feel like I had a reason to feel somewhat hopeful about the whole situation?