Chapter 38 Layla
Layla
I’m almost too terrified to knock.
I almost turn around, ride the elevator back down, get in my car, and drive home to the steady, safe life that’s waiting for me. The life that makes sense. The life that has nothing to do with the man standing behind this door.
But I don’t. I knock. Two taps, quick and nervous, before I can change my mind.
The sound echoes like a gunshot in the long hotel hallway. My stomach betrays me and does a little lurch, wanting to vomit.
I press a hand there to steady it. Ugh!
My intention was to say goodbye. That was the plan. The adult thing to do. Walk up here, thank him for introducing me to Benny, for treating me in Arizona, for making me feel special and desired, for what we almost had.
Then I was going to go home to Grady and trick myself into believing I did the right thing.
Except somewhere between the driver’s seat and the fourth floor, my resolve cracked. Between my apartment and the stern lecture from Faith about following my heart and the reminder to myself that I’ve known both men the same amount of time . . . something inside me shifted.
I don’t want to say goodbye.
Not to him.
The door swings open and there he is, standing in bare feet, gray sweatpants, white T-shirt. His hair is mussed from restless hands, and his eyes—God, his eyes—are cautious and hungry all at once.
I swallow hard. “Hi.”
He doesn’t make me explain myself in the hallway. He steps back, leaves the door in an open invitation, lets me cross the threshold on my own accord.
We stare at each other in that awkward, breathless way of people who have already done the hard things—kissed, said too much, said not enough—and still don’t know what to do with themselves.
It’s awkward in an emotional way.
“I . . .” He speaks first, pausing. “Can’t fucking believe you came.”
“I did.” I nod. “I don’t want to say goodbye to you.”
Hayes waits to see if there’s more to my sentence, and when there isn’t, he repeats himself. “I seriously cannot believe you’re here.”
Yeah. Suddenly I feel . . .
Brave.
Is that weird? A woman with convictions who’s able to make hard choices for herself, knowing they’re going to hurt others.
“Are you here to say goodbye? Is that what this is?” He continues to watch me before moving to the window and sliding open the patio door to let in fresh, mountain air.
“No, I’m not here to say goodbye. I’m here because . . .”
Patiently, he waits, brows rising in expectation for me to spit the words out.
“I choose you. I choose . . . Benny.”
He drags a palm over his face, a rough laugh escaping like it surprised him on the way out. “This is wild,” he tells me. “I was freaking the fuck out.”
We’re still too afraid to touch one another; the hesitation is palpable in the room, but I move closer to where he’s standing to close the gap.
“Trust me, I was freaking out too.”
“Okay.” His fingers flex against his thigh like they’re aching for something to do. “Can I—?”
Touch me. Kiss me. Wrap your arms around me?
“Yes.” I close the last inch.
His palm lands warm at my jaw, cautious as a first step on cracking ice. The world tilts; the mountain air slides past us, cool against my neck. He studies me up close, voice rough. “You’re shaking.”
“So are you,” I whisper.
We stand like that, just touching faces, breathing each other in, until the danger of bolting evaporates. He lets his thumb trace beneath my eye, reverent. “’Cause I don’t want to fuck this up.”
“We won’t.” I smile, feeling more in control than I did before I met him. “We make a plan before we make out.”
Hayes swallows. “What about . . .” That other guy?
My shoulders shrug. “It was new, and I think he understands the situation.” I bite down on my bottom lip, debating about confessing this next bit. “We hadn’t had sex yet.”
I want him to know that.
He needs to know I didn’t jump into bed with someone new the minute he and I stopped communicating.
He nods. Doesn’t comment further, only pulling me into his big, warm body and sliding his hands around my waist.
“I want to put my hands all over you,” he admits. “But I think we should talk first before we get carried away.”
Reluctantly, I step back. “Good idea.”
We go to the small sofa in the room and sink down, knee to knee.
The cushions are too firm, and the air is getting too cold, but I’m not going to complain yet—not until we have our serious talk.
It’s a long time coming and probably should have happened before I flew to Arizona, had sex with him, fell in love with his daughter, left without knowing what the future holds.
Hayes grabs the hotel stationery from the center of the coffee table and finds a pen. Clicks it open. “Are we exclusive?”
“Do you want to be exclusive?”
He nods. “Yes.”
He writes it down like it’s law, block letters pressed into the cheap paper: Exclusive.
Period.
He watches my face as he says the next bold statement: “I’m not asking you to uproot your life for a guy you met at a fall festival two weeks ago.
And I can’t uproot Benny without thinking ten moves ahead.
” He swallows. “But I also won’t pretend I haven’t thought about it.
About what it would look like. Long term. ”
He’s thought about . . . moving? For me?
My heart misfires. “You’ve . . . thought about that?”
He shrugs, mouth tight like he’s embarrassed by his own hope.
“I think about what a plane ticket costs and how many weekends we can string together before it stops feeling like visiting and starts feeling like a life. I don’t expect us to have all this figured out tonight, but I do want you to know we can make it work. ”
The thought of flying all over the place actually sounds . . .
Terrible.
My throat tightens with something warm and frightening. “I don’t want to pretend either,” I say. “I like my job, but I don’t love it—and Star Lake has always been my home but . . . I love being with you.”
Hayes leans back against the couch cushions. “You know, Layla. I hate to admit this, but I was a fucking coward when you came back to Star Lake.” He clears his throat. “I thought distance would make it easier, because we hardly know each other.”
I wait for him to continue, resting my hands on his upper thigh.
“Obviously it wasn’t easier, because we wouldn’t be sitting here now.” He leans toward me. “And I think flying back and forth would be fucking shitty. Real fucking shitty.”
I know. “I agree, but what choice do we have?”
He laughs. “So many choices.”
I feel my brows rise, wanting to be enlightened.
“How would you feel about splitting your time?”
I’m still not following. “How?”
“Well, assuming you want to stay in Star Lake, what if you give up your apartment and I buy a cabin here? And then we live here in the summer and in Arizona during football season.”
I blink, heart sprinting. “That sounds huge.”
“Yeah, it is.” He smiles proudly. “But it’s the first idea that doesn’t feel like punishment.”
“Hold up,” I say, palms sliding up his thigh to anchor. “You don’t have to buy property because you want to date me.” That’s bananas.
“You’re right, I don’t have to,” he agrees. “I want to. A cabin’s not a grand gesture—it’s a plan. Women love a plan, don’t they? And if things don’t work out, I’ll sell it.” He pulls me closer. “Babe, I can afford it. Do you know how much fucking money I have?”
No, I do not. I haven’t given money a single thought.
His words hit me sideways, almost ridiculous in their certainty.
How Much Money Does This Man Have?
“I’m not throwing away money, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he says calmly.
“I’m investing in us. And it gives Benny both—time with me, time in a town that doesn’t revolve around shopping and social status, that’s hot as fuck in the summer.
A cabin where she can run around barefoot and jump in a lake and live in her swimsuit sounds like a fantastic childhood. ”
I stare at him, heart pounding. “You really have thought this through.”
He laughs. “I had a lot to think about while I was waiting for you to show up. Babe, I can afford to make this possible. What I can’t afford is losing you because we were too scared to dream big.”
I search his face. “This sounds too good to be true,” I whisper.
“Trust me—it’s not. I’m selfish.” His eyes spark. “I want the life, the girl, the whole damn thing.”
A tidal wave of want washes over me; or is this gratitude? Relief?
“I want a life like that, too, but isn’t this a little too . . .”
Quick?
Crazy?
I mean, we haven’t even spent more than a few days together.
Talking about living together is wild. It’s something people do when they’re wildly in love . . .
“Layla. I’m as confused as you are about all this. If we say it out loud, it sounds so fucked up, doesn’t it?” He laughs. “Like—what are we going to tell our parents? ‘Hey, Mom, after not dating for nine years, I met someone and Surprise, she’s moving in’?”
I choke on a startled giggle. “My mother would freak.”
Will freak.
Because I want this.
“But here’s what’s even more insane: From the second you walked into my life, every part of me went, ‘Yes. Her.’ I don’t know if that’s a thing people admit without sounding deranged, but maybe love at first sight isn’t the dumbest myth I’ve ever heard even if I said I didn’t believe it.”
I bite down on my bottom lip to stop the ridiculous grin spreading across my face—Pinch Me, I’m Dreaming!
“Hold up. I’m about to say something crazier.”
“What?” I wait with bated breath.
“I’m bringing you home to meet my mom.”
He’s not saying he loves me, but the word still flares like a match in my chest. I’m on him before I can second-guess, fisting his shirt and dragging his mouth to mine like I’ll starve if I don’t taste him.
Hayes groans. “Fuck yeah—this is what I’m talkin’ about.”
He’s grinning against my lips when I swing a leg over and settle into his lap, knees bracketing his hips. His rough hands find my waist, slide up my ribs—claiming, careful, hungry.
Then he moves.
In one fluid shift he stands, scooping me up as if I weigh nothing. My gasp breaks into a laugh when my legs lock around his waist and his forearms steel around me.
“I’ve got you,” he murmurs, kissing me two strides to the bed, then laying me in the center. Hayes follows, a broad, warm gravity that parts my knees and steals the air from my lungs.
He braces above me and pauses—to have a long, hard look at me. Like he wants to memorize me in this moment before he devours me.
A brush of lips at the corner of my mouth. My chin. A soft bite to my bottom lip that sends sparks down my spine.
“Hi,” he whispers, stupidly sweet for a man wrecking me.
“Hi,” I breathe, already wrecked.
“I seriously fucking missed you.”
“I seriously fucking missed you too.” I laugh as he begins a war with the zipper pull of my jeans; I lift my hips and he drags them down, slow enough to make me crazy, fast enough to confirm he’s desperate.
He struggles when they won’t slide past my thighs and curses, then finally yanks them free and tosses them to the floor, hovers above me, still wearing all his clothes.
“Tell me you’re here.”
“I’m here because I choose you.” I cup his face so he sees it—the promise, the ache, the joy of it all. “You and Benny.”
He groans and crashes his mouth to mine.
The kiss is nothing polite; it’s days of restraint snapping, teeth and tongue and the kind of hunger that makes my toes curl in the sheets with anticipation.
His palm cups my throat while the other hand slides down, down, claiming the back of my thigh and hauling me flush to the heat straining behind the fabric of his bottoms.
“Feel that?” he rasps against my mouth. “That’s how much I missed you.”
“Show me.” I fist his shirt. “Get naked, please.”
He shucks it off and leans back, broad chested and with cut lines I can’t wait to touch. I rake my nails lightly over his skin, and I help as he pulls at the drawstrings at his waist, my greedy hands helping . . . palms skimming over the flex of his stomach.
So tight. So different from mine.
My fingers slip lower, fingers teasing the bulge of his erection, and he groans again, fumbling to remove his pants. My shirt.
Heat rolls off him when he climbs back over me—bare skin to bare skin, solid and overwhelming. “Better?” he asks, voice shredded.
“So much.” I drag him down. Kiss him hard, relishing the skin-on-skin contact, smiling when he chases the curve of my mouth.
“I’m fucking starving,” he grumbles, kissing the side of my neck. Licking.
I laugh. “You should have ordered room service.”
“They didn’t have what I want.”
“What’s that?” I taunt breathlessly, already knowing the answer.
“You.”
His mouth closes over my nipple, and he sucks, nips. Soothes with a slow lick, hand palming the other breast, inching his way down my body . . .
“I love you like this.” He kisses the soft inside of my knee, then the other, teasing until I swear at him. He laughs—wrecked—and finally puts his mouth where I need it, tongue sure, fingers anchoring my hips when I try to chase the high.
And as far as makeup sex goes?
It’s a truce and a trophy, an apology and a promise—fire and comfort braided together until I can’t tell where the ache ends and the relief begins.
We make each other come apart like two adults who are finally pulling our lives together, and when we come and go still—foreheads pressed together, breath shared—the uncertainty we dragged into this room with us is gone.
Tomorrow might be complicated.
But tonight is simple: I choose him.