Chapter Sixteen #2
So he called to her again. Didn’t care who heard. Who saw.
“Did you do that with him?”
That did it. She stilled, her spine straight, but he thought her shoulders rose in a steadying breath.
Don’t fucking do that, he thought. Don’t steady yourself for me.
“Is that how you were,” he continued, “when you were here on your honeymoon?”
She whirled on him then, quick enough that he took a step forward, in case she wasn’t as steady in those heels as she looked. In case the deep breath hadn’t worked.
“What are you even saying?” she said, her voice louder than he’d ever heard it, and a thrill went through him.
This was her, the Layla he’d only seen in little glimpses.
The Layla she only showed to him.
“It’s just two people,” he said, the suspicion in him rising now, the frustration at a fever pitch.
It hadn’t embarrassed her to see those people.
It had hurt her.
“Two people kissing,” he said. “Awkward to be next to, okay. But not a reason to run.”
She raised her chin, defiant. But she didn’t respond.
“Is that,” he repeated, enunciating each word, “how he kissed you?”
He could see her chest rising and falling. He took another step toward her. Behind them, he could still hear the noise of the restaurant, but a half block down, it was so much quieter. If there were people nearby, he didn’t notice.
“Layla,” he said.
“No.”
It wasn’t loud enough to be called an exclamation.
Not loud enough, but emphatic enough.
“No, what?”
She closed her eyes briefly, swallowed. When she opened them again, she looked straight at him and said, “No. He never kissed me like that. Like I was—like we were the only two people in the…in the universe. Not on my honeymoon. Not…”
She trailed off.
“Not ever?” He did not mean it to sound so fucking hopeful.
“I don’t—” She broke off, bit the inside of her cheek, her lips tightening with the motion. Plumping again when she finally readied herself to speak. “I don’t think ever. I don’t remember ever.”
Obviously, Griffin already hated him. Hated him first for being half a liability to Michael’s wedding.
Hated him more for getting on that boat with a new girlfriend, for leaving the poor woman to get sick alone over the side of it.
Hated him today for bowing gallantly before a dance, and for hearing that he’d left Layla alone, even for a single afternoon, on her honeymoon.
But now—now, hearing this?
He might have hated him more than he’d ever hated anyone.
Including himself.
“He should have,” he said.
She shrugged.
Shrugged. It made him so angry he wanted to shake her.
“He’s a piece of shit,” he said instead.
“He’s not,” she answered immediately. “You don’t even know him. He’s a good person. I told you, it was ami—hey!”
He’d taken the final step toward her; he’d grabbed her hand.
His left hand, that’s what he used, because it was most convenient, and he didn’t care that it made an inexplicable spot on his thigh radiate with pain.
He held her fast anyway, pulled her to the corner.
Then to the left, down a different street, darker and less remarkable.
“What are you doing?” she said, slightly behind him, but he didn’t answer yet.
He walked until he didn’t feel his pulling hip or his straining knee anymore, maybe another half block.
He didn’t stop until he saw something he wanted: a deep-set doorway, tucked beneath a stone arch.
A gabled overhang above, sturdier than an awning.
A dim light tucked into its rafters, flickering slightly.
He steered her into it. Guided her backward with his body, almost until her shoulders met the door. Kept hold of her hand, but loosened his hold as he looked down at her. She could go; he wanted her to know she could go if she wanted to.
But he didn’t think she wanted to.
She leaned back, settling herself against the place he’d put her. Looked up at him and said, “What are you doing?” again, but this time, it was a whisper.
“This street is mine,” he said, which made less sense out loud than it had in his head, but Layla kept looking at him, her head tipped up, her eyes flashing in understanding.
“I don’t know the name of it,” she said.
“You don’t need to. You only need to know that this is a street where someone once told you something important.”
“Okay.” A quiet, bewildered consent.
He let go of her hand, and for a second felt the confusion of it: one sensation lost, and his disobedient nerves jangling in response, unsure what price to demand of him. But he was determined: a feeling like he had once in the hospital, when he had to prove he could get out of bed on his own.
He wanted to say this with two hands on her. Right on the shoulders she’d shrugged.
So, he did it—a breath he took in as he lifted his hands, readying himself. Sometimes, like with the chair, both hands at the same time on something new was a problem, the unevenness of feeling too jarring, so the left one reacted like he was touching a hot pan, or an engine only just shut off.
But it didn’t happen this time. Layla’s magic spell cast over him, even when his hands settled first on a spot different than what he’d intended—her upper arms, bare and smooth and warm, impossibly inviting.
He curled his fingers around her triceps, felt the line of them as he moved up, those gauzy, split-open sleeves trailing over his knuckles as he rested his palms on her shoulders.
He thought maybe—maybe, through that more reliable right palm of his—he could feel goose bumps rise on her skin in the wake of his movement, but he didn’t lower his eyes to look.
He wanted to see her face when he said this.
“You keep saying amicable,” he started.
“It’s true,” she interrupted, defiant, and the truth was, he believed her.
Believed that the man he’d barely met had made it so nice for her, whatever had happened between them.
Bowed when he said goodbye to her, probably.
And he believed, too, that she’d received it gracefully, with those careful movements that hid everything he saw about her.
He slid his thumbs across the caps of her shoulders, leaned in a little farther. He would say this part so fucking close to her, no matter that this was closer even than their dance, no matter that she must be able to see every single scar on his face.
He would say it close enough for her to hear it loud and clear.
“There shouldn’t be anything amicable about losing you,” he said.
There should be a war, he thought. An army of stone gargoyles, ordered to be alive. All to come get you. All to show you that you should never shrug like that again.
“He should hurt like hell every time he sees you,” he said instead, because this wasn’t about him in his imaginary tower.
“He should be in a restaurant, watching two people kiss like that, and feel starved to death. Like he never touched a bite of his meal, because he doesn’t get to taste you anymore. He should feel that way. Not you.”
He kept his eyes on hers, but he knew her chest rose and fell even faster now. He could feel it, through those curves in her shoulders. He didn’t want to hurt her, saying this, but also, it had to hurt worse that no one else ever had.
It had to hurt worse that her husband hadn’t.
“You shouldn’t—”
“Griffin,” she said, cutting him off. Not only with the sound of his name on her lips, but with how she touched him, too: Griffin, she said, at the same time she set both of her hands on his sides, right above the bones of his hips, and he knew as it happened—as all his damned wires crossed—that for a while, or maybe forever, he would feel those particular bones rattle anytime he heard his name.
He couldn’t tell if it truly hurt. He was concentrating too hard on her hands.
“What?” he said, expecting her to push him away. To use those hands to say, Fine, I heard you; it was a little intense; I’ve had enough of this now.
But she didn’t do that.
She didn’t say that.
“It didn’t make me think of him,” she said, and he frowned down at her. He’d chased her out of a restaurant; he’d dragged her down a dark street she didn’t even know the name of. He’d insisted on this, on saying all this, so close to her, and she hadn’t been thinking of the ex at all.
“Of how he kissed me or didn’t,” she added.
“Oh,” he said, his voice an echo to his own ears, because now he noticed that sometime between her saying his name, her putting her hands at his waist, his own had moved.
Over the summit of those shoulder curves, his palms on the faint incline of her trapezius.
His thumbs on her collarbone, one upward stroke away from her pale, perfect neck, smooth and unadorned.
Do not, he told himself, trying to reconnect the right wires: the ones that told him he could not touch her like this, he could not feel a thing for her like this, not after so many years of hardly feeling anything other than hurt.
It was not for him, to feel this way.
But then, Layla Bailey pulled him closer.
Like she needed to tell him something important.
“It made me think of you.”