Chapter Thirty-One #2
It felt to her like she’d failed.
Like her struggles with staying close to the MacKenzies—all the missed family dinners, the coffee check-ins, whatever—were proof that she didn’t deserve a family.
That she didn’t deserve to be close to anyone at all.
I guess I’m not actually good, either. I’m not even all that reliable.
Her tears were coming in earnest now, soaking into Griffin’s shirt. She wished she’d stolen one of them, because she had the feeling she wouldn’t see one again for a while.
She had the fear that she wouldn’t see one again for forever.
“Layla,” he said, that particular way he had of shaping the sound of her name. She squeezed her eyes shut, tight tight tight to get a couple more of the tears out, and then looked up, bracing herself.
Don’t say I won’t see one of these shirts again for forever, she thought.
“I want to know what promises I can make to you,” he said, and ironically, it was as grave and serious as hearing a vow itself being made. “And what ones I can’t. I have to know that, first.”
She nodded. She had his shirt clutched in her fists, a tiny, sad celebration. He didn’t say for forever, she said to the shirt. Maybe I’ll touch your nice seamless softness again.
He must’ve misread her silence, because his face hardened again, his brow furrowing. His right hand was still tangled with hers, so he lifted his left and put it against her cheek, tipping her face up, his eyes on hers intense.
“And in case it’s not clear,” he said, “if I didn’t make it clear, that first night I kissed you—”
Her eyes slid closed, remembering it.
There shouldn’t be anything amicable about losing you.
He stroked her cheekbone until she looked at him again.
“If I had you, the only force in this world that could get me to let you go is my own pain. Nothing else.”
She knew what he meant, saying that. She knew he was reassuring her, even if it was premature. Even if it would turn out to be impossible.
He would never leave her the way Jamie had, he was saying.
He would never change his mind. Not for anything, real or imagined.
She kissed him, because she could not help it, because she wanted to seal this: this street that was not an aisle, these not-promises, this sadness way deep down, and the seed of hope she knew some part of her was planting in her soul, small and sacred.
When he broke away, it was with a groan, a pleading whisper of her name that she knew meant they were out of time.
She loosened her fingers, letting his slip free.
She thought, I am not going to let this burn me to the ground.
“What will you do now?”
He tucked his hands back into his pockets, straightened his shoulders. Looked down the street, toward the hotel.
“Go home,” he said. “Hope Michael doesn’t hate me.” He brought his eyes back to hers. “Do a hundred other things that people have been telling me to do for a long time, but that I’ve never wanted to do.”
A long pause.
“Not until you,” he added.
Maybe a few more tears slipped down her cheeks. Maybe she brushed them away sloppily. Maybe she couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
“Will you go back?” he asked her, after a few silent seconds. “To the apartment?”
She shook her head, a finality to the small movement that would be almost impossible to explain to anyone but him.
“I think I’ll walk for a while,” she said.
Until I know you’re gone, she didn’t add.
As though he’d heard her, he said, “Layla. Don’t wait for me.”
He wasn’t talking about her walk. He wasn’t saying, Come back to the hotel whenever you want, whether I’ve gone or not.
He was warning her of something else.
“I won’t,” she said, and she thought it sounded very convincing. She thought he would not dare guess that no matter what he said, no matter how long it took, she would keep watering that seed of hope for him—for them—inside her soul.
But just in case—in case something might give her away—she said, “You should probably go.”
One last long look before he nodded. Before he did not say goodbye.
Before he turned away.
She did not want to watch him go, not this time—not like the times she’d watched him walk away before she ever truly knew him, not like the times when she hadn’t known yet what kept him running scared.
So after a beat, she turned, too, planning to follow the street’s curve and turn the opposite direction from the apartment.
Before she got quite there, she heard Griffin call her name again.
She turned, saw him standing on this perfect Paris street she would remember forever.
“Yeah?” she called.
“Would you still do it again?”
The question she’d asked this morning, in the bed that would always be theirs. Before the mess in that apartment, before the wrenching pain of this inevitable conversation.
She couldn’t quite say she smiled. She was still too sad and raw for that.
But her voice was clear when she called back to him with her answer.
“I would.”
* * *
Less than ten hours later, Layla left Paris, seemingly the exact same way she’d come.
A late-booked middle seat in the back. A neutral outfit.
All alone.
But somehow, she knew, nothing about her would ever be the same.