A Glimmer of Hope (The Avalon Chronicles #1)(5)

Layla laughed. “Sounds like a plan to me.”

“How about you?”

“I’m good, thanks. University is almost done, and I might actually get a good grade from it. After I’ve finished . . . I have no idea. I’m doing a degree in metallurgy because I like it; it’s interesting and fun. But I honestly don’t know what I want to actually do with my life once the degree is over. Aren’t we meant to know by now?”

“I think some people never know.”

“How is that helpful?”

“Oh, you want helpful? I’m sorry, you’ll need to go speak to someone else about that.”

Layla smiled as Chloe joined them. “Glad to see you found us, Harry.”

“Well, you said be here at this time. I might not be good at understanding signals from women, but I do understand directions.”

“You set me up,” Layla said, leaning toward Chloe and whispering in her ear.

“Yep,” Chloe said with a grin. “We all need to let our hair down once in a while. And you needed a break. You mad?”

Layla held Chloe’s stare for a few seconds, before smiling. “No, it’s fine. You’re right, I needed this.”

The three of them spent the next few hours drinking, dancing, and enjoying themselves, forgetting whatever stresses of daily life might be getting to them. The merriment ended just after 1 a.m., when Harry caught a glimpse of someone walking into the club and cursed under his breath just loud enough for Chloe to hear.

“What’s wrong?” Chloe asked.

Before Harry could answer, Layla appeared next to them. “How are you not drunker?” she asked Chloe. “Drunker, is that a word?”

“Metabolism,” Chloe told her. “Mine is just better than yours.”

“But you’ve had more than me, more than Harry too. And you’re just . . .” She waved her hands around Chloe. “There.”

“That’s exceptionally eloquent,” Chloe replied with a smile, before turning to Harry. “What’s wrong, Harry?”

“A certain ex-boyfriend has just arrived.”

Chloe followed Harry’s gaze as it settled on the man in question.

“Oh, bollocks,” Layla said from beside the pair, having seen who her friends were looking at.

“We can go,” Chloe assured her.

“No. I don’t want to go. I’m having fun.” She took a deep breath. “Maybe we could go for a walk, get sobered up a bit.”

Chloe agreed and went to get their jackets, while Harry followed Layla outside.

“Layla,” her ex-boyfriend, Blake Davis, called after her.

Layla sighed when she realized that Blake was walking toward her with two of his idiot friends in tow. “Oh, this will be fun,” she muttered to herself.

She turned around. “Piss off, Blake.”

Blake’s expression darkened. “That how you want to talk to me after nearly a year together?”

“We haven’t been together in three months,” Layla said, the fresh air making her wish she could be anywhere else but where she currently was. “And you remember why we broke up, right? Because you were shagging Bianca? For six months of our relationship, you were cheating on me. You’re lucky I didn’t set fire to your car. Now go away.”

Blake took a step forward instead.

Layla’s eyes narrowed in anger. “You remember what happened when I tried to leave you, Blake? You want to try again? I think things will end differently this time.”

Anger flashed in Blake’s eyes.

“Hey, don’t,” Harry said, trying to calm things down.

“You need to keep your nose out of it,” Blake said.

“Yeah, go back to your own country, you little nothing,” one of the two men standing with Blake said. His name was Robert Mitchell, although everyone knew him as Rob. Layla thought of him as being one of those people who took a few classes in fighting and immediately thought themselves to be the next UFC champ. He was about five and a half feet tall, and while muscular, Layla wondered how much of that muscle was natural and how much came from a needle. He was also a massive misogynistic dick, and as she’d just discovered, a racist. Exactly the kind of person she wanted to avoid.

It had taken Layla a year to find out who Blake Davis really was, and three months to forget he existed. She really didn’t want to have to deal with him or his “me man, you listen” crap.

Layla didn’t know who the third man was; she’d never seen him before. But judging from his muscular physique, he was someone who liked to spend time in the gym.

“My own country?” Harry asked, quizzically. “Well, let’s see. My father is American, my mother English, and I was born here, in Southampton, so England is my own country. Or do you mean because I’m half Chinese? Because if that’s what you meant, then you meant for me to go back to my father’s parents’ country—my grandparents—who left China to move to America. So, whose country am I meant to go back to, you racist little troglodyte?”

Rob stared at Harry for several seconds, before shoving him back a step. “Blake said this is none of your business. Now, if you stay here, I’ll make it your business, and none of your little kung fu is going to help you.”

“My word, you really are an unpleasant little dick, aren’t you?” Chloe said as she walked toward the group.