Everything I Left Unsaid(24)

I turned on the phone, my heart pounding in my clumsy fingertips.

Call me.



That was it. One text message.

And say what, I wondered. I’m a freak. A total mess. I don’t know what I want, other than it’s not what I have.

Other than it’s more.

I didn’t give myself a chance to be scared. Or nervous. I called him back. I was utterly and totally compelled by that demand.

“Layla.” He answered right away. How had his voice gotten so familiar? I felt like I’d been listening to his voice on a loop for a week.

“Yes.”

He sighed and that was it. Just a sigh and then silence. And I didn’t know how to fill it. All I knew, really, was to keep my head down and work. I’d done one audacious thing in my life, and that was steal three thousand dollars from my husband and run out in the middle of the night.

And that night—with Dylan. That had been pretty audacious. So two, I guess.

“You all right?” he asked.

“Fine.” My voice was shrill. Strange. And I closed my eyes, praying for some kind of map in this situation. For that voiceless instinct to rise up and lead me out of these terrible, dark woods. But the instinct must have been taking a nap, because it was silent. “I’m fine.”

Memories of that night landed like sparks from a fire against my skin.

The brush of my thumb across my hip bone.

The chapped skin of my lips.

The way the bottom of my foot felt hot.

The quilt against my nipples.

The way I’d felt…for a while there…like I could do anything to myself and it would feel good.

Good. What a ridiculous understatement.

For a while there I’d craved everything. Anything.

The things in the half-read book, the things those girls did in those trucks at the truck stop. The things his voice alluded to.

I wanted all of it. And with equal force I wanted to not want any of it.

“I didn’t think I’d hear from you again.”

“I turned off the phone.”

“You embarrassed?”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“That’s bullshit, you know. You shouldn’t feel bad about anything that feels that good.”

“I think that’s easy for you to say.”

“It’s easy for you too. Just say it.”

Laughter humphed out of me.

“You’re twenty-four years old. How come you never touched yourself like that before?”

“It’s complicated.” Understatement of the century.

“What kind of complicated?”

“The kind I’m not going to talk about it,” I snapped, and then winced. But I had no intention of telling him who I really was. What my life was really like.

“I’m sorry,” I sighed. “I just…”

“Don’t want to spill your guts to a stranger? I get it. We all have secrets.”

Of course, immediately, I wanted to know his.

“Thank you,” I whispered. “For the other night. Really. Thank you. That was—”

“Good for me too. Until the end when you hung up.”

“Sorry.”

“It was pretty intense.”

“It’s not…I’m not…virgin kink. Or whatever.”

I’m just me.

“No shit,” he said. “You might be all the kinks.”

There was a delicious amount of respect in his words. And that respect delighted me.

“I appreciate you texting me.”

“I want you to call me again,” he said.

“To tell you about Ben?”

“Right now I don’t give a shit about Ben. I want you to call me so I can listen to you come again.”

My breath clogged in my throat. And those random sparks of desire, they coalesced into something big. Bigger even than my body.

“All right.”

“But Layla?”

“Yeah?”

“We are going to do this my way.”

“What does that mean?” Why did that thrill me somehow? Currents sizzled up my legs.

“It means there’s no embarrassment over what we do. None. The second you think about embarrassment or shame, forget it. Because it’s pointless.”

“But—”

“Tell me you understand that.”

“I don’t like bossy men,” I said, avoiding the question because really he was asking the impossible. I would try not to be embarrassed. I would work really hard at that, but he couldn’t make the feeling go away just by demanding it.

“No?”

“No,” I answered because I did like this. Because I was contrary and full of opposing forces. And he seemed impervious to these swipes I took at him. Seemed in fact to like it.

He chuckled, proving that he appreciated my claws, and it was just too much. I curled over onto my side, tucking my knees up, holding the thrill between my legs.

“You liked me the other night. You called me when you wanted to come, Layla. I think you like me fine.”

“I don’t want to be…controlled.”

“You can hang up whenever you want. Say the word and this is over. But if you want to keep going, it’s my rules.”