Everything I Left Unsaid(65)

For a second those wide edges of my life didn’t connect; anger slipped out of my hands. And I didn’t know what I was doing here. Or how in the world I’d gotten here. To this house. To this man.

“Layla?”

At the sound of his voice—so familiar, so achingly familiar—all the pieces of my life slammed back together.

Helpless, I closed my eyes and let that voice work its way through my body.

“You okay?” Even that familiar question was somehow bittersweet.

He’d spun around, shifting back out of the pool of light so his face and half his chest were in shadow. The shadows were dense and maybe that was easier…maybe that was better. I couldn’t see his eyes, but I knew they were watching me. His hands were in fists at his knees.

“Is this where you bring all the women you kidnap?” I asked, coming out swinging, for once in my life.

“No,” he said. “I don’t bring anyone here.”

“Well, aren’t I a special snowflake,” I said through lungs that felt as if they were collapsing in on each other.

“Layla,” he sighed.

Suddenly, I wished very much that I had not sent him that picture.

I felt painfully bared to him, wholly exposed. I’d sent him a naked picture of myself. My pale, thin, boyish body. All my flaws, all my imperfections, my feminine failures—he’d seen them.

And he sat there in the shadows, unwilling to show me anything of himself.

The distance between us throbbed. With anger. With lust. Questions and huge f*cking secrets.

Beneath my ribs, I ached. Between my legs I ached. My f*cking blood ached at the sight of him. I took a deep breath and clenched my hands together in front of me, as if I needed something to hold onto. And maybe I did. I was so adrift.

“I’d like to go home.”

“You can when I know it’s safe.”

“You are not the boss of me.” Really, could I be any more idiotic?

“When you’re in danger,” he said, “I’m going to do everything I can to keep you safe.”

“Why?” I asked, baffled by this protectiveness. By his attention. From the first phone call to now, I didn’t understand. Why me?

I didn’t want his concern to mean anything. I didn’t want to be warmed by that in some way. But anger was a blanket that could not cover all of me and my exposed parts soaked it up. I was helpless against that kind of care, I had no…defenses against someone’s worry. For me.

He was silent, there in the shadows. Like he had no intention of explaining himself.

“I don’t need you to do that.”

“Not your choice,” he said, with a shrug. As if my desires were irrelevant in the equation.

“Well, it’s hardly yours. I am not your business, Dylan.”

“It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?”

A few phone calls, some drunk texts, and two ill-advised pictures—that’s all we had between us. A handful of paltry, inconsequential things. How in the world did they add up to something so damn heavy?

“You didn’t want to see me, remember?” I whispered, revealing some of my hurt. “You ended it.”

His silence was agreement. Yes, he was saying. Yes, I ended it. Yes, I didn’t want to see you.

“I didn’t ask to be brought here,” I said, sounding shrill. His silence was making me crazy. Shut up, I told myself. Shut up and forget about him.

“You can go home tomorrow.”

We were at an impasse. Forty feet between us, and every inch was lined with barbed wire and land mines. And it would be easy to turn around and leave. Wait out the hours until that driver came back to take me home.

But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t just walk away and not…ever have seen him.

“Come out of the shadows,” I said.

He rolled toward the bench, his back to me. “Go on to bed, Layla. It’s been a long—”

“Stop!” I cried. The anger and fear and hurt exploded out of me. “Just stop. I’ve been bossed around, thrown into cars, driven to some kind of mountaintop fortress to…you. You, Dylan. You ended it and I still wound up here. To you!” I kept spitting out that word, like it somehow meant something. Like on the stupid weird map of my life he had been some kind of spectacular surprise destination. “I’m exhausted, I’m scared. I’m angry. I’m…” I cut myself off. I was not going to admit that I was turned on. Though, undoubtedly he had to know. He always seemed to know. He knew over a phone and now I was standing here, panting, my body shaking…God. Damn it. He had all the cards and I was standing here barefoot in my pajamas. If there was ever a moment I longed for a bra, this was it. My nipples hurt, they were so hard. I knew he could see them.

“Inevitable,” he said.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“I’m not in the mood for games!” I yelled.

I couldn’t see him, but I could tell he was smiling at me. I knew what his voice sounded like when he was smiling. “Games are what you like. Dirty little games. That’s all we’ve got, Layla.”

I fought back the surge of memories of all of our “games,” because I was not going to be distracted. And he was trying to marginalize it, and what we did—what happened between us—couldn’t fit within any margins I’d ever known.