Page 38 of Layla Meets Her Match

“No problem?” the guy behind him mutters. “He’s holding up the whole line.”

Lincoln’s shoulders tense, and I try to communicate with my expression that it’s fine. Why are our only two grumpy customers today right behind him? The second guy looks familiar. I scowl when I recognize him. He’s the guy who asked if we had anything healthy last week and then walked out of line, which is why I remember him. Now he can’t wait to get a cookie?

“Just a minute, sir,” I say, overly sweet.

“Yeah, no problem,” he repeats again. The guy behind him scoffs.

I turn to get Lincoln’s muffins but notice that Astrid is just putting the last muffin in. She keeps glancing up at the two guys waiting in my line, her expression nervous. Okay, Mama Bear Layla is about to pounce with them making everyone in this truck on edge.

“Are those Lincoln’s?” I ask, keeping my voice gentle.

She jumps, her gaze snapping to me. “Yeah. Here you go.” She slams the top of the box down and hands them over. Her cheeks are bright red.

“Don’t worry about them,” I say in a low voice.

Astrid nods, but it’s an automatic gesture. She hurries back to her seat, calling the next person over to her line and taking the order, leaving me with Mr. Healthy.

I hand over Lincoln’s muffins to him before sitting down, and he gives me an apologetic look. “See you tomorrow?” I ask him, ignoring the impatient bearded guy standing way too close to the window, as though I’ve forgotten he’s there. Today he’s wearing a tight black Nike T-shirt and matching running shorts.

Lincoln’s expression lights up. “You guys will be my lucky charm.” He waves and walks off, leaving me wondering if I imagined that he held my gaze for a long moment before glancing at Astrid.

“Are you going to take my order anytime today?” Muscles huffs.

“Chill out,” someone says from behind him, and I want to give them a free cookie.

“Sorry for the delay.” I widen my smile sweetly for him, turning on the “customer is always right” act to kill this guy with kindness. “What can I get for you?”

He looks over at Astrid, who’s avoiding his gaze, and I don’t blame her. “I’ll take a raspberry muffin, and can you leave off the icing?” His tone is so condescending.

I should get an Emmy just for continuing to smile. “I’ll have to go back and check.” I scoot back in my chair and try not to laugh as he lets out another huff. “Any of those muffins not have the icing drizzled over yet?” I ask Mila, tilting my head toward the guy who’s now shifting from side to side impatiently.

She widens her eyes. “Those ones just came out.” She gestures to a dozen on the cooling rack.

I grab one, box it up, and head back to my seat. “Thanks for your patience,” I say, my voice dripping with syrupiness. He just grunts as he taps his phone against the reader and reaches out for the box. He’s already stalking off as I call cheerfully, “Have a nice day!”

CHAPTER 22

LINCOLN

I spend the drive from the bakery truck to Dillon’s apartment trying to figure out if I’m a good enough friend of Layla’s by now that I don’t need to rely on seeing her just at the bakery truck. Is it okay to stop by her apartment to hang out? We do have a plan for next week for her to come to my place, but that seems far away. Next Tuesday night.

Okay, it’s only three days, and I do get to see her almost every morning, even for just a couple minutes, but it’s just too little. I remind myself that I’ve seen her a lot more over the last few weeks because Eli and Landon have made sure of it, but it still doesn’t feel like enough.

I hand off tickets to the game tomorrow to Dillon when I drop off one of the muffins. He’s a casual fan, but he seemed excited when I offered to grab him a couple as a thanks for helping us out with this. He reassures me he’ll email Officer Brady if he finds anything, and I take off. I have meetings this morning that I need to get to before the team checks into the hotel for the night. We’ll all be serious about focusing today. The Seattle Torrent is our biggest rival in our division, and we’ve split wins the last few years. We’d all like to see the Rays go up one on them. It would be a nice boost going into playing the Pumas next week, the toughest team in the league—reigning champions and favored to win again this year.

I stop by my house, putting the muffins in a storage container and then into the freezer. Dillon showed me and Landon how to look at the arsenic under a magnifying glass and pick it out, but we also decided it would be safer if Dillon checked the whole muffin. If whoever’s doing this saw Officer Brady or has figured out in some way that we’re on to them, they might change up their methods. I don’t want to be the reason anyone else gets sick, so delicious treats might start piling up in my freezer until we catch the culprit.

My meeting that morning with the rest of the offense is intense. Seattle has a tough defense, so scoring is going to be sparse. Coach Barrin, the offensive coordinator, likes to have fun with plays, no matter who we’re up against, so we go over some of the trick plays and rarer options that we practiced this week to combat Seattle’s huge defensive line and their all-star linebackers.

We’re tense in the walk-through we have on the field after that, until Coach Reeves—our head coach—and Coach Barrin start cracking dad jokes to get everyone to lighten up.

I head home and try to relax in the couple hours I have until I need to report to the hotel. Still, I’m restless and my conversation with Dottie is weighing on my mind. Maybe if I talk it out with my dad, I can at least shift it aside for now. I don’t know how long it’s going to take me to come to terms with Grandpa’s betrayal to our family. The therapist I went to for a while after he died liked to tell me it was going to take “as long as it’s going to take.” But after the anger that seemed to return full force during me and Dottie’s conversation, I wonder if I’m holding on to something I shouldn’t be. Is two years unreasonable or “as long as it’s going to take”?

“Hey, Linc,” Dad says when he answers. “What’s up?”

I blow out a long breath. “I’m not sure. You okay to talk about Grandpa? I need to get something off my chest.”

He pauses. “I’m happy to try,” he says slowly. I don’t know if Dad is having as rough a time as I am. I don’t bring Grandpa up with him if I can help it, and the few times we have talked about it, he gets through it as quickly as possible. “But is now a good time? You’ve got a big game tomorrow, and you should be starting to focus in on that.”

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