Page 49 of I Still Love You

He nods. “She seemed okay to go on her own. She wanted to stay, but I think it was better for her to get away from it all. She asked if I was going to stay until you came out.” He pauses for a beat as we step off the curb into the parking lot. “She cares about you, Luke.” He shakes his head. “I know some shit went down between you two and you have this deal, but it’s in her eyes, man. I saw it yesterday in the booth, and I saw it again today. You gotta reconcile what went on. Find peace with it, bro, before you fuck up everything good you have in your life.”

Layla was the only woman I ever gave my heart to. The only woman I’ve ever been vulnerable with, and she took advantage of that. The more I think back to it, the more I realize she didn’t do it on purpose. It’s not like she planned for shit to go the way it did. She didn’t expect her father to die. It just happened, and it was shit luck that I happened to propose not long before his accident.

She was right yesterday. We do need to talk. To sit down and understand each other’s feelings because I can’t keep losing my shit, and I definitely can’t handle the aftermath of a broken heart again.

22

Layla

“Oh my, God, Layla, are you okay?” Britney’s troubled voice comes through the phone, and I have to swallow down the emotion that threatens the stability of my tone. If we were video chatting instead of on a normal call, the sight of her lowered brows and pursed lips would get me, and all that happened today would drain through my eyes. I’m tempted to say no, to say I’m in a wind tunnel and I can’t get my bearings, can’t breathe, but I don’t.

“Yes,” I assure, blowing out a held breath. “I think so. I don’t know.”

“Where are you now?”

I move my gaze from my steering wheel to my rental. I’m sitting in the car because I’m not ready to be alone. After being tossed against a wall and held there as a man pressed his weight into me…I just want to know that someone is there. That if I choose, I can say something and be heard. Talking with Brit is helping. “I’m home now,” I tell her.

“Okay, good. Claire and I are coming over. We’ll bring a change of clothes and spend the night. You said you have a spare room, right? We’ll bunk together. It’ll be good.”

“No, Britney,” I clamber, my head hurting over the thought of having to play host. “You don’t need to do that. It’s been a long day. I just…I just wanted to tell someone before I climb into the shower to wash the day away.” I don’t tell her that my plan is to park my butt on the couch until these feelings pass, until the dread that’s been slithering itself through my body vanishes.

“Are you sure? Do you have off tomorrow?” she questions, and it reminds me of Claire and her outspoken personality because if Claire was on the call, she wouldn’t take no for an answer. She’d skid to a stop at my door and demand I open it. Britney doesn’t breach boundaries like Claire. “Is it safe for you to go back even though the cops arrested him?”

Blanching, I nibble my bottle lip. I truly don’t know how the hospital board is going to handle Andrew. If they’ll allow him to continue to work or not. But he’s not the only one I’m worried about, though for an entirely different reason. Luke is on my mind and has been since he walked into that alcove. It’s the only part of the story I left out to Brit, that the guy who saved me and was also arrested is not a stranger but the man who joined us for family dinner recently.

Luke’s damage is irreversible in a similar way as Andrew’s. Both of them made choices that will follow them and their careers, and I can’t stand to think about it where Luke is concerned. If he had seen another woman under Andrew’s hold, would he have acted the same? Would all his rationality have flown out the window?

“Layla? Are you there?”

“Sorry,” I say, shaking away how disturbing it was to see a reaction like that out of Luke. The vicious glint in his eyes. The promise in his words. The blood on his hands. “I’m here. I think I’m just going to head in and grab a shower, Brit.”

Her voice softens in reply. “Okay. Call me if you need me. I’ll be there in a heartbeat.”

“I know,” I reply, smiling small against my phone when I hear a message come through. “Just do me a favor. Don’t tell Mom or Claire yet. I’ll call them tomorrow.”

“As long as you tell them tomorrow, I won’t.”

“Promise.”

“Love you, Layla.”

“Love you, too, Brit.”

I pull the phone from my face and check my notification bar. My phone buzzes again, and I notice Sierra and Monica’s names at the top. A string of messages come in from both of them. I’m too tired to explain what happened. Instead of replying, I toss my phone back into my bag and make my way inside.

No one tells you when you sign up for a traveling nurse position how lonely it can be. You’re away from your family, sometimes by hundreds of miles, and if you’re lucky enough to get a contract close enough, you’re too tired after working a forty-plus hour work week to visit. You spend a lot of time by yourself, especially if you don’t have a significant other to share your life and free time with.

Having time alone is part of the reason I sought a traveling gig. After my dad died, I needed to get away. I needed to heal from the pain of losing him on my own. There’s nothing trickier than grief the first year after. Some days it sticks to you like two-sided tape and hardly makes it possible to get a breath in. Nothing you do shakes it off. I spent many days reflecting and wishing and regretting. Being in Quaint only made it worse. It exacerbated every step I tried to move through, and when I thought I was in the clear, the thoughts would sneak up when something reminded me of him.

I ran, and it helped. Separating myself from what reminded me of my dad gave me space to heal and rebuild the section of my life that collapsed. However, I don’t want to run anymore. I told Britney not to come over but being alone is the last thing I want.

How could I have told her I wanted company, but just not hers?

I keep volleying between each moment of the day, wondering if I could’ve done something different. Wondering if I should’ve been more aware of my surroundings, of knowing where Andrew was. But I’m not dumb—there wasn’t anything I could’ve done to prepare myself for what he did.

More than that, I’m annoyed that it’s getting to me so damn much, that it’s causing these uneasy feelings to overcome me, that it’s pulling up the past and making me feel guilty for the choices I’ve made, that it makes me feel weak, powerless, insecure.

I sigh out a breath, grab my hairbrush, and run it through my wet hair. I haven’t been home long, but I jumped in the shower as soon as I walked through the door, worried if I touched anything, it too would pick up the sickening scent of Andrew’s cologne and breath. I turn on the television and pop two pieces of bread in the toaster. The sun shines through the kitchen and living room windows, begging me to go outside like I usually do in the evenings. Begging me to make tea and grab a book to sit on the porch with until the sun dips and paints the warm colors of the sunset across the backyard.

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