Layla Read online

  Layla smiles. “I’m full of good points. That’s why you’re in love with me.”

  “So in love with you.” I kiss her, but this kiss is coupled with concern.

  In the beginning, I liked Layla. I was attracted to her. But concern for her didn’t accompany those feelings. However, over the last few weeks, I’ve started to worry about her.

  Concern might be the only difference between liking someone and loving someone.

  I debate telling her to be extra careful while I’m gone because now I’m even more apprehensive. I’d like it if she’d never answer my door when I’m not here. I’d really like it if she’d delete all her social media accounts. But she’s a grown-ass woman, so I don’t say any of that.

  I don’t know why I have this pit in my stomach because essentially, I’m a nobody right now. One unofficial fan club and five thousand followers does not make me a somebody. A few comments from some fans online isn’t really something that warrants an overprotective boyfriend. Even still, I’m having a security system installed while I’m gone. It’ll put my mind at ease.

  “I have to meet Garrett in two hours. And I still have to shower and finish packing.”

  Layla kisses me and then rolls off the bed. “I’ll put a frozen lasagna in the oven so you can eat before you leave. Want some garlic bread with it?”

  “Sounds perfect.”

  She closes the bedroom door, and I begrudgingly head to the bathroom.

  Maybe we should get a dog. A protective one, like a German shepherd. It’d make me feel better when I have to leave Layla here by herself.

  I turn on the water in the shower and take off my shirt, but before I unbutton my jeans, there’s a knock at the door. I told Garrett I’d meet him at his house. Maybe he got impatient.

  “I’ll get it!” I yell out from the bathroom. I really don’t want Layla answering the door after I read some of those comments. Not to mention, Sable knows where I live. She’s slept in my bed.

  “I’ve got it!” Layla yells back.

  I’m picking up my shirt and pulling it back over my head when I hear a sound. It’s like a single-shot firecracker. Pop!

  My blood chills—as if my veins would shatter like glass if I moved. But I do move. I run.

  When I reach the bedroom door, I hear the sound again. Another pop!

  I swing open the door, and everything I know and everything I love and everything I live for is in a heap on my living room floor. There’s blood pooling beneath her shoulder. In her hair. I immediately drop to my knees and lift her head.

  “Layla,” I whisper, right before feeling a sting in my shoulder.

  Everything after that is a blur.

  A nightmare.

  Everything stops.

  It just stops.

  It just . . .

  THE INTERVIEW

  The man is quiet.

  The whole house is quiet. Too quiet.

  I need more bourbon. As if he knows this, he stands up and grabs the bottle. He brings it back to the table and slides it over to me. “What happened next?”

  I shrug. Take a drink. “She survived.”

  “Who shot her? Sable?”

  My jaw is tense when I nod. “Yes. Over a fucking Instagram post.” My words are short and clipped. I’m sure the expression on my face shows just how done I wish I could be with this conversation.

  “Was Sable arrested?”

  I shake my head. “No.”

  The man is looking at me like he wants me to elaborate even more on that night, and I will, but not right now. I’m still trying to swallow everything that’s led up to this point. I need to fully digest it before I spit it back out.

  “I don’t really want to talk about that right now,” I say. “Not that it isn’t important. I just . . .” I push back from the table and stand up. “I need to check on Layla again.” My voice is dry from all the talking. He stops the recorder as I turn to walk up the stairs.

  I pause halfway up the steps. I lean against the wall and close my eyes. It’s still hard to wrap my mind around what’s happening sometimes, even though I’ve been living it for weeks now.

  I take a moment to separate everything I’m saying about Layla downstairs from what I need to say to her upstairs.

  After a few long seconds, I push off the wall and head to our bedroom. I unlock the door and slowly open it, expecting Layla to be asleep. She isn’t. She is lying down, though.

  “I’m thirsty,” she says flatly.

  I pick up the glass of water by the bed and wait for her to sit up. I’ve given the rope plenty of slack so she can move around a bit, but she still winces when the rope rubs against her wrists. She leans forward until the glass meets her lips. She takes several sips before dropping against the headboard, exhausted.

  “You should eat,” I tell her. “What do you want me to bring you?”

  She looks at me with disgust. “I don’t know, Leeds. It’s hard to see what’s in the fridge when I’m tied to a bed.”

  Her anger slips into my skin with the ease of a sharpened scalpel. It mixes with the guilt I feel for keeping her here, but Layla’s anger and my guilt combined still lack the capability to breach my conscience.

  “I can make you a sandwich.”

  “How about you untie me and I can make it myself?”

  I leave her while I go downstairs to make her a sandwich. Turkey and cheddar, no onions, double the tomato. I don’t speak to the man while I make Layla her sandwich. I do have questions for him, but I’ll get to those later. I just want to tell him everything I know first. I want to get it over with.

  When I’m back upstairs, I set the sandwich and the bag of Cheetos I brought Layla on the bed. I also made her a glass of wine, so I place that on the nightstand.

  “I’ll untie you so you can eat, but don’t try to run this time,” I warn her. “You know it won’t work.”

  She nods, and I can tell by the fear in her eyes that she doesn’t want to experience that again. In fact, I can probably trust that she was so terrified by what happened the last time she tried to leave that she doesn’t even need to be tied up. I doubt she’d even leave this bedroom willingly.

  Unfortunately, I just can’t risk it. I need her here.

  When the rope is off her wrists, she pulls her arms down and massages her shoulder. I feel bad that she’s sore, so I make room between her and the bed and I sit behind her. I rub her shoulders while she eats, wanting to ease some of her tension. She takes a small bite of her sandwich, then picks up a piece of tomato and lettuce that fell out onto the plate. She pops them both into her mouth and licks her fingers. Maybe she’s just hungry, but she looks like she’s actually enjoying this sandwich. It reminds me of how she used to tease me about my sandwich-making abilities.

  “You used to hate my sandwiches.”

  She shrugs. “People change,” she says between bites. “You also used to be a loving boyfriend who didn’t hold me hostage, but look at you now.”

  Touché.

  When her shoulders feel more relaxed, I leave her on the bed as I walk to the bathroom, trusting that Willow will stop Layla if she tries to escape again. I retrieve the first aid kit from beneath the counter, then walk back to the bed and apply antiseptic ointment to Layla’s wrists between her bites of food and sips of wine. I bought this first aid kit at a gas station on our way here several weeks ago. I had no idea how much I’d end up using it.

  We don’t talk while she eats. The faster she eats, the better. I want to get these questions over with so we can start getting answers.

  When she’s finished, I wrap her wrists with a roll of ACE bandage to ease the pain from the rope. “Do you want me to tie you to the other side of the bed now so you can lie on your other side?”

  She nods, holding her arms out for me.

  I hate myself for this. Especially after spending the last hour talking about what it was like to fall in love with her. Remembering the agony that rolled through me when I saw her on my living room
floor.

  And now I have to spend the next hour talking about what everything has been like after that night. The hospital stay, the recovery, what it did to our private lives. The months of guilt. The betrayal, the lies. How I’ve manipulated her. Not looking forward to this.

  “Try to get some sleep now.”

  She just nods this time. I think the exhaustion is getting to her.

  I walk back downstairs, but the man isn’t in the kitchen anymore. I find him in the Grand Room. He’s moved the tape recorder to the piano, and he’s sitting on the bench. “Thought I’d change up the scenery a bit,” he says. I sit on the end of the couch closest to him, and he presses record again. “What happened after you were shot?”

  “I called 911. Tried to keep Layla alive until they arrived. Then we were both taken into surgery.”

  “And after that?”

  I tell him what I can remember, which isn’t much. I woke up from surgery not knowing if Layla was even alive. I tell him about how I had to spend three hours in recovery with no word on her condition. I tell him about the agony of having to call her mother and sister to let them know what had happened, and the two hours I spent being interrogated while still not knowing if Layla had survived.

  I tell him everything I can remember about the hospital stay, but none of it is all that important. Nothing about her survival or the recovery is nearly as significant as everything that started happening once we returned to the bed and breakfast.

  “Why did you guys decide to come back here?”

  “I wanted to get her out of Tennessee. Once her doctors gave her the all clear, I thought it would be good to get her away. And I know how much she loves this place.” I pause when I say that, and then I backtrack. “Well . . . how much she used to love it.”

  “When did she stop loving it here?”

  “I guess the day I brought her back.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I ate a strand of Layla’s hair this morning.

  The thought crossed my mind that something as weird as eating your girlfriend’s hair could be the starting point to even weirder behavior. It could be a precursor to cannibalism, much like harming animals as a child is sometimes a precursor to becoming a serial killer.

  But eating her hair was nothing more than a slightly creepy last-ditch effort on my part to try and absolve myself from all the guilt. I dreamt that swallowing a piece of her hair tethered us together somehow, eliminating any fear that we might someday grow apart because of everything that happened. So, when I woke up, I plucked a strand from her head while she slept and put it in my mouth.

  That was eight hours ago, and it feels like the strand somehow found its way around my heart and cut off the blood supply.

  My heart is choking.

  That would make a good lyric.

  I open my phone while we wait in line to board the plane, and I type my heart chokes on its own guilt into my notes, beneath several other dismal lyrics I’ve pulled from random thoughts.

  My lyrics have really taken a depressing turn lately.

  “Leeds,” Layla says, giving me a gentle nudge from behind. I’m holding up the line. I slide my phone into my pocket and head to our seats.

  I packed very little for this trip. Two pairs of jeans, some shorts, a few T-shirts, and the engagement ring.

  I tucked it into a sock and shoved the sock deep inside a pair of my running shoes. Layla has a separate suitcase, so there shouldn’t be a reason for her to dig through mine, but I don’t want her to find the ring. I bought it when she was still in the hospital. I knew it was premature, but I was overwhelmed with fears of the unknown. I thought buying the ring might put some kind of energy into the universe that would make her recover faster.

  Her recovery has been better than expected, but I’ve yet to propose. She doesn’t even know I bought her the ring. I’m still not sure when I’m proposing because I want it to be perfect. It might not even happen on this trip, but I’d rather have the ring and not need it than need it and not have it.

  I booked this trip because the last six months have been horrendous. It has taken a toll on us, emotionally and physically. I’m hoping going back to the place where Layla and I met will feel like a reset on our lives. I have this notion that if I take us back to the starting line, we’ll never cross the finish line.

  Another potential lyric.

  The man in front of me is attempting to shove his oversize suitcase into the overhead bin, so I take the pause in the movement of the line and type a tweaked version of that sentence into my notes. I keep running back to the starting line because I don’t want to be finished with you.

  Layla’s recovery has been a lot more intense than my own. It was touch and go for an entire week. Once she was stable, it was still four weeks before she was discharged.

  I blame myself daily for not being more careful. For not fearing Sable’s instability all those months before, when she refused to stop contacting me.

  I blame myself for ever thinking it was a good idea to put Layla’s face out there while not expecting some sort of repercussions. I mean, it’s the fucking internet. I should have known better. Every post has some sort of repercussion.

  We desperately need this trip. We need the privacy. A break from the outside world. I just want to go back to how it all was in the beginning. Just the two of us, locked up in a bedroom, having the best and most random conversations between rounds of sweaty sex.

  I shove Layla’s carry-on into the overhead bin. We’re in seats 4A and 4B, the last row in first class. Layla takes the window seat. She’s been unusually quiet, which means she’s probably feeling anxious.

  I haven’t told her where we’re going yet. I wanted it to be a surprise, but the unknown might be feeding her anxiety. I hadn’t really thought about that until this moment.

  I sit down and fasten my seat belt while she closes the window shade. “Any guesses where we’re headed?”

  “I know we’re flying to Nebraska,” she says. “I don’t even know what’s in Nebraska.”

  “We’re not actually staying in Nebraska. It’s the closest airport to where we’re going, though.”

  That should be a hint, but she doesn’t seem to catch on to it. She grabs one of the small water bottles from between our seats and opens it. “I hope it’s relaxing. I don’t know that I’m in the mood for adventure.”

  I try not to laugh at the thought of that. What does she expect? That I would sign her up for rock climbing or river rafting after she’s been in physical therapy for the past six months?

  She’s been through so much and I know I’ve been extremely overprotective, but we’ve slowly been easing back into our old routine. No one can bounce back from something like that and immediately fall back into being their chipper, happy selves, so there’s still some ground to cover, but I’m confident our rhythm will come back with time.

  Layla pulls her phone out of her purse before shoving the purse beneath the seat in front of her. “We need to post a picture of you on the plane,” she says, lifting her phone.

  I smile, but she shakes her head, indicating she doesn’t want me to smile. I stop smiling. She snaps a picture of me and then opens it in an editing app.

  It’s hard not being a little bitter at the idea of fame after what happened to us. Layla never would have been injured if it weren’t for social media.

  She finishes editing the picture and holds it up for me to approve. I always approve them. I don’t really care what she posts, to be honest. I nod when I see the picture, but then I groan when I see the hashtags. #Singer #Musician #LeedsGabriel #Model

  “Model? Really, Layla? Am I trying to make it as a musician or an influencer?”

  “You can’t be the former nowadays without also being the latter.” She posts the picture with the hashtags.

  “They used to say MTV was the death of the ugly musician,” I mutter. “Not even close. Instagram is the new grim reaper.”

  “It’s a good thing you look like yo
u do, then,” Layla says. She kisses me and then puts her phone back into her purse.

  I turn my cell on airplane mode and drop it into the back pocket of the seat in front of me, dreading the inevitable pictures Layla will force me to take before my head hits the pillow tonight. I know I should be more grateful to her for wanting me to succeed. It just all feels dirty now. Our story made a few headlines and circulated in the Nashville scene, so it gave me a small bump in sales and a huge bump in followers—I’m over ten thousand now. But I can’t help but feel like I’m capitalizing off her injuries.

  I feel like a sellout who never really had anything to sell out.

  The plane begins to taxi, and Layla starts twisting the hem of her dress nervously. She’s already downed both bottles of our water.

  The attack changed a lot of things about her. It changed both of us.

  A lot was taken from her because of me. Months of her life. Her confidence. Her security. She was left with anxiety, dependency issues, night terrors, panic attacks, memory loss. The carefree and confident girl I fell in love with no longer sits next to me. Instead, I sit next to a girl who seems like she’s fighting not to crawl out of the skin she’s in.

  It’s like all her resilience is buried beneath layers of scar tissue now.

  Maybe that’s why I’ve let her basically take over as my manager while she recovers. I do what she says because my career is the only thing that seems to give her a sense of purpose. Keeps her mind off everything that’s happened.

  And maybe that’s how she deals with it—by turning the one thing that caused all of this into a positive thing. Every aspect of our lives other than my career has suffered. Layla says it’s good we have that small sliver of positivity to hold on to. I don’t want to deprive her of that, but I kind of miss the days when she didn’t take my career as seriously. I miss it when she encouraged me to quit the band in order to preserve my own happiness. I miss how she used to pull my guitar out of my hands so she could crawl on top of me. I miss it when she didn’t care about what was posted to my Instagram page.