The Contradiction of Solitude (19 page)

I looked out the window and watched the light bounce off the water. Right now it was peaceful. The only traces of the storm were a few broken tree limbs.

And the heavy weight in the pit of my stomach.

I picked up my phone where I had dropped it on the floor many hours before and turned it on.

No texts.

I frowned and scrolled through my saved messages. They were all gone. As though they had never been there.

My throat felt tight and my head fuzzy.

Even worse, there was nothing from Layna. She had never called.

I went into the bathroom and brushed my teeth, avoiding the mirror. I didn’t want to see my reflection.

I knew what I’d see.

Nothing.

I didn’t bother changing my clothes. I tugged on my boots and grabbed my car keys, stepping out into the brand new morning.

The birds were quiet. There were never many around the quarry. I had noticed in my first days there that the wildlife seemed to give this place a wide berth. I never worried about the raccoons getting in the trash or snakes coming in through the windows.

They stayed away.

My heart was the only one that beat in this solitude.

I got in my car, drove out to the main road, and headed for town. I had the day off but had planned to go into the studio anyway. I wasn’t a man content with down time.

But things changed. And there was somewhere else that I needed to go.

Ten minutes later I stood outside of Layna’s door, my palm pressed to the wood, my head bowed low. I should knock.

She never called.

“Are you looking for Layna?”

I looked up to find an older woman coming down the stairs. Another woman that looked to be about my age was just behind her.

“Yes. Is she home?” I asked.

The older woman was carrying a plate of cookies wrapped in pink cling film. The younger woman gave me a shy smile. One I didn’t bother to return. I was standing outside of Layna’s door. I was incapable of flirting.

“She should be. She doesn’t work today. I’m Debbie Statham, her neighbor. And this is my granddaughter, Chloe. She’s visiting from New York. She lives in the city. Works at that store, Sak’s on Fifth Avenue.” I didn’t understand people that felt comfortable with sharing life stories to complete strangers.

As if their words were worth saying.

Chloe, the granddaughter, looked embarrassed. I didn’t blame her. She flushed a pretty red.

Layna’s apartment door opened suddenly and there she was. Her hair was tied in a low bun at the nape of her neck and she looked as though she had just gotten out of bed. She wore sleep pants and a purple tank top with no bra. I couldn’t help but notice. I was attracted to Layna in ways that were still founded in something absolutely physical.

Her eyes met mine and I felt frozen from the inside out. She was not happy to see me.

Her face was impassive as always but her eyes…they gave her away. She was pissed off. I really wasn’t sure how to make things right with a girl like Layna. Flowers and chocolates would never work. Perfumed promises and emphatic declarations wouldn’t sway her.

“There you are, sweetheart, Chloe and I made you some brownies. We’ve been baking all morning.” Mrs. Statham nudged me aside and handed Layna the plate in her hands.

I thought very seriously about body checking the old lady.

The granddaughter hung back, and I noticed that she directed several coy glances my way. A smug smile on her full lips. What sort of woman gave such a blatant unspoken invitation to a man they didn’t know? To a man obviously there to see someone else?

Chloe bit down on her bottom lip and raised her eyebrows in question. What did she expect me to do? Drag her into the corner with her grandmother and Layna five feet away?

I glanced away, my lip curling in annoyance, to find Layna looking over Mrs. Statham’s head at me. She hadn’t missed the looks her neighbor’s granddaughter was slinging my way.

And while she smiled at Mrs. Statham as the woman explained why she used wheat instead of white flour, her eyes snapped and sizzled. There was fire there. Fuck. I was burning in it.

“Elian,” Layna murmured, interrupting the old woman.

I stepped forward, away from Chloe and her overly familiar eyes. I pushed past a surprised Mrs. Statham, who seemed unused to this less patient side of her sweet neighbor.

Layna held the door open, giving me room to come inside, and then she turned to her unwelcome intruders. Her eyes on Chloe, not her grandmother. “He’s here to see me.”

There was a warning there. Low and threatening. I didn’t miss it. And neither did Chloe. Her eyes went wide and she quickly looked away.

“Of course he is dear. I recognized him immediately,” Mrs. Statham filled in, not seeing the territorial pissing that was occurring in front of her.

I grinned. I couldn’t help it. Layna had laid claim to me. I knew it was in my genetic make-up to drag her back to my cave. To rip and shred any perceived threat. But I found it unbelievably sexy to watch her cut another woman down with only her lethal eyes. Just because she wanted me for her own.

I shouldn’t have let anything get in the way of being with her last night. A woman like Layna was too easily loved and lost. Too easy to slip through unsuspecting fingers.

I had to hold on and hold down while I could.

Before it was too late.

“Thank you for the brownies,” Layna said, giving her elderly neighbor a smile that never reached her eyes. Eyes still trained on Chloe who wasn’t casting flirting glances anywhere anymore.

“You’re welcome. If you have time, you could come up and have something to eat later. I made chicken salad this morning. It’s Chloe’s favorite.” Mrs. Statham beamed at her shrunken granddaughter.

Layna, still staring at the increasingly uneasy Chloe, bared her teeth, more of a sneer than a grin. “Thanks, but we’ll be busy.” Again, those words were meant as a brand. For me. For this stranger who dared to step on what was hers.

Then Layna closed the door, carefully putting the plate of brownies on the table just inside the entryway. She walked past me and into her living room, turning on lights as she went, even though the sun streamed through the windows.

“I waited for you,” she said without preamble. My moment of reckoning had come.

“I’m—” I couldn’t say sorry. She would never accept the apology. What could I tell her that she would understand?

“I had a rough night,” I admitted, settling on the honest truth.

Layna nodded and folded herself into an overstuffed armchair. She looked small, vulnerable even, enveloped in cushions and pillows.

“I should have called.”

“You didn’t.”

She sounded pained. And I thrilled at making her feel that way. That pain was mine. All mine.

“I couldn’t.” It was the truth. It was an excuse.

“Tell me,” she said, looking up at me. And I fell. Fell. Into coal black eyes and the hint of fire still flaming bright.

“I can’t.” More excuses. Tongue-tied lies strangling in my throat.

My eyes flittered around the room, landing again on the line of framed pictures on the windowsill.

I walked towards them, shielding my eyes from the glaring sun. Blinding me. I couldn’t see.

She still sat in her chair, watching me. Closely. Like an insect under glass. Examining. Careful.

I picked up the third framed picture. I had looked at the first two before.

A pretty dark-haired girl wearing glasses. A scar on her cheek and a crooked nose. A photograph taken outdoors by a picnic table. The girl was looking off towards something I couldn’t see. She didn’t look happy.

She looked…lost.

I held up the frame. “Who is this?”

“Family.” The same, vague answer. I looked closer at the girl in the picture, trying to see a resemblance.

There was none.

I put it back and looked again at the other two girls I had noticed last time I had visited. The redhead and the blonde.

They were her family too. But they looked nothing alike.

“Family is more than blood. It’s an unbreakable bond between people…sometimes complete strangers.” She sounded angry. Hateful. Bitter. She didn’t want to talk about the girls in the photographs. That was obvious.

But my curiosity was getting the better of me. I couldn’t help it. This complicated girl was an enigma. I didn’t understand her at all. A small yet powerful voice deep inside told me that I probably shouldn’t try.

“Are they strangers? Your family?” I asked her, repositioning the photograph I had picked up back in its spot on the ledge.

“Aren’t all families?”

“I suppose so,” I agreed, sitting down on the couch, facing her. Her apartment was so cold. The air conditioner was apparently turned on high. Goose bumps broke out along my skin and I rubbed my arms. Layna was unconcerned with the temperature. It seemed to suit her.

“I should have come to you last night.” I ran my hands through my hair, feeling like an idiot. I had lost my head. And over what? The voice from my past? A voice I shouldn’t hear at all?

“Tell me,” she repeated and this time I could only comply.

“I’m not who you think I am,” I began. I couldn’t look at her. I was afraid. I was giving her a small piece of who I was. Not enough, I was sure. But it was all I could give right now.

“Who are you, Elian Beyer?”

Elian Beyer.

That name.

I hated it.

But I couldn’t take it back. It’s who I had become. I couldn’t give her that. Not yet. I wasn’t ready.

“I’m a guy who has had to run far, far away.”

Layna uncurled her legs and leaned forward, her arms braced on her knees, her hands dangling between. She looked at me with an intensity that left me shaking.

Reeling.

“What are you running from?” she whispered. She sounded on edge. Excited even. Was that right?

I frowned, not understanding her reaction. But there was something in her easy acceptance of secrets I couldn’t voice that made me want to unravel everything. To lay it all out at her feet and leave it there for her to pick over like a vulture.

“My parents are dead. My dad, as I told you, died before I left home.” I gripped my hands together hard enough to break bone. I started to lose feeling in my fingers. It kept me grounded. It helped me speak of things that were almost too painful to be real.

“My mother…she passed just a few years ago. I didn’t go home. I couldn’t. I know that makes me a selfish ass, but I hadn’t been back since three years after my sister—” I choked up. I couldn’t finish the sentence.

It was the thing that had dogged my every step. It was the event that had ruined my whole life.

“What happened to your sister?” Layna asked. Her voice was once again soft and even. I closed my eyes and wished she’d just keep talking. It was easier to slit myself open if I could just listen to her speak.

I couldn’t. I wanted to give her the story she asked for—the truth we both craved.

But I couldn’t.

There were some things too dark to see the light.

My hands were shaking and my mouth sealed shut. I couldn’t say anything more.

Then Layna was on her knees in front of me. I hadn’t seen her move. She was suddenly there. Her hand on my thighs, her beautiful, beautiful face turned up. Her coal black eyes that saw more than I wanted her to, piercing, shattering, incinerating holes.

“If the words hurt, then stop. I don’t need to hear them.” She put her hand on my chest, just over my thumping, thumping heart. “You’ll know when you’re ready to cut this out and give it to me. Until then, we’ll wait.”

My god, this woman. The things she did to me. Every inch. Every pump of a willing heart.

“I want to give it to you.” It sounded like a plea.

Layna dug her fingers into skin, protected only by the thin material of my shirt. I wanted to wince at the bite of pain. She pushed. She burrowed. She planted herself in. Roots deep.

“Not yet.”

She rose up on her knees, her fingers still bruising my pliant flesh and she kissed me. Tongues and teeth and blood. Mixed up and falling down.

I wanted skin. Hers. I wanted to touch it and own it.

Mine.

And for that moment.

She belonged only to me.

And the demons that nipped at my heels were kept at bay.

For now.