Layla

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.”