“I already told you, Solana helped me out.” He moves his hand away from my face and touches his chest. “Helped me fake my own death. And I think she’s here to help you if the deal between her and I still stands, which it seems like it does since she hasn’t killed you yet.”
My brows dip even lower as confusion sets in deeper. I reach for Layton’s shirt and lift it up until I can see his chest. He lowers his hand and lets me examine his skin… the small circular scar on his lean chest, right near the tattoo of his family’s crest, a circle enclosing Greek-like symbols. In the heat of the moment, I hadn’t even noticed the scar. “You were shot?” I gape at him. “When you said fake your death I thought… well, I’m mot sure what I thought, but Id didn’t think it meant you were actually shot.”
He shrugs nonchalantly. “It was the only way we could pull it off. But it’s okay—I’m okay. It missed all major organs and arteries… Solana has a very good aim and now all I have is a scar.”
“She’s the one who shot you? Good God.”
He sighs, cover his hand over mine, which is still pressed against his chest. I can feel his heart beating under my palm, steady, calm. “Lola, I know you want to hear all the answers, but we really need to get to the safehouse. You have two very powerful mafia families after you—you’re not safe here so close to a town and the public.”
“Wow two hits.” I force a hollow laugh as I absentmindedly trace the scar on his chest. “I guess I should feel honored or something.”
“Lolita…” His voice drifts off as he leans in toward me. “It’s going to be okay. I’m not going to let anything happen to you. You know that, right?” His eyelids drift shut as he leans into kiss me. And I want to let him, but I’m afraid I’ll start crying again, my mind still on emotion overload. I feel just as cold inside as the day I first ran. I wonder when I’ll be warm again—if I’ll ever be warm.
So I turn my head and he ends up kissing my cheek, his lips brushing against my flesh, warming up the cold in my body for a flickering instant. “I can’t kiss you right now,” I teller him softly. “I’m already fighting an emotion breakdown and your kisses seem to bring it out more… make me feel too much.”
“Is that a good thing?” he asks, slanting back and looking me in the eyes.
“Good and bad,” I say truthfully. “I’m glad you’re alive… glad you’re here… but it makes me feel… sort of guilty about what I’ve been doing over the couple of years. And I’m not used to guilt. Never been my thing, you know.”
“I do know.” His voice is soft, caring. “Lola, what you did… I’m sure you had to do it, right? To survive.”
I shrug, guilty knots winding in my stomach. “Yes and no… It wasn’t just that.” I can barely look at him. “Honestly, I did it because I liked it—liked how it made me feel on the inside.”
He presses his lips together with so much force the skin around his mouth turns white. “How did it make you feel?”
I glance at him with wariness. “You seriously want to know?”
He nods, but doesn’t look so certain. “I want to understand what it was like for you these last two years—need to understand. Because all I have is that picture of what I walked in on when I went into the hotel room and saw you like that.” He squeezes his eyes, looking as though he’s in pain. “God, when I heard you scream, I thought I was going to find you dead.”
“It wasn’t always that way. Most of the time it was fine.” I don’t want to tell him the real reason why I did it, too ashamed, but when I open my mouth, it sort of spills out. “I did it because it made me numb—I didn’t have to feel death on my hands. You know as well as I do that sex was always sort of a weird euphoric thing for me. Well it started to be a self-numbing thing after everything happened, like taking drugs without the drugs.”
“Lolita,” he says my full name again, the sound rolling off his tongue like honey. “I’m sorry… I wish I could have found a way to tell you all this sooner... But I wasn’t even supposed to see you now… I’m supposed to be dead… but I had to see you. That night in the motel, later at the house when you were out looking at my car.” He drifts toward me again. “Tonight. I couldn’t let anything happen to you.”
I stare into his silvery eyes, remembering all the things we used to be, remembering how it felt when I thought I’d never look at him again, touch him again, kiss him again.
“Oh my God, fuck it.” I drop the gun and then I’m smashing my lips against his, kissing him with so much passion I nearly bite his lip. And he kisses me back with zero hesitation, scooping me up in his arms. I wrap my legs around him and hold onto him with one hand while my other drifts downward.
“Lola,” Layton says between kisses as I undo the button of his jeans. “I need to tell you something else… something really important…”
“Then tell me.” I know I should stop and listen to him, but I can’t bring myself to do so, not ready to break the connection.
I nip at his bottom lip as I grind my hips against him, eliciting a groan from his mouth. His hands wander to my breasts, down to my hips, as he nips and bites at my lips, my jawline, my neck.
“I want you inside me again.” I practically beg him again, not sure if I’m seeking sex for all the right reasons, but I can’t stop myself from wanting it. “Please, Layton.”
I feel him smile against my lips. “I’ve never heard you beg like that, but that’s two times in one night. I must be good.”
“And you’ve never returned from the dead before.” I rock my hips against his, growing impatient, but a grin slips through. “You’re such a cocky bastard.”
“Hmmm….” His fingers tangle through my hair as he press a kiss to my jawline. “Maybe I should drag this out more… see what I can get out of it.”
My smile broadens and I realize how long it’s been since I’ve genuinely smiled. But this is Layton I know, the one I grew up with before everything was tainted, before our friendship was torn apart, before I killed, before I ran, and that one could always get me to smile.
“I’d like to see you try.” I decide to act like the old Lola for a moment, even though I’m not sure who that is anymore.
He lets out this deep throaty groan and then his fingers are slipping under my panties and are about to slip into me and I’m practically panting in anticipation.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
“Hate to break up the pornshow in there,” Solana says through the door. “But we have a huge problem.”
“I’m going to kill her,” I gripe as Layton slips his fingers out of me, leaving me high and dry.
His silvery eyes look a little dazed as he wets his lips with his tongue. “Lola, you should get to know her—she’s your sister.”
He might be right but at the same time I’m not sure if I want to, considering everything.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
“We have company,” she says and bangs on the door again. “So unless you want to die while fucking, get out here. Now.”
Shaking my head, I pick up the gun from off the floor. “God, I don’t want to kill again.” My breath falters from my lips, knowing that I just might have to, if we’re walking into an ambush.
“Don’t worry, you won’t have to.” There’s something in Layton’s voice that has me puzzled and a bit worried but before I can say anything about it, he withdraws something out of his back pocket.
A syringe.
I start to jump back but he grabs me by the arm and then the needle pierces my skin. “You fucking bastard,” I growl as a spout of dizziness overtakes me and I fall helplessly into my arms.
“I’m sorry, but it’s for your own good Lolita,” he whispers. The last thing I see in his eyes is remorse then I passed out, not sure what I’ll wake up to or if I’ll even wake up.
Chapter 11
Layton
My life has been full of choices not made by myself. It started when I was young, when my father sat me down in his office on my six birthday and told me I was g
oing to befriend Lolita Anders.
“But I don’t want to,” I’d replied, being the typical six year-old boy who hates girl’s because he thinks they have cooties.
“You have to,” he’d said, sitting on the desk with his legs dangling over the edge as he looked down at me, making me feel so small in the chair. “It’s for a family, for protection. Right now, the Anelli’s don’t like us very much and we need them to like us. They’re too powerful for us to be on their bad side.”
It’d seemed like a silly reason, but I didn’t argue. I saw how arguing with my dad had ended up. My mother argued with him all the time and instead of yelling back, my father hit her. He also liked to hit the people that worked from him too and sometimes he even killed them. I wasn’t supposed to know it at the time, but I’d accidentally seen him shoot someone in cold-blooded murder when I’d been hiding in his office during a game of hide-an-seek with my brother.
So I’d agreed and had made a major effort to get to know Lolita Anders at school. Turns out, I actually liked her and the friendship sort of grew on it’s own. When I was fourteen, I realized I might like her as more than a friend, which confused the shit out of me so I didn’t act on it. But then when I was sixteen, I realized that I wanted to date her, but knew her well enough that I knew she’d never go for it. When I was seventeen, I slept with her for the first time and it was one of the best and worst days of my life because I realized I was falling in love with Lola, a foreign emotion to me growing up in a home so cold. Like a dumbass I ended up telling her and still to this day am waiting to hear it back. I’m not surprised though. Her mother stuffed her head with all this weird crap about relationships. My father said the woman was seriously messed up, that she was still in love with Everson, the brother, but stayed with Larenze Anelli, Lola’s father, because it gave her stability and wealth and that made her bitter.
When Lola’s mother died, she seemed to get a little worse. Tough as nails on the outside, she was a confused mess on the inside and completely shut down. And then when I went to work with Frankie, well I think she actually hated me.
I’m worried she’ll hate me again if I tell her everything. There’s so much I haven’t told her about our pasts and things going on now. I know if she knew everything about my family, she’d never forgive me. And I swear to God that in itself would be enough to kill me for real.
“I still can’t believe that you tranquilized her. I was betting that you’d backed out,” Solana remarks as we drive down the desolate highway, heading away from the motel where I’m hoping Frankie’s men are still looking for Lola. We’d managed to slip out unnoticed, but I’m not sure how long it’ll be until they figure out we’ve taken off. I’m worried. Right now I’m supposed to be dead and it took a lot to get to that place. Lots and lots of pain that I’d prefer to never experience again.
“I told you if anything bad happened, I’d do it,” I tell Solana. “We talked about this before I went into the bathroom to talk to her.”
She props her boots on the dashboard. “Yeah, but I didn’t think you had it in you.”
I glance in the rearview mirror, my worry about being discovered by Frankie’s men briefly alleviated when I see no headlights behind us. “I didn’t want her to end up in anymore situations where she had to kill anyone. Once was more than enough.”
“You and I have killed many, many more times,” she states blasé as if we’re talking about the weather.
I’ve known Solana for a couple of years now and this is the only mode she has—calm and indifferent. But it was how she was raised to be in that God-awful place that I still can’t believe my family is a part of. “And we’re perfectly fine doing it again.”
“No, you’re perfectly fine doing it again.” I clutch the steering wheel until my knuckles turn white. “I hate doing it.”
“But you still do it if you have to.” She peers over her shoulder at Lola passed out on the backseat of the car. “She can’t even do it if her life depends on it.”
“And I’m glad. She’s better than that… it’s part of the reason why I love her. Because even though she won’t admit it, she’s a caring person.”
Solana rolls her eyes as she adjusts her ponytail. “You’re more whipped than I thought. No wonder you were perfectly okay taking a bullet just so you wouldn’t have to kill Lola. It’s starting to make sense now.” But I can tell she’s actually confused by it, unable to understand the emotion. I was honestly surprised when she made the deal with me. Let her shot me close enough to death, then we had a doctor who was in on it revive me, all so I could disappear and hopefully one day reunite with Lola again. There were so many things that could go wrong, like I could have easily died, but it was worth the risk to be here now.
I ignore her comment. Yeah, I am whipped by Lola, have been probably since we were fourteen. “So how long were you tracking me in Glensdale?” I ask, pretending that I’m calmer than I am. I know Solana enough to understand that if she wants to, she’ll kill me, without warning or hesitation.
“Since I was sent here to kill her about a week ago. I’ll admit I was a little surprised when I saw you poking around in her life. Not a lot of people are brave enough to break bargains with me.” She gives me a sidelong glance. “But I’m wondering just long have you been breaking our bargain?”
“For a couple of weeks now,” I lie tightly, because I’ve been trying to track Lola since we made the bargain. “I’m sorry, but once I found her and then found out Frankie had figured out where she was, I had to protect her. I tried to do it subtly, but they found her first.”
“You’re lucky I didn’t find her first,” she says, chewing on her bottom lip. “I promised pain when I found her and still haven’t got the honor of doing so.”
“Don’t hate her, Solana, just because she had a better life than you.” I’m crossing a line, but she’ struck a nerve with threatening Lola. “It’s not her fault what happened to you.”
“I know that.” She looks out the window at the trees blurring by. “But you’re forgetting that it’s in my nature to hunt and kill. And right now, I’m going against every instinct instilled in me. ”
“And why are you exactly?”
She remains silently for a while before looking at me. “Lets just say I’m doing you another favor.”
I’d press her for more details, but know it’ll be wasted breath. “So can I ask which one of the families sent you here to kill her?” I ask. “I’m guessing the Dellefontes since Frankie sent his own men.”
She shakes her head. “Nope. That’s not how I work.”
“You know you’re awfully committed to the people who hire you, which is weird since they’re the reason you’re like this in the first place.”
“Watch it Layton,” she warns. “Don’t forget for a second who I am and don’t forget what I’ve done for you.”
She’s right—Solana isn’t someone to be messed with. I should just take my gun out now and get rid of her, but I can’t bring myself to do so. She saved me, from death, from a life I loathed. I owe her more than I probably ever be able to pay back.
So where is this safehouse?” I change the subject. “You said it was nearby but we’ve driven for over fifty miles by now.”
She waves for me to keep going as she rest back in the seat and cross her arms over her chest, letting her head fall back against the headrest. “Just keep going. I promise it’s not too far.”
I sigh and keep driving down the road. Safehouses are always questionable. Either the people are genuinely good and have opened the house to help people like Lola and I who need to escape or they’ve done it hoping people like Lola stumble in and the can collected the reward. And the reward on Lola is huge. Three different mafia families after her, although I haven’t told her about the third, too terrified to tell her who the third one is.
After what seems like hours, Solana finally tells me to turn off the road that dips into the forest. I drive another twenty miles out into the backwoods,
the car not taking to the bumpy road very well and I worry more than a few times that we’re going to get stuck. Finally, after I’m beginning to question if Solana knows where we’re going, we pull up to a log cabin secluded in the trees.
“There it is,” she announces, sitting up in her seat. “See, told you it was back here.”
I eye the house with skepticism. It’s late, the lights off, so it’s completely dark around us except for the headlights from the car and a moonlight trickling through the trees. “Are you sure this place is a safehouse?”
She reaches for the door handle. “Yep. Got the information from a very reliable source.”
I turn the engine off but keep the headlights on. “And that would be?”
“Your brother.” There’s a twinkle in her eyes. She’s fucking with my head right now and completely enjoying herself. She knows how I feel about my younger brother, Benton—that I love him to death but that he’s completely irresponsible.