balcony. The sky was pink, the rising sun still behind the mountains. To the left and right there were other little balconies, four of them. Little extra nooks and crannies on a house that just kept going. There was a brook beneath me, falling off the edge of the cliff the house was built onto. This house was built into a cliff. With a waterfall falling under it.
It was like magic, this house.
My back pocket buzzed and I jumped, startled. My phone. I’d forgotten. No bra or shoes, but I had this damn phone shoved in the back pocket of my shorts.
Suddenly all that shit I felt, the grubby bit and the meaningless part—it was all gone. I was still hurt, still impossibly wounded, but I was furious, too.
And if I’d learned nothing else in the last two months of my life, it was that fury felt better than pain. Every damn time. So I grabbed onto my anger with both hands.
“Dylan?” I asked after I answered.
“You okay?”
“I’m in your goddamn house.”
“Good.”
“Where the hell are you?”
“I’m…in my garage.”
I lifted my head, as though I could smell him on the breeze. “Here?”
“Here. But—”
“How do I get there?”
“Layla—”
“Tell me how to get there or I’m going to start tearing this place apart!”
His chuckle was unexpected and it did nothing to cool me down. “I’m not kidding, Dylan. I’m seeing you right now or I’m walking out that door.”
“We’re in the middle of nowhere.”
“And if you think that will stop me you’re crazy.”
He was silent for a long time; I could hear him breathing. “Go through the big room. I’ll leave the door open.”
I ran back down the hallway through the big room. Margaret had vanished, thank heavens. And down in the far left corner of the room near the floor-to-ceiling window was a cracked door, a slice of yellow light cutting into the shadows.
With my hands shaking, I pushed open that door.
The garage was big. Like a cathedral. In the center of it was one whole car with its hood open, surrounded by pieces of cars. It smelled of oil and concrete. On a metal table there was a dismantled engine and on the far wall there was a long wooden bench.
Sitting in a pool of light, on a stool at the bench, his back to me, was Dylan.
For a second those wide edges of my life didn’t connect; anger slipped out of my hands. And I didn’t know what I was doing here. Or how in the world I’d gotten here. To this house. To this man.
“Layla?”
At the sound of his voice—so familiar, so achingly familiar—all the pieces of my life slammed back together.
Helpless, I closed my eyes and let that voice work its way through my body.
“You okay?” Even that familiar question was somehow bittersweet.
He’d spun around, shifting back out of the pool of light so his face and half his chest were in shadow. The shadows were dense and maybe that was easier…maybe that was better. I couldn’t see his eyes, but I knew they were watching me. His hands were in fists at his knees.
“Is this where you bring all the women you kidnap?” I asked, coming out swinging, for once in my life.
“No,” he said. “I don’t bring anyone here.”
“Well, aren’t I a special snowflake,” I said through lungs that felt as if they were collapsing in on each other.
“Layla,” he sighed.
Suddenly, I wished very much that I had not sent him that picture.
I felt painfully bared to him, wholly exposed. I’d sent him a naked picture of myself. My pale, thin, boyish body. All my flaws, all my imperfections, my feminine failures—he’d seen them.
And he sat there in the shadows, unwilling to show me anything of himself.
The distance between us throbbed. With anger. With lust. Questions and huge fucking secrets.
Beneath my ribs, I ached. Between my legs I ached. My fucking blood ached at the sight of him. I took a deep breath and clenched my hands together in front of me, as if I needed something to hold onto. And maybe I did. I was so adrift.
“I’d like to go home.”
“You can when I know it’s safe.”
“You are not the boss of me.” Really, could I be any more idiotic?
“When you’re in danger,” he said, “I’m going to do everything I can to keep you safe.”
“Why?” I asked, baffled by this protectiveness. By his attention. From the first phone call to now, I didn’t understand. Why me?