Layla - Colleen Hoover Page 0,78
Willow doesn’t have to spend another day alone in this house.
I’m full of an immense need to find answers for why Willow is stuck in her world, because I desperately need her to get stuck in mine.
I tilt my head to look at her, and when I do, I wish I wouldn’t have. It just makes it worse because she’s looking back at me with a broken heart. She rolls toward me and tucks her head in the crook of my neck, curling herself around me. “Every time I have to leave her body, it feels like a punishment. Every night, over and over. It’s torture.”
I wrap my arms around her, wishing I could fix everything for her. But I can’t.
I’ve just made it all so much worse.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The bed is empty when I wake up. I touch Layla’s pillow and run my hand over it, as if Willow is still lying there. Maybe she is.
I sit up to check the time, but I can’t find my phone. I look on the floor. On the bed. It isn’t in here.
Did Layla take it?
I rush downstairs to find her, my fear two steps ahead of me as I wonder why she took my phone and what she might be seeing on it. A conversation with Willow, the app for the security system. I rush into the kitchen, but Layla isn’t there. I search the Grand Room, the downstairs bedrooms. I open the back door, but she isn’t out by the pool.
I run to the front door and swing it open.
Layla is sitting on the porch steps, staring out over the front yard. There’s a cigarette in her hand.
“What are you doing?”
She doesn’t turn around to look at me, which makes me wonder what she found out. There are so many things. The cameras, the conversations on my laptop, the kiss last night.
I walk tentatively toward the steps and watch as Layla takes in a slow drag of the cigarette. “I wasn’t aware you smoked,” I say.
She blows the smoke out. “I don’t. But I keep some hidden in my purse for when I’m stressed.” She cuts her eyes at me, looking over her shoulder. I’m not sure what it is that caused that betrayal in her expression, but she definitely uncovered something.
I keep my voice steady when I say, “What’s wrong, Layla?”
She looks away from me again. Her voice is flat when she says, “Why didn’t you tell me you were buying this house?”
I lean my head back and blow out a silent breath of relief. I thought maybe she might have found the security footage. I wouldn’t have been able to explain that.
But I expected her to be mad about this.
I’m even okay that she knows about it. I planned to tell her today anyway. “How did you find out?”
“The Realtor just stopped by.” Layla jams her cigarette onto the wooden step next to her, and it feels like an insult. “The contract is on the kitchen counter. She’d like it back by the end of the day.”
I’ve never seen her this angry. Her sentences are tight, and she won’t look me in the eye. “Layla. It was supposed to be a surprise.”
“The hell it was,” she says. She stands up and brushes past me, then makes her way into the house and up the stairs.
I follow her, a little confused by her level of anger. I didn’t expect her to be thrilled, but I also didn’t expect her to be this incensed. “Layla,” I say when I reach the top of the stairs. I get her name out, right as the bedroom door closes in my face. I open it and watch as she pulls an empty suitcase from beneath the bed. She tosses it on the bed, opens it, and then walks to the dresser. “Why are you so upset about this?”
She scoops up the entire contents of the dresser drawer and tosses them into the suitcase. “I don’t want to live in the middle of nowhere. We’re a couple. You should talk to me about things like this, but instead, you went behind my back.” She walks to the closet now and grabs several of her shirts.
“I wasn’t hiding it. It was a surprise. We fell in love here. I thought this place meant something to us.”
Her face contorts into a mixture of confusion and anger. “My sister got married here. This place means more to her than it does to me. I don’t even like Kansas.