CHAPTER 3 – THE CHAIR
1576 Words
LAYLA’S POV
Megan arms are on the armrests, and her legs are crossed comfortably.
“Layla! I heard you might be coming home. Are you okay?” She stands and opens her arms. “We've been so worried.”
“What are you doing in my father's seat?”
“You've been gone for such a long time. We really have to catch up.” She giggles in a way that makes my skin crawl. “I got promoted when your dad fell sick, and I promise I've been trying my best to keep it together until he gets better.”
A metallic taste floods my mouth, and I dig my nails into my palm.
How dare she act like she was not just sleeping with my husband and we’ve not seen each other in a long while?
“I'd like to see my father.”
“Of course! Let me get you to where he is.” She gets up and motions me to follow. “Only family is allowed to see him for obvious reasons.”
She places a hand on my back as we walk down the hall, and I want to shake it off, but I don’t, because people are watching and I don’t want to cause a scene.
We stop at a room further down the hall, and I see that they’ve converted it to a makeshift private clinic.
My father is hooked to monitors – thinner than I've ever seen him – and he is being monitored by a private nurse Megan tells me her parents arranged. The room smells like antiseptic and something underneath that's still him – still the father who used to carry me on his shoulders through the compound when I was small. But fainter now. Like even his scent is leaving.
His eyes fill when I walk in, and he reaches for me with a hand that weighs nothing. He used to be strong enough to lift me over his head, but now his fingers tremble around mine like holding on costs him everything he has.
“Elaine?”
He thinks I'm my mother.
“It’s Layla, dad.” I almost break as I correct him.
He blinks. “Layla. Baby. Come closer, my darling.”
I lie down beside him on the narrow bed and let him stroke my hair and I don't tell him a single thing about Garrett. He's too fragile for the truth, and I'm too fragile to watch it land. So, I hold his hand and pretend everything is fine and just talk to him like I came home for a visit.
Then when the nurse leaves to get something and we’re alone, he suddenly holds my face and stares directly into my eyes.
“My love.” His voice is hoarse. “Promise me you will save our people.”
I sit up. “From what?”
His eyes search my face like he's trying to push something important through the fog. “The wolves... they're not...” He trails off. His hand finds mine again and squeezes with a strength that surprises me. “Don't trust the–”
The nurse walks in. “He needs his medication now. You'll have to step out.”
I look at my father, but he's already drifting off to sleep and whatever he was trying to tell me has dissolved behind his eyes. I kiss his forehead and leave, and the unfinished sentence follows me down the hallway like a ghost.
Hours later I'm still turning his words over in my head when Harper – my childhood best friend – bursts through the clubhouse door. She grabs me, holds me hard enough that my ribs ache, then pulls back and looks at my face.
“Names. I need names. And then I need addresses.”
That's Harper. No context needed. Just point her at the target.
I tell her what my father said and her face goes serious. Then we walk to the bar and sit in front of Nina – our bartender and the gossip pipeline of Iron Howl for very valid reasons.
“Girl, you have no idea what's been going on here.” Nina leans across the bar, voice low. “Money's been disappearing from the club accounts for months. Megan's been meeting with people from Black Viper after hours. And your daddy's nurse? She only answers to Megan's parents. Nobody else gets near his medication.”
Harper and I look at each other. And I’m about to ask more questions when Megan walks into the common area in a fresh outfit with open arms.
“Layla! I'm honestly so glad you're home.”
The metallic taste floods my mouth again.
“Thank you, Megan.”
She hugs me, and I don’t push her away because even more people are watching this time.
Across the room, Rafe's jaw is set like he's biting through wire. Colt's face is doing something I'd call premeditated assault in any other context. And Eli isn't watching Megan – he's watching me – and something in his expression tells me he sees exactly what she’s doing.
Over the next few days, I settle into my old room at Iron Howl after a minor argument with Brandon about him moving the triplets into rooms on my floor – for security – because it means I'd be living in a hallway with three men I have complicated history with, one of whom I can still feel on my skin from the bike ride, while carrying my cheating husband's baby, but his argument is more sound, so I stop fighting.
Every hallway encounter is a problem.
Rafe walks past me shirtless on his way to the shower and the width of his shoulders should not be information I'm storing. And when he says my name down the hall in that low tone, something tugs behind my ribs that I refuse to examine.
Colt is the opposite problem. He leans in doorframes with his arms crossed, stands too close, and radiates a heat that makes me want to lose my mind.
“You look like hell, Rowan.” He grins. “It's a good look on you.”
I flip him off and he laughs, and something warm uncurls in my chest that I decide to label as irritation.
And then there's Eli.
I find a glass of water outside my door every morning and I assume it's Nina. Then one night I can't sleep and I open my door and he's there, setting the glass down slowly.
He looks up. I look down.
He doesn't say anything. He just stands, nods once, and walks away.
The glass always has a lemon slice in it – and it suddenly hits me that I mentioned once, years ago, at a family barbecue, that I like lemon in my water. He remembered. He's been remembering it this whole time.
I close the door and drink the water and don't finish the thought forming in my head about what kind of man holds onto a detail like that for years.
But every day it gets louder.
Rafe comes out of the bathroom one morning and I'm right there in the hallway and we nearly collide. His hand shoots out and catches the doorframe an inch from my face, and he's close enough that I can feel the heat coming off his shower-damp skin.
His eyes drop to my mouth for half a second and then snap back up and I stop breathing entirely. Then he steps aside silently, and I make it to my room before my knees remember they're supposed to be shaking.
Colt is worse because he doesn't have the decency to be subtle. He catches me reaching for a mug on the top shelf and instead of getting it like a normal person, he comes up behind me and reaches over my head, and his entire body is pressed against my back for two full seconds.
His mouth is next to my ear when he says “got it” and I can feel his breath on my neck and the bastard is smiling – I can HEAR him smiling – and when he steps back and hands me the mug, his fingers brush mine and he holds eye contact for longer than anyone has ever needed to hold eye contact over a coffee mug.
“You're welcome, Rowan.”
“I didn't say thank you.”
“You were thinking it.”
I was not thinking it. I was thinking something entirely different that I will take to my grave.
And Eli.
Eli who draws in the common room with his sleeves pushed up and his fingers wrapped around a pencil with a precision that makes my stomach do something unnecessary. I walk past him on the couch one evening and glance down at the sketchbook and he closes it quietly and looks up at me with an expression that makes me feel like I've interrupted something private.
Something that had to do with me.
We're all in the common room as they introduce me to new pack members and I try to ignore every almost contact when Megan walks in and taps a glass to get the room's attention.
“I, Megan Rowan, hereby convene a council meeting.” She turns to stare at me directly. “There's a formality we need to address.”
- Writer
