“I’m not saying that it doesn’t,” he argued.
“Saying that I’m your friend out of pity says our friendship doesn’t matter.”
They were quiet after those words left her mouth, both of them lost in their own thoughts. Finally, Layne spoke.
“Sorry. I’m kind of rough when it comes to certain things, and I really don’t know how to be any other way. I’ve always wondered why you picked me.”
“I just did,” she whispered. “Even though you smiled and looked happy in the video, I could see in your eyes that you weren’t happy. I could see you needed a friend, and so did I.”
“I did,” he admitted, swallowing hard. “I still do.” Those words were hard to say. The admittance about killed him.
“Then don’t turn your back on me. Let me be here for you.”
That was so hard for him to do with people besides the members of this club. He didn’t really have any female friends. Bianca and Meredith didn’t count as far as he was concerned. Since he had come back from Iraq, he hadn’t even allowed himself to spend the night in the same bed as a woman. Having her here scared him.
“I want you to be my friend, but I have to warn you. I could hurt you.”
“You won’t,” she assured him. “I know you won’t.”
He wasn’t sure, and that was the worst feeling in the world. The happiness he felt when she had decided to turn to him for help was now replaced with an overwhelming anxiety that he would do something to run her off. Mix that with the fact that just being around her made him want to dig his fingers into her hair and tilt her head back so he could bury his mouth against her throat, and he knew the two of them were a deadly combination.
“Being mean to me isn’t going to run me off, ya know. I deal with much worse than you’re giving me every day. Producers, directors, tabloid magazine writers—they are assholes. You’re just a guy trying to protect others from himself.”
She was right; he was trying to protect her from himself. “I just don’t know what I’m capable of. The only people I’ve allowed myself to be around are outlaws and whores, to be perfectly honest with you. I don’t know how to be around the public at large.”
Very delicately, she took his hand. She didn’t hold it, but she let it rest in hers, offering him just a tiny comfort. “Then I’ll do what I’ve done every day since you shipped off to the sandbox.”
Those words made him curious. “What’s that?”
A soft smile played on her lips. “Pray for you. I’ve done it every day. It started out as a prayer that you would come home, then as the days got closer to you being done; it was that you would come home safe. After a while, it was that you would sound normal when I talked to you again on the phone, and lately it’s been that you wouldn’t turn me away. Now, I’ll pray for peace, because it’s obvious that you need it. Something is eating away at you.”
It was, but it wasn’t something that he could put a finger on. It was a restlessness in his body, a churning in his gut, a ringing in his ears when he was given a few moments to himself. He had to get a grip on it.
“I won’t bug you about it, just like I don’t want you to bug me about what I’m doing here.”
“That’s fair,” he answered. “But you’re going to have to give me the whole story soon. If you want me to protect you, you’re gonna have to be honest with me.”
Those were the words she had been waiting on. “And if you want me to be honest with you, you’re gonna have to be honest with me. Friends are honest, friends help each other, and friends don’t put up with other friends’ bullshit.”
A rare smile tilted up the corners of his mouth. It stopped right before it became a full one, but she took that little expression and tucked it away in her pocket for later. Maybe, just maybe, the two of them could figure this relationship of theirs out.
Chapter Four
Tyler grunted loudly when Layne landed a well-timed punch to his gut before backing away against the ropes of the boxing ring. “Give me a minute,” he heaved.
“What’s wrong, old man?” Layne taunted.
The only person that was allowed to taunt Tyler like that was Layne while they boxed. Not many people did anything better than the new vice president, but Layne flat out kicked his ass when it came to boxing. That was the only reason Tyler gave him any leeway.
“Not old, you’re just hitting hard today.” Tyler bent at the waist, trying to get air into his lungs.
Immediately, Layne stood up straight. “Am I? Sorry, sir.”
“How many times do I have to tell you to stop with the sir bullshit? I’m a superior, but you ain’t in the Army anymore. You start with that, and I’ll beat the shit out of you just for the hell of it,” Tyler threatened. He wasn’t exactly sure he could beat this younger man up, but he absolutely hated the way Layne reverted back sometimes. He no longer had a contract signed with the government over his head, and it was important to make Layne remember that.
Putting his gloved hands behind his head, Layne walked over to the other side of the boxing ring and leaned against the ropes. So many thoughts rushed through his head. He was off balance, and sometimes that could be detrimental to him. “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he told the big man across the ring.
“Now you’re just gonna piss me off.” Tyler lifted himself up off the ropes and walked over to where Layne sat on one of them. Usually his height advantage intimidated people, but he could tell it didn’t this time. “You didn’t hurt me, you winded me. If you hurt me, I’d let you know.”
Layne nodded, swallowing roughly against the panic that was beginning to seize his throat.
“Are you having trouble with Jessica being here?”
His eyes widened as he looked up at the larger than life Native American. It was highly unusual for him to check on others like this. That is, unless you were a certain female about 5’3”, 140 pounds, had dark hair, and a necklace around your neck.
“Kind of.”
Tyler sighed and had a seat on the mat. “Do you want to talk about it? I’m not gonna pretend I even know what the fuck to say to you. But, as your friend, and your superior…I don’t like the look in your eyes. Liam has a new baby, Jagger’s got a new love, and Steele is as busy as ever. So if you need someone to talk to, I’m making myself available to you.”
His first instinct was to be flippant. “It’s not like I’m going to eat my own gun.”
“Nobody said you were. In fact, if you were gonna do that, you probably would have done it when you first came back. Don’t be a shit. I’m being serious here.”
“I just get this overwhelming sense of panic sometimes. It normally comes around women because I’m afraid I’m going to hurt them. I got back from Iraq three years ago. In three years I haven’t had a woman in my bed for longer than it took to get my rocks off. I don’t hang out with women, the exception being the few who are around here all the time. I just don’t trust myself,” he admitted.
“Why?”
“There’s things I can’t talk about, that I won’t talk about. At night I still have dreams.”
Tyler interrupted. “That doesn’t mean you’re going to hurt someone.”
“But do you know how many men from my unit have?”
“Those men aren’t you.”
“They could be, they so easily could be, and I just don’t trust myself,” Layne whispered.
The words he spoke were telling. This was the man who never asked why when he was told to do something; his hand never shook when he held a gun on another person. There was something else going on here.
“Is it just with women? Or is it this woman?”
Tyler was too observant for his own good. “All of them, but this one especially. This one means more than the rest of them combined.”
“She knew you before you went to Iraq, right?”
Getting up, Layne took the gloves off his hands and threw them down on the mat before running his hands over his wet scalp. “She did.” He blew out
a deep breath. “Not many people did, but she did.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“I’m not that same guy. I came back completely different, and if she spends enough time with me, she’s going to see that. Hell, she already does.”
It was obvious that this was weighing heavily on Layne’s mind. That made it important to Tyler, but he had to wonder when exactly he had become the father-figure head for all of these young men. It made his palms twitchy and made him nervous to not steer them wrong. The only thing he could do was give Layne advice from his own experiences. “Who stays the same, Layne? We all grow, we all change, my brother.”
“Like this?” He put his hands on his own chest. “Sometimes I feel like I want to rip the skin off my body—it’s so suffocating.”
“Look,” Tyler shifted his legs and motioned for Layne to have a seat next to him on the mat, “the only thing I can tell you is from my experience, and I’m not going to pretend like I have any kind of experience with what you’re dealing with. While I have seen, done, and been a part of some crazy shit in my life, I’ve never been overseas with the Taliban chasing my ass. Please don’t think that I’m comparing myself to you.”
“Even if you were, you’re a great big motherfucker, I think I’d let you get by with it.” Layne made a rare joke.
Not able to help himself, Tyler chuckled. “You keep that attitude with me. Seriously though, like I was saying…we aren’t the same people any of us were a few years ago. Do you think that our life choices haven’t affected each of us? Personally, Meredith’s rape affected me in ways I’m still just beginning to come to grips with. I look at women differently; I look at my friends differently. It affected every part of my life. It’s not like tomorrow I’m going to wake up and feel like everything is a-fucking-okay with every part of it. I still get angry, and I still want to kill the bastard one more time. I have good days and bad days, just like she does.”
The silence between the two of them really was deafening, Layne could hear it echoing in his ears as he flipped the words over and over in his brain. “I feel defective in some way.”
“You aren’t,” Tyler told him again.
Shutting off the part of his brain that wanted to share these feelings with another human being, Layne put his wall up. “You know what, just forget it. You’re never going to convince me that something’s not wrong with me. So just stop it.”
The tone he used was that of a bratty teenager, and Tyler wanted to scream. Instead he did what he figured any father did that was worth his salt and brought out the disappointed shame. “I just told you not to ‘sir’ me, but you can damn well guarantee that if you take that flippant, know-it-all, smartass tone with me again, I’ll jerk a knot in your ass so fast that your head will spin. I’m trying to help you, and if you don’t want that help—then that’s fine, but don’t throw my goodwill back in my fucking face. You got that?”
Layne was quiet for a few moments before he nodded his head. “Yeah, I got it.”
Jessica walked into the main living area of the clubhouse. In the light of morning she felt awkward being in this place. As she made her way in, the two women who sat at the table stopped talking and smiled at her.
“Hey, Jessica,” the blonde said and waved.
“Bianca, right?”
“That’s right. Can I get you anything to eat?” she asked as she went to stand up from the table.
“Oh please, don’t get up on my account. If you just show me where everything is, I can make it myself.”
The woman who sat there with her, this one with darker hair, shook her head. “No way, you’re a guest here. I’m Meredith by the way.”
“She’s with Tyler, the tall Native American,” Bianca filled in.
“I remember him, but really you don’t have to wait on me,” she argued again.
“No, they really do, because if you touch a certain coffee mug, you’re bound to have some bad luck.”
Bianca threw her head back and laughed. “Jagger’s had some bad luck with a coffee mug that Tyler uses that’s shaped like a pretty realistic-looking skull. Word has it that Tyler’s cursed it, but he’ll never tell.”
“Just take my word for it,” Jagger told her as he came over to the table and dropped a kiss on Bianca’s forehead. “It’s cursed. I had a major run of bad luck after I touched that thing.”
“Somewhere along the line, you got some good luck,” she joked as she grabbed hold of his cut and pulled him closer to her body.
Meredith cleared her throat. “You’ll have to forgive the two of them. They’re a little sickening right now. Let’s go get you some breakfast.”
It was on the tip of Jessica’s tongue to refuse again, to tell this new woman she had just met that she wasn’t really hungry. She was going to do that until her stomach picked that precise moment to growl loudly. “Guess I’m pretty hungry,” she laughed, her face burning with embarrassment.
“What can I get for ya? We have just about everything here, and almost everybody eats something different for breakfast. I’m on a toast and strawberry jam kick right now,” she talked as she moved around the kitchen area.
“I’ll have that too, then. Please don’t go to any trouble for me.”
“It’s really not any trouble,” Meredith smiled.
“Is Tyler your husband?” she tried to make conversation as she watched Meredith put four pieces of toast in a double toaster.
“We’re committed to one another. Some people call it marriage; others just call it a committed relationship. We don’t really like to put a label on it.”
That kind of reminded her of Hollywood. A lot of women her age were having children with men that they barely knew and kept saying they were in a “committed relationship”. She got the feeling that in this place the phrase was completely different.
She kept her reply noncommittal. “As long as the two of you are happy.”
“We are. Very happy!”
The two of them stood in silence, Meredith humming along as she pulled two Styrofoam plates out of a cabinet along with two empty glasses. “Do you want orange juice?”
“Sounds good.” Jessica noticed that she had seen most members of the club since she had gotten up, but she had yet to see Layne. “Do you know where Layne is?”
“He and Tyler went to work out, which means they’re beating the shit out of each other. They like to box.”
That wasn’t surprising; Layne had always seemed to be a hands on kind of guy. “Will they be doing it for very long?”
Meredith checked her watch. “They’ve already been out there for over an hour. Hopefully they’ll be done soon. Tyler and I have an appointment.”
Those last words were almost drowned out as the two sweaty men in question made their way into the kitchen, both breathing heavily, chugging on water bottles. Jessica had never been so starstruck, even in a room full of actors…these men were the real deal.
Chapter Five
“So what do you do on a normal day?” Jessica asked as she ate her toast and drank the orange juice Meredith had poured for her.
Layne glanced up from the bagel and bacon he ate, almost like her question scared him. “Ya know, the usual.”
She laughed. “No, I don’t know what the usual is. Remember? I’ve never been here before.”
Did he tell her what they really usually did? Protection runs to help in the drug and gun trade, escort strippers out of strip joints, shake down a few people if they were paid enough money? “I usually work at the shop,” he told her. “Ya know, mostly oil changes, tire rotations, things like that. I have to go work there today, actually. Will you be okay by yourself?” Funny that he hated liars—what a hypocrite he turned out to be.
Being by herself didn’t really appeal to her, but she knew that he also had a life that he had to live. To be honest, she had completely barged in on it, and she couldn’t be mad at him if he had things to do. “I will be. I actually have some things I need to do too. Is ther
e Wi-Fi here? I need to hook up to the internet.”
He nodded and pointed towards another man who sat at the table. “Steele can get you whatever you need.”
“Okay, then I guess I’ll be set.” She smiled brightly, though they both knew it didn’t meet her eyes.
“Great, I gotta go take a shower before I head in for my shift. I’ll see ya sometime tonight.”
With those words he was gone, and she felt more alone than she ever had in her life. What had seemed like such a good idea before now seemed like it was the worst idea ever. She knew that was partly her fault. She wanted more than she’d ever told him and it was obvious it was more than he was able to give.
“Harden that heart, girl,” she told herself as she watched him walk away, but she couldn’t help but remember the boy he used to be.
Jessica looked out along the cars that were waiting in line at Jackson-Hartsfield Airport. She was never sure which one Layne would be driving. It always depended on who he could sweet-talk to give up their vehicle for a day or two. There was always someone willing to help him. He was well-liked in his unit, and they all thought it was awesome that a Hollywood actress hung out with them for a few days every couple of months.
Using her hand to shield her eyes from the sun, she stepped further out onto the sidewalk, her gaze running up and down the cars, looking for something that would tell her which one Layne was in. Finally she saw it, a sticker that granted access onto the post at Fort Benning. It was a truck, a huge truck.
“Layne!” she waved.
He stuck his hand out the window, waving back at her.
“I can’t get out, you’re gonna have to come over here,” he yelled.
In this place, she wasn’t afraid that someone would see her and call the paparazzi, she could be herself for 48 hours with him. Knowing that, she did what any other young woman would do who was coming to see her soldier for a weekend and high-tailed it down the line, running as she got closer. The truck had a lift kit, and she reached up, grabbing the door handle. Once she swung it open, she threw her bag inside and then grasped the sides of the door frame, lifting herself into the passenger seat. Once there, she giggled as she struggled to shut the beast of a door.
Worth The Battle (Heaven Hill Series) Page 3
