Claiming Serenity

by Eden Butler

  “Mollie… she… lower. Please. Right there…”

  “Mollie?”

  “Saw… saw us tonight… at… at Joe’s.”

  Donovan stopped, pushing away from Layla and the heavy breath that left her open mouth. “Did she tell the others?”

  Layla moved her hands over her chest, covering herself. “No. She wouldn’t do that. We keep each other’s secrets.”

  He waited, his own hesitation pulling too many questions, too much thought into his head, but he kept his fingers on that beautiful pale skin, absently rubbing his thumb over her navel. “Do you want me to stop, Layla?”

  They stared at each other, pausing for permission, for a rejection Donovan hoped wouldn’t come and then Layla smiled. “I like when you touch me.”

  “I like touching you. You know that.” He tugged off his shirt and laid back against his headboard. She watched him, gaze taking in his movements as he snuggled against the pillows and lifted his arm to rest on the top of his head. He bit his lip once, ravenous with the look she gave him, the tiniest lick of that small, pink tongue across her bottom lip and those perfect, round nipples pebbling hard as he stared at them.

  “Come here,” he said, wanting her, just then, but knowing that she needed a moment to calm, to have those worries so evident in the slow way she moved toward him, eased. He let her come to his side, right against his chest and for the first time, Donovan held her tight against him. “I’m not the kind of guy you need.” She sat up, looking at him. “I’m no Prince Charming. I’m not good for anyone and I doubt I ever will be.”

  “So do you want this to end? You have doubts?”

  He hated the idea of never touching her again. He hated that being without her touch, her taste, would bother him greatly, and if he were a better man, a stronger man, a decent man at all, he would tell her to go. Donovan knew that if he were the kind of man he once was, before betrayal and disappointment fractured whatever he thought he might want one day, then he’d thank Layla for her time and attention and tell her his doubts were too great, that their moment had passed.

  But this Donovan was a selfish bastard on his best days. Still, he’d give her something, likely not what she deserved, but something he’d never given to any woman. Ever.

  “If I said I didn’t care about you, that would be a lie. I do. Am I in love with you?” He waited, measuring her expression, relaxing when she didn’t look afraid. “No, sorry, I’m not. But I like the way we move together. I like that I can get lost in your body.” I like the way I can still smell your perfume on my pillow after you leave, he said to himself. “I like that you let me do things to your body that I’ve only ever dreamed about.” I like how free you are with me. How beautiful you look when you’re underneath me, falling to pieces. “I like that you don’t ask for anything but my body, for the way I make yours feel.” I love how you let me take you, let me love you like we won’t have another second of this in life.

  He expected her to be disappointed. Most women were when you told them you didn’t love them, but Layla wasn’t a typical woman and they had never professed any desires for anything more than moments and spaces of want being fulfilled.

  But Donovan could see something working behind her eyes, something in the way she didn’t smile, in how she faced him, stared over his face as though what she’d say next had to be considered and carefully spoken.

  “Maybe… I dunno, maybe we should set some ground rules.” Donovan didn’t like where this was going, but let her continue. “I… one day I want something with someone who will love me. You can’t give me that and I can’t spend the rest of my life sneaking into your bed.”

  “You want to date someone else?” He told himself he would not be upset if she found someone. Despite their own relationship, Layla was a good person, and good people tend to gravitate toward each other. They fell in love and got married and did all the things that normal people are expected to do. If she wanted that and knew he couldn’t give that to her then, logically, he couldn’t be angry at her for that.

  It still bugged him, though, the idea of her with any asshole but him.

  “I want you to be okay with the idea of me dating someone else if that someone else happens to come along.”

  He thought for a moment, considering her, ignoring the twist working in his stomach and the idea of Layla letting anyone else do to her what he did. “Okay. Fair enough. We have no commitment to each and that’s fine, Layla.” A quick blink to move away the image of all those times that Rent-a-Cop held her hand or kissed her in the café, at McKinney’s, all the moments that fucker touched her and Donovan felt sick to his stomach. “I’m, a, not cool with you sleeping with me and then running off to fuck someone else.”

  He tried to hold back the smug smile he felt itching his bottom lip when Layla bunched her nose up as though she found the idea of being with more than one person obscene. “I wouldn’t do that. Donovan, that’s just… foul.” But the tempting smug smile left him when Layla narrowed her eyes, when one thin, single eyebrow cocked up. “Same goes for you. I don’t care if you date, if you hang out with other girls, but this body,” Donovan flinched when Layla grabbed his thigh and settled over his lap. “For as long as we want this, this body is mine. I’m calling dibs.” He let a smile slip, let his composure fall just an inch and it was enough for Layla to catch and quickly deflate his arrogance. “Until something better comes along.”

  He felt the smile fall from his mouth and would have called her something insulting, something that would annoy her enough that they’d fuss and then move onto Donovan’s second favorite thing to do with Layla: argue, but she moved against his lap, slid over his dick and any ideas he might have had about pissing her off left his head and Donovan took her lips, hard, eager, fast.

  They had become comfortable; the taste, the feel of that soft skin against his mouth was something Donovan didn’t think he wanted to do without. In the back of his mind he heard a warning; the fierce rage of conscious thought that told him to back away, that he was kissing her because she felt like his. The possessive roar that anyone else taking her lips was some sort of sin against what was building between them.

  But that night, he didn’t listen to the warnings. He didn’t listen to constant refrain of sense that told him she had gotten under his skin. He liked her there, sliding against him, her pointed nipples rubbing against his bare chest. Even if he couldn’t admit it aloud, even if he’d never confess it to her, Donovan liked Layla hot and tight and throbbing. He liked it too damn much.

  Sayo’s skin had always been pale. Alabaster, Layla thought, like porcelain, fine, fragile but strong. Like her friend. Now that skin was even paler and the only blemishes marring that perfection came from the shadows that showed beneath her eyes.

  “You sleeping at all?” Layla nodded toward the bench just beyond the courtyard in the center of campus and both girls sat down, warming their hands against the take-away cups of piping hot coffee.

  “Not really. My mom made me stay home last night and shoved two sleeping pills down my throat, but I just couldn’t…” Sayo’s dark eyelashes brushed against the swells of her cheeks and from the slow blink, Layla caught her pause. Something unspoken, thoughts she kept to herself remained silent behind her pink lips. “It didn’t work. None of it.” She sipped her coffee, cringing only slightly when she took in too much hot liquid, but then Sayo rested against the bench, forcing a smile at Layla. “I’m sorry I haven’t been around.”

  “Sweetie, we all understand. Your family…”

  Sayo silenced her with a sharp shake of her head. “You’re all my family too. My blood, it doesn’t run here, Layla. Everything I am, the person I try to be—that comes from the family that raised me and the family I chose when I found you and Autumn and Mollie.” Sayo didn’t look at her when she took her hand, threaded her fingers between Layla’s. “You’re just as much my family as my parents and all my brothers and sisters. I don’t share blood with anybody, but that doesn’t
mean you all aren’t in my bones.”

  Damn. Layla loved her friends. Even with all Sayo’s distance that semester and the burden she wouldn’t allow any of them to carry for her, Layla felt the emotion of the moment tighten in her chest. She could only nod once and look down at her feet, afraid that if she even glanced at Sayo the tears would start, would likely not end until they were both slobbering messes of ridiculousness.

  Layla made her voice soft, shooting for gentleness, for tact that wouldn’t have Sayo upset at just the mention of her little cousin’s name. “Rhea is your family too, honey and she’s all that matters right now.” Sayo’s frown came quick, but she blinked back the emotion and Layla hurried to correct herself. “We missed you at Thanksgiving and you’ve been… busy, but I asked you to come with me tonight because I wanted to apologize for that shit with Donovan at McKinney’s.”

  Layla saw the visible release of Sayo’s tension as her shoulders relaxed against the bench and she twisted around, pulling her feet underneath her small body. “What was that about?”

  “Nothing that makes any sense at all.” Layla and her friends shared body language, stares and glances that clued each other into warnings, suspicions and completely eradicated any hint of bullshit they may try to slip over each other. Sayo used those clues just then, staring at Layla, her eyes tight until Layla was unable to take the scrutiny and she leaned her head back, staring up at the stars, not bothering to keep the frustration from her tone. “Things have gone stupid with him. It’s all complicated and messy and really not worth talking about.” She grabbed Sayo’s hands, sitting up straight. Talking about Donovan and yet another one of their stupid pranks wasn’t why she’d brought Sayo out that night. She had to focus if she wanted to make this apology count. “I’m a stupid, selfish bitch and most of the time I forget how very tiny I am.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, sweetie,” she said, sitting up to set her cup on the ground at her feet and pinch the bridge of her nose. “I’m twenty-four. I’m immature and greedy and most days I think I’m in my own sort of vapid orbit. I forget that there are people wishing for the things in life I forget with very little effort.” Layla glanced at Sayo, feeling more relaxed when her friend’s face softened. “I forget that I am very small, that my problems are, compared to all the shit that rises and sets in everyone’s day. I’m sorry.” Sayo let her take her hand and squeezed back when Layla grabbed her fingers. “I’m sorry that this utter bullshit is happening to Rhea. It should be skinheads or pedophiles or greedy corporate jackasses who get rich off their minimum wage workers that get sick. Not smart little girls full of life. This shouldn’t touch her, it shouldn’t touch you, and I forget sometimes that what I think is suffering, is fucking chocolate rainbows compared to others.”

  Layla thought she’d said too much, that reminding Sayo of her cousin’s illness, of the hardships her entire family had been facing, had crossed a line she wasn’t supposed to notice existed. It was an unspoken awkwardness that people generally tried not to broach anytime someone was dying. Don’t mention THE sickness. Don’t mention THE finality or the inevitable death that loomed in the distance. Layla hadn’t simply stepped over that line, she’d pirouetted across it like the loud, obnoxious brat she knew she was.

  But as Layla watched Sayo, she noticed her friend flirting toward something she hadn’t done in months. Sayo smiled. “Chocolate rainbows?”

  “What?” Layla blinked, smiling at Sayo like that grin of her was contagious. She wanted to keep her friend smiling. She wanted to make her forget, just for a few minutes, that her life, her loss, wasn’t the only thing on her mind. Layla did what she was good at. She tried for humor. “Like you wouldn’t step on my head to get to one. Chocolate and rainbows, Sayo. That shit would be awesome.” That smile only grew wider and Layla thought she might have heard a small laugh. It certainly sounded like Sayo’s long withheld giggle.

  “Strawberries,” Sayo said, behind a sip of coffee.

  “Huh?”

  She shrugged, but that grin did not fall. “Strawberry rainbows. I’d cut you for a strawberry rainbow.”

  “But chocolate…”

  That honest, shocked tone in Layla’s voice struck Sayo as funny and finally, she surrendered to the joke, laughing loud and long and beautifully. “I don’t really like chocolate.” Layla stared at her like she was insane. “We don’t have to like the same things. Besides, you remember that Easter I made myself sick on dark chocolate after the church passion play? Father O’Bryant still takes two step backs from me when he sees me at mass. I haven’t had much taste for it since.”

  Layla blinked at her friend, astounded by this shocking revelation. “It’s like you’re not human.”

  “Shut up.” Sayo nudged her with her elbow but kept that wide smile on her face.

  “What’s going on with Quinn?” Stupid, dumb asshole, Layla called herself when that perfect smile fell from Sayo’s lips.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Autumn told us that Declan makes him volunteer at the hospital?”

  Sayo only nodded, seemed distracted by the question, by the mention of the hospital and the jackass Irishman who had been dumped right into their laps. Layla had seen the way Quinn looked at Sayo. Hell, Autumn had told her about the threat that Declan and Donovan gave him to stay clear of all of them. But something in Sayo’s features told Layla there were details she was missing.

  “Deco thought it would give him perspective,” Sayo said, stretching out to cross her feet together on the ground. “He spends a few hours a week there. Most of the time he’s with Rhea.”

  “What?”

  Sayo nodded, shrugged as though she still couldn’t believe Quinn would be so bold as to intrude on Sayo’s family. “Freaked me out at first. I thought he was angling for a sympathy screw, but then I found him there a few times when I was supposed to be out working. My Aunt Carol told me he reads to Rhea five times a week.”

  Layla didn’t know the little jackass knew how to read, much less that he’d spend his time with a dying eight year old. Those two could not have been more different. “Wow. That’s a little…”

  “Right? I was suspicious for sure, but then Deco told me Quinn spent the first six years of his life in a children’s hospital in Dublin. He was born with a congenital heart defect. It almost killed him.”

  So that was his thing. Quinn O’Malley was bitter. Maybe his parents overcompensated for having birthed a sick kid. Maybe they’d felt guilty that he’d been landed with something in their DNA that could have killed him. Guilty or not, the O’Malleys had raised an entitled asshole, so him taking the time out of his seemingly important day to visit with Rhea was odd and mildly comforting. “So the jackass has a heart.”

  Sayo’s shrug was quick, as though she wasn’t willing to put much thought into what Quinn did or the type of person he really was. She seemed focused on other, more important stresses. “I don’t know if he has a heart, the jury’s still out on that one, but he seems to like Rhea. Gets pissy if anyone interrupts their story time and I think my little cousin has acquired a crush.”

  What was it, Layla wondered about the female genetic make-up, present in even the young that made them gravitate toward the bad boy? What was it that had little Rhea wanting Quinn’s attention? What was it with Layla, she wondered, that made Donovan seem completely unavoidable. Shaking her head, Layla looked at Sayo, saw that the smile had not returned to her face. “That poor girl.”

  “Right?” Sayo said, frowning as she swallowed the last of her coffee.

  Layla decided, just then, that she’d get Sayo’s smile back even if only for that one night. She loved Sayo. They were sisters and she wanted her friend to forget about hospitals and rude Irishmen and all the crap that she’d been digging through for months.

  “Come on, let’s go to McKinney’s. Get something a little stronger?”

  Sayo nodded, eyes closed as if Layla had suggested the perfect solution to the whole crap-s
hoveling. “God yes.”

  As they left the courtyard and walked the several blocks toward town, the activity around them grew. It was a Saturday night just after the end of the Thanksgiving break and students had returned from their families ready to finish up the semester. By contrast, the campus itself was fairly quiet, with only a few stragglers—a stray student or harried-looking professor or two. The night was peaceful as the girls walked arm in arm toward the bustle of the historic district.

  McKinney’s was close to the park, just a few blocks from the rugby pitch and near Autumn’s apartment, a fact that the girls had taken advantage of during the past four years. The pub was small, but quaint, comfy and welcoming and just the sight of the large sign swinging against the early December wind had Layla’s insides warming.

  They bypassed a small group of rugby players Layla recognized, nodding to a few as they caught her eye. Her gaze wandered away from Sayo’s face as she talked about the crowd around them and the seemingly impromptu concert several drunk musicians had started on the park sidewalk, Layla scanned the passing rugby players, hoping Donovan wasn’t among them.

  Sayo stopped near McKinney’s, focus squared on the two guitar players singing a loud, perfectly pitched version of “The Gypsy Rover.” Her smile was brief, barely on her lips, but she somehow seemed more relaxed, her body not as rigid and defensive as it had been. It felt so familiar, normal to Layla, as though she’d returned to a time not long ago before Autumn and Mollie had Declan and Vaughn to distract them from a good time with just their friends.

  “I miss this a lot,” Sayo said, seeming to read Layla’s thoughts.

  “Smiling?”

  “That too.” Sayo stared back at the musicians and Layla joined her, looping her arm through her friend’s as they watched the band continue, joined now by a banjo player and a tall redhead with the thickest beard Layla had ever seen. His harmonica disappeared when he held it to his mouth. “It reminds me of that St. Paddy’s day when Evelyn and your mom took us all to McKinney’s for the first time.”