Layla

I’ve been talking for half an hour straight, and the man hasn’t spoken a word. I would continue, but Layla hasn’t let up this whole time. I need to make sure she’s okay.

Or at least as okay as she can be while being held against her will by her own boyfriend.

“I’m sorry,” I say to him, scooting my chair back. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

He hits the stop button with an understanding nod.

I walk up the stairs— again—to plead with Layla to trust me long enough to find answers. When I open the door, she’s on her knees on the bed, doing her best to slip her hands out of the rope that’s connecting her wrists to the bedpost.

“Layla,” I say, defeated. “Can you please stop?”

She yanks her arms in the opposite direction of the bedpost in an attempt to break the rope. I wince. That had to hurt. I walk over to the bed and check her wrists. They’re raw from all the times she’s tried to break free. Her wrists are starting to bleed.

She mutters something unintelligible, so I remove the duct tape from her mouth.

She sucks in a huge gulp of air. “Please untie me,” she pleads. Her eyes are bloodshot and sad. Mascara is smeared down her left cheek. It kills me seeing her like this. I don’t want this for her, but I have no other choice.

At least it feels like I have no other choice.

“I can’t. You know that.”

“Please,” she says. “It hurts.”

“It won’t hurt if you stop trying to free yourself.” I adjust the pillow beneath her and give the rope more slack so she can lie down. I know she

feels like a prisoner. I guess, in a way, she is. But I’ve at least left her legs untied. If she’d just lie still and stop trying to fight me on this, she’d come out of it just fine. She might even get some much-needed rest. “Just give me a couple of hours. When I’m finished talking to him, I’ll bring you downstairs with me.”

She rolls her tear-rimmed eyes. “You’re a liar. All you do now is lie to me.”

I don’t let those words penetrate the walls of my chest. I know she doesn’t mean them. She’s just scared. Upset.

But so am I.

I lean forward and press a kiss against the top of her head. She tries to pull away from me, but she can’t go far. She’s crying now, trying not to look at me. I hide my guilt behind a hardened jaw. “If you promise not to scream, I won’t put the duct tape back on.”

This is a compromise she’s willing to make. She nods with a defeated look in her eyes, as if I won this round, but I’m not trying to win anything other than our normalcy back.

When I close the door and lock her inside, I can hear her begin to sob.

I feel her pain in every part of me, crackling inside my bones. I press my forehead against the door for a few seconds and force myself to regain my composure before heading back downstairs.

When I’m back in the kitchen, there’s a glass of dark liquor sitting in front of my chair. The man motions toward it.

“Bourbon,” he says.

I sit down and sniff it, then take a sip, enjoying the burn as it slides down my throat. It immediately soothes my nerves. I should have poured myself a glass before we started this.

“What’s your name?” I ask him. I only know the email address we’ve been using to communicate, but it was just the name of his business. Not his actual name.

He looks down at the shirt he’s wearing. It’s a Jiffy Lube shirt covered in oil stains with a name tag on it that says Randall. He points at the name tag. “Randall.”

He resumes the recording, but we both know his name isn’t Randall, and I know for a fact that isn’t his shirt. But despite knowing he’s not entirely forthcoming about his own identity, I still move forward with this

interview, because he’s the only person I know on this earth who can possibly help.

And I am desperate for help.

So desperate I’m making decisions I wouldn’t have dared make if this were a few months ago.

It’s interesting how much a person’s belief system can be changed by things in this world that can’t be explained. Hell, not just my belief system, but my morals. My values. My focus. My heart.

The Leeds from a few months ago would have slammed the door in this guy’s face. Instead, I’m the one who reached out to him, begging for his help. And now that he’s here, I can only hope I made the right decision.

“How long did the two of you stay here after you first met?” he asks.

“Three extra days.”

“Did anything significant happen while you were here?”

“Not that I can recall. We stayed in our room most of the time. Only came down for meals. It was the middle of the week, so the place was relatively quiet.”

“And then you went back to Tennessee? Layla to Chicago?”

“No. Even after four days together, we weren’t ready to say goodbye. I invited her to come stay a week with me in Tennessee, but one week turned into two. Two turned into six, and then eight. We didn’t want to be apart.”

“How long have you been with her?”

“About eight months now.”

“Have there been any significant changes in your life since you met her? Besides the obvious?”

I laugh half-heartedly at that. “I’m not even sure what you’re referring to when you say besides the obvious. So much has changed.”

“The obvious being everything that’s happened in this house,” he says.

“What changed before that?”

I take another sip of the bourbon.

Then I finish it off.

I’m staring into the bottom of the empty glass, thinking about all of it.

The picture I posted of us, the outcome of that, the fear, the recovery.

“Everything was perfect for those first two months.”

“And then?”

That question elicits a huge sigh from me. “And then Sable happened.”

“Who is Sable?”

“My ex.”