Not to mention this seething feeling that filled Layla night and day now – and the way it tore into Luke at every opportunity.
Raking a hand through his thick black waves again, Luke heaved a sigh. Gazing out over the yard, he mumbled, “This just isn’t working, Layla.”
His statement settled into Layla’s gut like a punch, and though it stopped her breath, she already knew what was coming. Silence enveloped the porch as a chill breeze blew again, lifting the golden alder leaves and making them swirl down around the base of the back steps. In the silence, Layla’s gaze moved from Luke to where he stared out over the yard of their cozy home. The raised garden beds were dying back to sticks, except the squash which had exploded in a riot over half the small yard. The winter kale was still hale and glossy with dark green leaves. But this lovely home couldn’t be Layla’s anymore.
Not with so much tension between her and Luke day in and day out.
And not with the dreams that came to her night after night.
“I need to move out.”
Layla’s words dropped from her lips like a stone, but the truth in them was undeniable. She probably should have moved out the moment she and Luke had broken up the first time, but housing in Seattle was hard to find. Now it was becoming all too clear that their lives couldn’t stay in this rut. A rut they’d only perpetuated after Layla’s near abduction by getting back together, trying out this storm-driven rollercoaster one last time.
And now, staring out over the dying autumn yard, Layla suddenly felt it was the last time.
“Do you want to move out?” Luke’s voice startled her and she looked back, to find him eyeballing her with a quiet sort of calm now.
“No. But I need to.” Layla murmured to the swirling breeze.
“Where will you go?” Luke’s brows knit, his green eyes deeply sorry. He was worried about her; he might always be worried about her. But over the past weeks, it was becoming undeniably clear that he and she were unable to be with each other anymore. Desperation had brought them together one last time – and now it was time for something else.
They both knew it.
“I don’t know.” Layla sighed. She felt her own rage easing back now that the decision filled her. It was as if the hot wrath inside her agreed, coiling back down as it understood the final outcome of this relationship – that it could never be.
“Carla has an apartment in the U-District. Maybe I can crash with her for a while.” Carla was a friend from Layla’s PhD program, who had taken a job as a teaching fellow. They had coffee occasionally, but even as Layla said it, she didn’t believe it would work. She and Carla weren’t really all that close. Working so hard in school for so many years had precluded friendships, leaving Layla’s personal life in shambles other than her housemates.
Luke gave a hard sigh and scuffed his biking shoe on the porch. “I can’t just dump you out on your ass, Layla. Christ. Stay the month. We’ll figure something out.”
It was a decent offer. September had just begun and it was weeks until the end of the month, but with that offer, Layla felt something inside her firm. She had to go. It wasn’t going to work for her to stay. With a nod, she turned to open the screen door and head back inside. But Luke reached out as she turned, snagging her hand. She looked back, gazing at him and seeing those emerald eyes get red-rimmed.
“Why do I feel like I’ve lost you?” He rasped, agony in his voice. “More than ever before?”
“Because you have, Luke.” Layla didn’t say it to be mean; it was simply the truth. They’d given it a good go these past weeks, but it was plain to both of them now that things weren’t working.
Luke swallowed then nodded, pain all too vivid in his gaze. “It was that night, wasn’t it? That night you almost got abducted. We went to bed. But when you woke up, you were just…differentin the morning. I felt it, way back then. Long before our argument at Havana. Some part of you had just… been taken, so far beyond my reach. What happened, Layla? Where did we go so wrong? What did I do that night that pushed you away?”
Layla shook her head; she couldn’t explain it. She and Luke had had a chance at something good, a chance to begin again the night he’d held her in his arms after her near-abduction. But later that night when she’d stood at the window, feeling the touch of her mystery man all around her in the moonlight – everything had changed.
And now, after weeks of dreaming about the man in the desert night after night, this Mr. Rhakvir about whom she knew so little, Layla couldn’t tell Luke the truth. She couldn’t tell Luke that when the breeze blew, she smelled cinnamon and jasmine in it. She couldn’t tell him that when she closed her eyes to sleep, piercing aqua eyes surfaced in her mind, drowning her with all the colors of the Mediterranean Sea. She couldn’t tell Luke that when he held her, she imagined him taller, slimmer, dressed in expensive fabrics with a soft black stubble gracing his jaw. She couldn’t tell him that another man had snuck into her heart that night the Moroccan cuff had somehow returned to her wrist after she’d thrown it far out into the darkness.
Or that she’d been dreaming about being with that man ever since.
Layla had nothing to say, so she said nothing. Slipping her hand out of Luke’s, she retreated inside with her heart sinking down through her boots, moving past the other housemates at the kitchen table who watched with round eyes. When she mounted the stairs, Arron rose from the table and came too. They moved into Layla’s room and Arron shut the door, his grey eyes round and his blond eyebrows arched.
“Are you really moving out?”
“I don’t know.” Layla sank to the bed and Arron hopped on also, reaching out to rub Layla’s back in a comforting way.
“What’s gotten into Luke? He’s being such a dick. More than usual.”
“It’s not him, it’s me. All this fighting recently is my fault, Arron.” Layla sighed, flopping down to the duvet. Setting the heels of her hands to her eye sockets, Layla rubbed hard, trying to quell the tears that threatened just behind her lids. It worked, sort of, and when she took them away, she found herself staring up at a ceiling that suddenly seemed foreign now with her newly-made decision to move out.
Though she had absolutely no idea where she was going to go.
Leaning on his arm in his skinny jeans and French-tucked bird-print shirt, Arron regarded Layla with serious grey eyes, picking up on the difficulty of her situation. “Why do you think all this recent fighting is because of you?”
“Because I’m not in love with Luke anymore.” Layla spoke softly. “I’m in love with someone else.”
