She’d had been leery of letting them go alone, but it wasn’t really like they were asking for her permission. Besides, Jayson had pointed out that they had very little choice. If they wanted to find Anya before it was too late, they were going to have to take some chances. Jayson trusted their instincts to bail if anything felt off. Hopefully, they’d be back in a couple hours with information about where Anya was being held.
Layla sighed. Knowing where Anya was being held was only the first step. Getting her out of wherever that was would come next, and something told Layla the next rescue was going to be a lot harder than the on-the-fly mission into the RSA building.
An operation like that would normally have called for a larger, more experienced DCO team, like the one she’d been part of in Glasgow. But they didn’t have a larger, more experienced DCO team. They had three teenagers, a former Special Forces soldier with a back full of shrapnel, and her—a barely trained shifter not qualified to be in the field on her own. Even considering how well she and Jayson had performed last night, their odds of rescuing Anya and getting out of this alive didn’t seem good.
Layla had called Kendra last night after getting back to the safety of the library, hoping for news on their backup. Since they still weren’t sure Clayne and Danica had received the order to divert to Donetsk, John had reached out to coyote shifter Trevor Maxwell and his industrial espionage team, telling them to drop what they were doing and get to Eastern Europe ASAP. But Trevor’s team was in Buenos Aires, and it would take at least thirty-six hours for them to reach the Ukraine, maybe longer.
“This is all probably going to be over well before they get here,” Layla had explained to Kendra. “Whatever the militia is grabbing these girls for, it can’t be anything good, and Jayson is going to want to move as soon as we figure out where they are.”
Not that she blamed Jayson. She was just as eager to rescue Anya and the other girls as he was. Layla shuddered to imagine what might be happening to a handful of missing young women.
Kendra had sighed. “Look, I know this isn’t the mission either of you went over there to do, but it’s the one that needs doing right now. And with Powell gone, you two are on your own. I know it seems impossible, but you’re going to have to find a way to make it work.”
Layla lay there listening to Jayson’s steady heartbeat now, trying to imagine how they could possiblymake it work. Especially when they still didn’t know exactly what was going on with the hybrid serum Jayson had taken. She was still agonizing over whether to tell him about the antidote Zarina had given him. After what she had seen last night, it seemed obvious that the serum hadn’t turned Jayson into any kind of hybrid as she thought of them, but beyond that, she honestly had no idea.
Had it healed his back? Increased his pain threshold? Sped up his reflexes? All she could say was…maybe.
She’d already been impressed as hell with what he had done since arriving in Donetsk, then last night, she’d watched him hump those injured people up three flights of stairs and survive a running gunfight with at least a dozen militia soldiers. Maybe the hybrid serum had done something to him. Then again, maybe it hadn’t and he was just being insanely reckless because he thought he was something he wasn’t.
That was the biggest reason she needed to tell Jayson about the antidote. What if he went into this next rescue mission—assuming they could find out where Anya was—and did something insane because he thought he had hybrid abilities that he really didn’t? Just the thought of him doing something crazy—and getting hurt—made her heart freeze into a solid block of ice in her chest.
Then again, telling him that he was essentially no more than the battle-scared vet he previously believed himself to be could prove just as deadly for him. There was a good possibility that everything Jayson had been able to accomplish up to this point was because he simply believed he could. If she took that confidence away from him, what would he have left?
Layla closed her eyes and let out a long, slow breath. As a psychologist, she should know what the hell to do in a situation like this, but when it came to Jayson, she didn’t have a clue. Her heart was simply too involved.
She was still contemplating what she should do when she picked up on the fact that Jayson’s breathing pattern had changed while she’d been lost in thought. She opened her eyes to find him wide-awake beside her, his head cradled in one hand and a smile on his lips.
“What?” she said, suddenly self-conscious. “Was I drooling?”
He chuckled. “No.”
That was a relief. “Then is my hair a tangled mess?”
“No,” he said, reaching out to smooth his hand over it. “It’s perfect, like the rest of you. I was just lying here watching you and thinking about how beautiful you are.”
Layla made a face. “Right. I’ve been sleeping on the floor of an abandoned building for the last two nights. I’m pretty sure I look the opposite of beautiful right now.”
“I disagree,” Jayson insisted.
She laughed and would have said something about him needing glasses, but he rolled her onto her back and kissed her. His fingers threaded their way into her hair as his mouth roamed over hers, taking everything she had to offer.
Layla wrapped a leg around him, pulling him closer and letting out a little shiver at the feel of his hard-on pressing against her body. He grabbed her thigh, running his hand up and down her jean-clad leg, making her warm all over. What she wouldn’t give for the two of them to be nestled in a pile of warm, soft blankets back home in her apartment with nothing to do but make love all day.
Suddenly, Jayson pulled back. She chased him, extending the kiss and letting him know that she was more than ready to keep going if he was. Dylan and the others would be out for a while. They might as well make good use of the time. But the serious look on Jayson’s face was enough to make her back off.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, rolling onto her side as he did the same. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine—better than fine.” He gently caressed her bottom lip with his thumb. “It just occurred to me that I’ve never told you how beautiful you are until now, which has to make me either the slowest or dumbest man in the world.”
She opened her mouth to tell him he was being silly, but he stopped her with a gentle finger on the lips.
“And since we’re on the topic of me telling you things that I should have said a long time ago,” he continued, “I also need to tell you I know how incredibly lucky I am to have you in my life, even if I haven’t always shown it. I’m sorry about that. But I want you to know that you’re the most important thing in the world to me.”
“You don’t have anything to apologize for, Jayson,” she said softly. “Not after everything you’ve had to go through.”
Jayson smiled wryly. “That’s where you’re wrong, Layla. Last year may have been total shit, and there were times when the pain became so unbearable and the future so hopeless that I thought about giving up and just ending it, but I still had no right to treat you the way I did. I was hurting and couldn’t see my world ever getting better, so I lashed out at the only person who cared enough about me to put up with it. I need you to know how incredibly sorry I am for putting you through all that.”
Tears filled Layla’s eyes. Suddenly, she had a hard time breathing. Part of her had always known that suicide was something Jayson had considered. Still, it was hard for her to hear him say it out loud. But having him apologize for things he had said and done when he’d been in that deep, dark place was tough too. Worse, it was scaring her. It was like he was trying to get stuff off his chest before they went on this rescue mission, like he thought he might not have a chance to say it later.
