“Oh,” she said, noThat’s convenient!sense of things in sight now. She was either going to have to come clean about her day with Griffin—a terrible idea, given what they’d just been talking about—or continue to let everyone think she’d left yesterday because of Jamie.
“I’m really okay,” she added, trying to talk over the still-churning whirlwind.
I slept with Griffin and got my heart involved. I’m sore all over this morning, because he explored my body so fully, so perfectly. I want to get up and leave this spa; I want to go find him and ask him about the house fire, the friend he lost, the lazy judgments of people like Fitz and Paula, and maybe even you.
I want to know if he’d ever want to see me again, after all this.
“It was…you know.” She clutched for a word, any word, and landed on: “Memories.”
Em clucked in sympathy, a noise that made Layla shift in her seat with…well. More guilt, surely.
But also, maybe annoyance.
Notthosememories, Layla wanted to clarify.
Not memories with your brother.
But she couldn’t very well go on explaining it. She couldn’t say,Actually, the memory that sent me out of that museum yesterday was with Griffin. A cozy dinner, a fight in the street, a kiss you could carve a sculpture of.
She couldn’t say,And then we made a bunch more. All day, all over the city. All night, in his bed.
So she squeezed Em’s hand back and said, “I’m good today. Promise.”
“Good.” Em took a breath, leaned back. “Because after these massages…”
Emily trailed off, looked toward where Manon and Céline sat, to where Paula and Damaris stayed huddled in conversation, to where Rosie and Sam had wandered farther down the spa’s cavernous hall, where the Turkish bath—the place they were all to regather after their treatments—was located. Layla could tell Em was thinking about how this small group of guests was set to expand over the next few hours. Most of them, Layla had already discerned, were from the bride’s side of things—Uncle Steve and histhird wife, despite the dining room table theft, two of Manon and Céline’s French cousins and their spouses, coming in from Nantes, a couple more of Em’s close friends. Tonight, they’d gather at the rental property nearby that Manon and Robert had booked for the next three days of formal events in honor of the bride and groom: cocktails and music this evening, an informal rehearsal tomorrow morning followed by tomorrow night’s ceremony, and brunch the morning after.
In other words, after these massages, this destination wedding became a lot lessdestination.
A lot morewedding.
And Emily still had that fretful, anxious look on her face.
“Can I do anything?” Layla asked.
Em blew out a breath, shoulders sagging. Across the room, one of the frosted-glass doors opened, and a tight-ponytailed woman all in white emerged, announcing readiness for “the MacKenzie party.”
Manon stood and said, “Enfin!” and Céline leaned in to chide her for the expression of impatience.
“Probably not,” Em answered, rising slowly and smoothing her robe. “Unless you can somehow teleport across this city to wherever the guys are, and make it so Griffin somehow doesn’t make anything worse today.”
For a few seconds, Layla stayed sitting—staring—as Em made her way toward Manon, trying to decide which part of this whirlwind waiting room had blown her off course the most.
Was it the reckoning with the depth of her feelings for Griffin, after only a single day and night spent alone with him, fully in his company?
Was it what she’d learned about him, and how he was hurt?
Was it this sharp, sudden feeling of frustration she had towardEmily—Emily, herfamily!—for saying his name in that uncharacteristically unkind way?
Or was it the slow, dawning realization that didn’t turn out to be much of a relief at all: that Layla—pitied, brokenhearted Layla, brave-facing it for the ex-in-laws in the city they’d claimed as their own, accidentally reminding the bride that marriage was not forever on the very first night she was here—was not, in fact, the biggest threat to this wedding happening?
She swallowed and stood, her legs wobbly, her mind racing.
Her heart somewhere across the city.
With the man who’d once accused her of ruining this whole week.
With the man whose secrets might have been just as responsible all along.
