“We were on the same flight,” Layla supplied.
Emily looked delighted, and then disappointed. “Really? I wish I would’ve realized! Michael could’ve met you at the airport, too. You could’ve all ridden—”
“It’s fine,” Layla said quickly, waving a dismissive hand. She wanted to feel judgmental of Griffin getting a personalized pickup in a city where public transit options were easy and abundant, but then again, her own public transit plans had folded pretty quickly in the face of that luxury car windfall Willa’s uncle provided.
“Were you sitting near each other?” Michael asked. Layla detected a note of concern in his voice.
“No,” Griffin said. Flat and final.
Layla thought aniceperson, a normal person, would follow up with more information, but Griffin Testa was obviously not a nice or normal person.
He was a human black hole.
She cleared her throat delicately. “There was a medical issue near where he was seated. I did some light intervention.”
Emily gasped dramatically. “Oh! Was everyone okay?”
“Everyone was fine,” Layla said smoothly.
Because I handled it, because I was calm and unbothered, mind over matter, like I am now, no matter how this man standing here now made me feel in the moment.
“Just a bit tense,” she added. “You know how flying is these days. Short tempers.”
Michael’s expression changed from interest to suspicion. His gaze snapped to his friend.
“Griff,” he said, making no effort to conceal the note of frustration—of disappointment—in his voice.
But Layla was too busy noticing something else: the slight, nearly undetectable grimace that passed over Griffin’s face.
She hadn’t meant to suggest that he’dstartedit.
In fact, if she was honest, he’d ended it for pretty much everyone else on that plane.
Except for her.
She waited for him to say something to defend himself in the face of his friend’s censure, but he didn’t. And she shouldn’t care about that, not after how he’d treated her.
How he looked at her.
But as though her mouth had a mind entirely of its own, she found herself speaking again.
“He helped defuse the situation, actually. It was sort of…” She trailed off, searching her mind for a word that was notelectric.
“Heroic,” she finished, and then wished she could sink straight into the marble floor.
Griffin looked at her as though she had betrayed him.
She swallowed, at war with herself. Should she stay in this…inthis staring contest with him? Should she drop her eyes, a form of apology for what anyone else would take as a compliment?
Michael’s hand clapped heavily onto Griffin’s shoulder, and this time, he more than barely grimaced. He winced, his face contorting unevenly.
“Really, bud?” Michael said, seemingly oblivious to his friend’s discomfort.
“It was nothing.” A dull knife, now, that voice, but it still scraped all along Layla’s skin.
“It was something!” said Michael, and then he turned to Layla. “Griff is afraid of flying. Terrified, really.”
Layla swallowed, her mind flashing to Griffin’s words from before:It will be me who needs medical attention.
