Layla

I know she thinks this is probably some fantasy of mine—I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t—but not right now. Not after she just came down from a panic attack. It feels wrong.

I take her face in my hands. “Not here, okay?”

She deflates a little. “We’ll be fast.”

I kiss her. “Not right now. Tonight.” I back away from her and open the door, stepping aside to let her walk out.

She waves me out and shakes her head. “I want to use the bathroom first,” she says with a weak voice. Her eyes look like they’re frowning when I close the door. I walk back to my seat, feeling like a complete asshole for turning her down.

But it would have made me an even bigger asshole if I’d fucked her sixty seconds after she had a panic attack.

That’s not something I want her to get used to.

I can’t be the Band-Aid for her wounds. I need to be what helps them heal.“How far away are we?” It’s the first thing she’s said since we got in the rental car. She fell asleep before we were even out of the airport terminal.

“About twenty minutes.”

She stretches her legs and arms and lets out a moaning sound that makes me shift in my seat. I’ve been regretting not bending her over the airplane sink since I walked out of the bathroom earlier. The old Leeds would have taken her up on that offer. Twice, probably.

Sometimes I think I’ve changed more than she has. My love for her has been over-the-top protective since her surgery. I think I’m too careful with her now. I’m careful when I speak to her, careful when I hug her, careful when I kiss her, careful when I make love to her.

I flip my blinker on to take the next exit. “We need gas. This is the last store before we get there. You need a bathroom break?”

Layla shakes her head. “I’m good.”

After we get to the gas station and I get the nozzle locked into place, I walk over to the passenger door and open it. Layla looks up at me, shielding her eyes from the afternoon sun. I grab her hand and pull her out of the car.

I wrap my arms around her, leaning her against the car, and then I kiss the side of her head. “I’m sorry.”

It’s all I say. I don’t even know if she’s disappointed that I turned her down or if she even knows what I’m sorry for, but she sinks into me a little more.

“It’s okay,” she says. “You don’t have to want me every second of the day.”

The wind is blowing her hair in her face, so I push it back with my hands. When I do this, I feel something in the strands of her hair. They’re clumped together—sticky between my fingers. I lean in and inspect her head, even though she tries to pull away. Her hair is dark, so I can’t see the blood, but when I pull my fingers back, the tips of them are red. “You’re bleeding.”

“Am I?” She presses her fingers against her head, right over her incision.

The gas nozzle clicks, so I release her and pull it out of the gas tank. “Let me park the car and I’ll come inside and help you clean it up.”

After I park the car, I search the store shelves until I find a small first aid kit. I meet Layla in the women’s restroom with it. It’s a one-person stall, so I lock the door to the bathroom behind me. She faces me, leaning against the sink. I take a cotton swab and some peroxide out of the kit and clean the dried blood out of her hair first, then from around the incision.

“Did you hit your head on something?”

“No.”

“It’s pretty bad.” It should be healed by now. It’s been six months since she got the scar, but every couple of weeks it breaks open again. “Maybe you should get it checked out this week.”

“It doesn’t hurt,” she says. “It’ll be fine. I’m fine.”

I finish cleaning it up and then put some antiseptic ointment on it. I don’t press her again about why it’s bleeding. She’ll never admit that she does it herself, but I’ve seen her picking at it.

I clean up the mess and close the first aid kit while Layla uses the restroom. She moves to the sink and washes her hands. I’m leaning against the bathroom door, watching her in the mirror.

What if I’m part of the problem? What if my hesitation to treat her exactly how I treated her before is holding her back somehow?

We make love a lot, but it’s different than it was before. In those first couple of months together, we were a combination of everything that makes sex good. I was sweet and gentle with her, but also reckless and rough, sometimes all at once. I didn’t treat her like she was fragile. I treated her like she was unbreakable.