Layla

ChapterSixteen

Mark

Iwas choosing to look at our time apart as a period of growth and self-discovery. It might seem impossible for people to believe, but I genuinely think now that we were stronger because of it.

We’d gotten married relatively young—in fact, we were still pretty young—but when you know, you know.

But—but—what if we hadn’t had that time? Would we still be together? I’d loved her more than life back then, but I couldn’t remember ever feeling this relaxed and content. Then again, maybe it was because her family knew about us and were coming round to accepting it? We didn’t need to hide or worry about being caught anymore, so we were free to be us.

You just never know what life holds, so maybe our time apart was fate or for a special purpose?

Tonight was her birthday party, but I’d asked her parents to hold off until nine o’clock for it to start. After a lot of begging and promises, the house had finally been released, and we were allowed to go into it. Granted, we wouldn’t be staying in it or touching anything, but it was ours again, and we didn’t have to worry about buried bodies or stories of snuff films being made in it. Yes, that had occurred to me.

With a blindfold around her eyes, I drove us around town for a while, laughing when she got frustrated.

“Mark, if you don’t tell me where we’re going or get us there soon, I’m either going to throw up in your car, or I’m going to choke you with the blindfold and shove it up your ass. I’ll even make sure half of it’s hanging out like a tail and tell them you were too kinky for me.”

“You’re inventive, baby. I’ll give you that,” I snorted as I turned onto our road.

“Oh, did you hear? Sayla’s buying the house two doors down from yours.”

As always, the change in topics took my brain a second to catch up with, but then something hit me, and I pulled over to the side of the road five houses down from ours.

“Are we there?” Layla reached up to take the blindfold off, and I only just caught her hand in time to stop her.

“No, not yet, but I need to make something clear. This house is our house, regardless of whether we live in it together right now, next week, six months from now, or even next year. I bought it to make a dream come true and hoped that my part of that dream would come back to Piersville.” Her shuddering inhale seemed overly loud in the silent car. “But now that you’re here, it’s ours.”

Through the dim light coming from the dash, I saw her chin start wobbling and panicked. Layla had never been a crier, she just didn’t have it in her, so whenever she gave in and shed tears, it ripped me to pieces.

That’s why I softened the blow. “I get it, we need to have it sterilized and then maybe go around with those sage stick things and cleanse the demons out of it. I’m also not against spraying holy water and trying to get my hands on feathers from the wings of angels to dry it off. But I deliberately didn’t change anything inside it so that we could decide together what to do to it to make it ours.”

She snorted out a laugh. “You want smudge sticks and holy water?”

“Babe, you haven’t seen what I’ve seen. If you did, you might decide to bulldoze it down and start again. I even considered it the night our brothers brought the Luminol in, and then when I found out it wasn’t the Luminol making it glow and what that meant….”

God, it always left a nasty taste in my mouth thinking about it… Maybe not unlike the people who’d taken part in putting the fluids on the walls had in their mouths. Gag!

“I love that it’s ours, and we get to work on it together.”

“After it’s been sterilized,” I reminded her. Like she’d ever forget it.

“And sterilized,” she snickered. “How long do you think it’ll take for them to disinfect it?”

I started the engine back up and drove the short distance to the house, where I pulled into the driveway.

“Well, if you decide you want some stuff removed, it might not take them as long because there’ll be fewer surfaces to clean,” I hedged, deliberately leaving it relatively vague and not mentioning the mirrors everywhere that could easily be removed.

Getting out and going round to Layla’s side, I opened the door and helped her until she stood in front of me.

Leaning down, I put my mouth right next to her ear. “Are you ready?”

“Yes,” she breathed, then snapped, “but if you do anything mean like push me off the edge of a cliff into the water like my brothers did when I was six, I’ll kick you in the balls and leave you behind.”

I looked up at the sky, which was just turning dark enough to see the stars. “How do conversations always end up like this? I take you to a surprise I’ve planned out for you, and it turns into a nightmare story from your childhood and ends up with my nuts in my gallbladder and me stranded next to a cliff somewhere?”

“Just lucky like that, I guess.”

Figuring I’d leave her blindfold on for a couple more minutes, I duck walked us toward the house's front door and opened it.