Page 29 of What Hurts Us

“I read between the lines.”

She dropped her hand. “So, what if it does? I agreed to be your—” she peered out of the corners of her eyes, making sure no one was within earshot “—fake girlfriend or fiancé or whatever.”

“I don’t give a fuck what you agreed to. I’ll put a hard stop on this whole deal and figure out something else. If there’s a problem, you need to fucking tell me.”

She offered her hand again. “I’m good. Let’s go eat.”

“Tell me why you don’t date cops.”

Her glare was searing. “I’m not a magic eight ball. You don’t get to keep shaking me until you get the answer you want.”

“Then give me the truth the first time.”

“Shouldn’t we start with my favorite color or your shoe size? You know—something less intimate?”

“Telling your partner what’s bothering you isn’t intimate. It’s the bare fucking minimum.” The moment I heard the words slip out of my mouth, I regretted it. Not because it wasn’t true, but because I’d cracked her carefully crafted mask. Rivulets of hurt and heartbreak leaked through her shiny exterior like a dam on the verge of collapse—still holding firm, but beneath it laid something too powerful to retain.

Delicate eyelids lifted, revealing glittering brown irises. “The last guy I was with was ... a cop. And he was a fantastic guy. We agreed to keep things casual. He had some issues he was working through—a girl he was really hung up on. I was just a temporary placebo.” She looked down at her sneakers. “But I fell anyway, and it hurt like hell when it ended.”

“He used you,” I said.

She wavered. “I had just taken a new assignment in Beaufort, and I was a little lonely, so I forced myself to go out. I went out to this locals-only bar. Some creep got handsy with me, and this sexy man stepped in and told the guy he was my boyfriend. When the drunk guy didn’t take a hint, he pulled out his badge and told him I’d press charges.” Layla dropped her shoulders in a half-assed shrug. “We used each other. The sex was great, and he was great.”

“I hope you pressed charges against the drunk guy. Dick weasels shouldn’t get away with bullshit like that.”

She let a caustic smile slip. “I didn’t. But it was because I fell for Chase like a wrecking ball off a skyscraper. That night we had drinks, we flirted, and we hooked up. It lasted a few months while I finished everything I needed to get my CRFN. When I got the job offer from AirCare, I hoped we would make it a long-distance thing while I trained. He told me he had fun but that his heart was still with this other girl and ending whatever we were was for the best.”

How anyone could look at Layla and let her slip away was beyond me.

“For him, it was a fun fling. For me … I fell. Pretending like I didn’t have feelings for him hurt worse than if I had just admitted it to him.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Like I said, he was hung up on someone else. Even a blind man could see that he and Bridget were meant to be. Still didn’t change the fact that I wished I was her. To have someone look at me the way he looked at her.”

“Shit…” I scrubbed my palms down my face, feeling like the world’s biggest asshole. “Then I roll up after you get kicked out of your apartment and ask you to fake it with me.”

A cheery smile replaced all traces of authentic emotion. “Yep. But I don’t think we have to worry about me catching feelings from a little hand holding.” She opened her palm.

This time I took it, wrapping my hand around hers and lacing our fingers together. Her skin was velvet soft. Fingers, nimble and skilled, twined with mine.

“Besides,” she said. “I get a vermin-free bed for the next few months, and you’re buying me the biggest sandwich the Mule has on their menu.”

* * *

“So,you’re fluent in Farsi, English, and Spanish,” I said as I finished my beer and set the empty bottle back on the table.

Layla and I were squished into a high-top table on the edge of The Copper Mule’s outdoor patio. The downside was that table real estate was slim—especially when we had gone all out on an appetizer platter, drinks, and towering turkey melts. The upside was that our conversation could remain private.

Layla nodded. “I know a decent amount of Kurdish, too, but I wouldn’t say I’m fluent.”

“Geez,” I muttered as I grabbed a corn fritter from the appetizer plate. “I got through high school Spanish kicking and screaming. The only thing I remember how to say isyo canto en el coro.”

She giggled over the rim of her Jack and Coke. “Did you really sing in a choir?”

“Hell no. I sound like a dying walrus. But apparently, my Spanish teacher thought that was an imperative sentence for us to learn.” I dragged the fritter through the ramekin of dip. “How’d you learn all those languages?”

“Born in Iran,” she said before popping a fry in her mouth. “So, there’s the Farsi. Grew up in Jersey with parents who insisted we speak as much English as possible. They didn’t count on my brother and me getting obsessed with WaWa and picking up Jersey slang like‘J’eet yet?’It took me forever to get rid of the Jersey accent. When I moved down here and entered the North Carolina public school system, they insisted on Spanish class. It was pretty easy to learn. Languages piggyback off each other more than we think.”

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