Because of You

An hour later, I stand in front of the small mirror in the bathroom staring at the woman reflected back. She looks nothing like me. But I guess that’s what I wanted when I locked myself in here and found a pair of scissors in the medicine cabinet.

“Someplace safe” turned out to be Brady’s three bedroom townhouse on the outskirts of town. And he was right. It’s definitely safe. He’s got more deadbolts on his door than an apartment in Hell’s Kitchen in New York City, and his security system is more state-of-the-art than mine. He's turned the walk-in closet in his bedroom into a panic room, complete with a steel door and a keypad for entry and exit, and there is a table set up inside with monitors that show the entryway inside the front door and all around the exterior of the house.

I had barely glanced at his furnishings as he walked me through the home, showing me where everything was, and I regret that now. It's strange being here in his domain and around his things. A man’s home is like a window into his soul. It tells you if he’s a confirmed bachelor who never wants to grow up or a family man with a big heart who keeps pictures of his loved ones on his mantle and hung on his walls.

His sister and niece weren’t home when we got here but I can hear a female voice talking softly to Brady on the other side of the door now and I assume it’s Gwen.

“How long has she been in there?”

“I don’t know, a f*cking long time,” Brady whispers angrily.

“Don’t get lippy with me. Did you even knock on the door to see if she was okay?”

“No. I figured she needed some space.”

“You’re an idiot. Women don’t need space even when we say we do. You should check on her.”

“You’re standing right there, YOU check on her.”

“I can’t just knock on the door of the bathroom Layla Carlysle is in! What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Oh my God, she’s just a person. A normal, smart, amazing person. You can knock on the door, Gwen.”

I’d laugh out loud right now at their whispered argument if I wasn’t so numb. Hearing the two of them bicker back and forth makes me wish I had a sibling.

“I knew it! You really DO have a crush on her!”

“Will you shut up? I don’t have a crush on her. I’m not twelve,” Brady argues.

“Fine, then you’re in love with her.”

There’s a long stretch of silence outside the door, and I realize I’m holding my breath, waiting for Brady’s reply.

“You’re pesky. And annoying. Like a housefly. Go away,” Brady finally says, not responding to Gwen’s statement of love.

I let out the breath I was holding, not sure if I’m happy or disappointed that he didn’t say something in regards to Gwen’s comment, which is completely unfounded anyway. He’s not in love with me. That’s just silly. We’ve only known each other for a month, and we live in two completely different worlds.

I don’t hear any more of the conversation through the door and realize that they’re probably both just standing there waiting for me to emerge. I take a deep breath figuring I might as well get this over with. I walk over to the door and unlock it, turning the handle and opening it slowly. I glance around the door frame into an empty hallway, thankful that Brady and Gwen aren’t standing inches from the closed door and staring at it, waiting for it to open.

I make my way down the hallway and notice several framed photos hanging on the wall of Gwen and her daughter Emma, Gwen and Brady, Brady and Emma, and a few of all three of them together. There’s one last photo next to all the others of Brady and three other men in their Navy Dress Whites, and I know immediately that these are the men he talked about on our run, the friends he spoke so highly of and admires. I smile to myself despite how I’m feeling, realizing that Brady’s home is nothing like a college fraternity house.

I step into the living room and find Gwen seated on the edge of the coffee table and Brady pacing back and forth behind the couch with his hands clasped behind his head.

They both look up when I enter the room, and their jaws drop when I step out of the dark hallway and into the brightly lit room.

“Oh wow,” Gwen whispers, a smile slowly turning up the corners of her mouth until she’s full-on grinning at me.

“Holy shit,” Brady mutters as he stops pacing and his hands drop down to his sides.

I reach one of my hands up to tug self-consciously at the blunt ends of my hair that now rest an inch above my shoulders instead of eight inches past them.

“You look amazing!” Gwen says, standing up quickly from the coffee table and rushing over to stand in front of me. “I’m Gwen, by the way, and I love your music! I’m a huge fan!”

Her gushing and the genuine smile on her face as she stares at my hack job makes me feel a little better about what I’ve done. I eye the blue and purple streaks in her dark hair, and I immediately wish I had the guts to do something that drastic. I guess this will have to do for now.

“Thank you,” I tell her with a smile. “I’m sorry for taking over your bathroom for so long. And I promise I’ll clean up the hair all over the place.”

Gwen reaches out and rubs my arm gently.

“Nonsense. Brady is the neat freak, so he can worry about it while you and I watch some mindless reality TV before my whirlwind of a daughter gets home from school,” Gwen says with a laugh.

At the mention of Brady, my eyes leave hers and wander over to him as he stands perfectly still behind the couch staring at me. Gwen follows my gaze and I see her give her brother a dirty look and not so subtly nod her head in my direction.

“So, Brady. Doesn’t Layla look amazing?” Gwen prods.

Brady just nods dumbly without saying a word.

“Don’t you have anything to say to her?” Gwen says through her smile and clenched teeth.

After a few awkward seconds, he finally speaks.

“What is it about my bathroom that causes both of the women in my life to lock themselves in there at separate times and chop it all off?” Brady says with a shake of his head, throwing his hands up in the air in puzzlement.

I look back at Gwen and we both stare at each other’s hair before we burst out laughing. We’re laughing so hard that tears are falling from both of our eyes and Gwen clutches her stomach. At the tail end of our laughing fit, Brady walks up next to me, runs both of his hands down the side of my head, and holds them in place on either side of my face. He stares into my eyes for a few minutes with a soft smile on his face before leaning in and kissing my cheek.

“I thought it was impossible for you to be any more beautiful than you already were,” he whispers in my ear while Gwen gives us some privacy and turns on the television.

“Jesus, was I f*cking wrong.”

I can hear the desire in his voice, and it makes my stomach flip with excitement. This day started out amazing and quickly turned horrifying. I breathe a sigh of relief because it looks like it might end on a more positive note.





I snatch up my ringing cell phone and smile when I see who’s calling, despite all of the anxiety I’m feeling.

“Garrett, what’s up man?”

I hear a baby scream in the background and rustling over the line before he answers.

“Baby shit, lots and lots of baby shit,” he replies with a sigh.

“Does that mean married life is good or are you ready to throw in the towel?” I ask with a laugh, receiving a punch in the arm from Gwen who’s sitting next to me at my small kitchen table while Layla is showering and the bright morning sun shines through the window.

“Nah, things are good. Things are really good. Parker just got home from a photo shoot in Arizona, and Annie is finally sleeping through the night. It’s good having both of my girls under one roof, man.”

I can hear the smile and happiness in Garrett’s voice. For a minute, a feeling of envy washes over me. Garrett and Parker were able to work through some pretty f*cking extreme odds in the last year, and they managed to make it work. They’re both happier than I’ve ever seen them, and it makes me suddenly wish I had that kind of happiness. I never thought marriage and kids would be in the cards for me, not wanting to find someone and then leave her alone every few months while I traipsed across the globe on SEAL missions. Now that I’m retired from the Navy and have a more stable job, not to mention an amazing woman who has worked her way under my skin, I feel more hopeful about the future for the first time in my life.

“So anyway, I got your message last night about looking into Jack Carlysle’s car accident,” Garrett says as I hear Parker’s voice cooing and laughing in the background.

I had left a message for Garrett the night before after Layla fell asleep on the couch with Emma snuggled up next to her. I felt like a pansy-ass for getting all emotional while standing in the room watching them sleep. Gwen and Emma are my whole life, and Layla is quickly moving into that same category. Seeing how well she gets along with Gwen, and then Emma when she got home from school, made my heart feel like it would burst out of my chest.

I tried contacting June at the bar to see if she could expand a little more about the suspicions she said she had involving Jack’s death, but I couldn’t reach her. I called Garrett in the meantime and had him do some digging.

“It took a while, but I was able to find out something a little weird. You said the guy died when his brakes went out and his car slammed into a tree, right?” Garrett asks.

“Yep, that’s what Layla told me, and all the news articles I read and the police report confirmed the same thing.”

I hear Garrett flipping through some pages for a few seconds before he responds.

“Here’s the strange thing. The day before the accident, Jack Carlysle had an appointment at the same garage he’d gone to for twenty years. Local establishment, same owner since the sixties, reputable place. And guess what he fixed?”

Garrett pauses and a feeling of dread fills my stomach before I answer.

“His brakes,” I reply softly.

“Ding, ding, ding! Correct.”

I shake my head in confusion and take a moment to make sure I can still hear the sound of the shower running down the hall where Layla is.

“If his brakes were recently fixed, how the f*ck did they manage to go?” I ask angrily as Gwen looks at me with raised eyebrows.

“Well, I spoke to the owner, Bill, real nice guy, and I didn’t get any kind of vibe from him that he had any ill will towards Jack. He was genuinely upset about the whole thing and swore up and down that when he personally changed the brake pads and fluid, nothing was amiss and everything was in top shape when he finished,” Garrett explains.

“So someone got to that car after it was fixed,” I conclude. “Why the hell wasn’t this brought up with the police? Why didn’t Bill tell them there was no way something could have accidentally gone wrong with Jack’s brakes?”

Garrett sighs. “Jack’s vehicle was the last one Bill worked on that day. The last one he worked on ever, actually. He retired that day and closed the doors to his shop, something he’d been planning for over two years. That night, Bill got on a plane with his wife and flew to Spain. They spent three months all over that countryside and didn’t hear of Jack’s death until they came home. By that point, the cops had already closed the case as a cut and dry accident. Bill tried to file a report claiming someone must have tampered with the car so the police would reopen the case, but it was a no go. They didn’t see any merit in his claims and figured he was just trying to cover his own ass so the family wouldn’t sue him.”

I spend a few more minutes going over the details of what Garrett found and ask him to email me a copy of the statement Bill filed with the police, along with a copy of the work order form that day.

I hang up the phone just as a knock sounds at the door.

Gwen starts to get up to answer it, but I stop her with a hand on her arm.

“I’ll get it. Go check on Layla and make sure she was able to find the towels and anything else she needs. And not a word of what we just found out from Garrett, please. I want to make sure all of this adds up before I put one more thing on her shoulders for her to worry about,” I explain.

Gwen nods and heads off down the hall as I go to the door, looking out the peep hole before unlocking the deadbolts and throwing it open.

“Hey, Brady! What’s going on?” Finn says with a smile as he tries to walk by me and into the house.

I put my hand up on his chest, stopping him in his tracks, utterly confused by his jovial demeanor.

Finn sighs and we stand there staring at one another in silence for several long minutes. I don’t care if Layla did call him last night to explain things and have him bring some of her stuff over this morning. I still don’t trust him.

He finally shrugs his shoulders at me.

“Look, man, I’m sorry about being such a dick to you. Just look at it from my side of things. Layla and I have been friends for years. She’s been through a lot, and I just didn’t want her getting hurt again. I had no idea who you were or what your motives were, and I acted like an ass. I’m sorry.”

He extends his hand and I want to shake my head to clear it, wondering if I’m still asleep and this is a dream. Why the f*ck is he suddenly playing nice with me?

“Come on, don’t leave me hanging,” Finn says with a laugh, his hand still out in front of him.

“Hey, Finn,” Layla says from behind me. I turn away from Finn, thankful for her interruption so I’m not tempted to grab onto his hand, yank him closer, and punch him in the face.

“Hi, Lay. Like what you’ve done with your hair,” he says with a smile as I finally step aside to let him in and close the door behind him. He hands her a small suitcase and the black leather Gibson guitar case that I’d noticed on the stage the other night at June’s.

Layla takes them both from him and props them up against the wall in the foyer, all of us awkwardly standing around staring at each other and not talking.

“So, Brady, would you mind if Layla and I had a couple minutes alone to talk? I won’t keep her from you long,” he asks politely after a few minutes and with another weird smile on his face that I can’t tell if it's forced or his real smile since I’ve never seen it on his face before.

I don’t reply because anything I say right now will just make me look like an a*shole, so I nod at Layla, and the two of them disappear down the hallway towards the bedroom—the f*cking bedroom where they can both sit on a bed and talk.

The idea of Layla on bed with anyone other than me makes me feel murderous. F*ck! I need to rein this shit in.

Layla said there was never anything between them, and I believe her and trust her. I just don’t trust that smarmy bastard who suddenly wants to be my friend or some shit. Trying to avoid running down the hall and making an ass of myself by listening to their conversation, I fill my thoughts with Layla and what happened in my bedroom after I woke her up and we put Emma to bed. She locked my bedroom door as soon as we got inside, dropped to her knees, ripped open my jeans, and took me in her mouth without saying a word. I pride myself on being able to last pretty f*cking long in the bedroom, but last night, it was downright embarrassing how quickly her lips and tongue brought me to completion.

As I stand here remembering the feel of her hot mouth wrapped around me and wonder when I can kick Finn out so I can get her naked again, there’s another knock at the door. It’s like Grand f*cking Central Station here this morning. Since Finn is the only person who knows where Layla is right now, and I’m not expecting anyone, I quietly move to the door to look through the hole again.

Oh you have GOT to be kidding me.

I step back and open the door with trepidation, staring down into the face of Layla’s mother. Unlike Finn, she doesn’t wait for an invitation. She just barges right past me and into the living room.

“Sure, come right in,” I mutter to myself as I close the door behind her.

She stands in the middle of my living room doing a slow circle, taking in her surroundings. I don’t miss the look of revulsion on her face as she wrinkles her nose before turning back to face me and quickly replacing that look with a smile.

“Let me guess, you followed Finn?” I ask her as I stay in the foyer and slide my hands into the back pockets of my jeans.

“Of course I followed Finn. He said he spoke to Layla and he knew where she was and that she was safe. I just needed to see for myself.”

She looks around quickly again, and I can tell it’s really taking some effort for her to not cringe. My place is small. I know that. But it’s clean and it’s mine. It’s a place to lay my head at night, and it keeps everyone inside of it safe. That’s all that matters. She can just take that stick right out of her ass because I’m not a millionaire and I never will be.

“Layla is fine. Shaken up, but she’s fine. She’s a very strong woman,” I tell Eve. Maybe if I say it enough, her mother will actually believe it. She doesn’t know the specifics of what happened yesterday. She only knows that Layla received another threatening note. It’s none of her business that the note was printed on a picture of the two of us in a very compromising position.

“Well, that’s good. That’s very good. Actually, I didn’t just come over here for Layla,” she admits.

Surprise, surprise. The she-devil must want something.

“I wanted to apologize to you.”

I quickly glance out of the window in the living room, checking for flying pigs, before I turn back to face Eve.

What the f*ck is she apologizing to me for?

“I have to admit, I didn’t hire you with the best intentions in mind. I really didn’t believe Layla had an actual stalker. I’d heard about your reputation, and I figured you would come in here, not really do much, and then go. I could show the media that I really have Layla’s best interests at heart, and it wouldn’t turn into a huge circus that could harm anyone publicly. If I were to hire some big-name investigator, it would quickly get out that Layla had been receiving threats like that for years and I never did anything about it.”

I can do nothing but stand there staring at the piece of work in front of me. She’s actually telling me that she only hired me because she most likely thought I’d be drunk the entire time and not give a rat’s ass about my client’s safety.

“Let’s cut the bullshit, shall we? You’ve never had Layla’s best interests at heart or you wouldn’t be forcing her to do something she doesn’t love. Why the hell admit this to me now when we’re close to catching the stalker? To ease your guilty conscience?” I fire back angrily.

“I know I’ve made mistakes where Layla is concerned, believe me. And I’m not doing any of this because I feel guilty. I will never apologize for the decisions I’ve made because they’ve got me to where I am today. But I would like to apologize to you for underestimating you. You’re very good at your job, Mr. Marshall,” she tells me with a confident lift of her chin.

Did I wake up in a second f*cking dimension this morning? First Finn and now Eve. Why the f*ck are they both trying to kiss my ass?

“I see that you really care about Layla, and I just want to make sure you understand that as great of a man as you are, the two of you come from different worlds.”

I laugh and roll my eyes at her.

“And here we go. The real reason why you showed up on my doorstep trying to blow smoke up my ass. She’s a star and I’m nobody and it would never work between us. Did I get the gist of it?” I ask sarcastically, pulling my hands out of my pockets to cross them over my chest and leaning my shoulder casually against the wall.

“I see I’m not telling you something you don’t already realize. I’m not trying to be cruel, Mr. Marshall, but it’s the truth. You live two completely different lives. Everyone in the world knows who Layla is. She has enough money to buy a hundred of these little homes and then some,” she explains, looking around the small room once again and pulling her purse tighter to her side like I might try to steal it. “I’m doing this for your own good. She’s a big deal. She’s recognized wherever she goes, and if someone is linked to her, the media will dig and dig and dig into that person’s life until they know every single intimate detail about them and their family members. You’re lucky that little stunt she pulled at The Red Door Saloon wasn’t splashed across the front of every newspaper because right now, the media would know all about you since I heard she dragged you out of there in front of everyone. They’d know about the mistakes you’ve made, and they’d know about the secrets your sister is hiding. They would know it all.”

My arms fall limply to my sides during Eve’s little enlightenment, and now I can’t stop opening and closing my hands into fists, the muscles in my arms clenching in fury. I want to argue with Eve. I want to tell her that no one will give a rat’s ass about me or my family because she’s right, I’m nobody. But I can’t make the words come out because I know everything she says is true. The first time the media sees me with Layla, they are going to want to know everything about me. They’ll find out about every single time I’ve screwed up in my life and people have gotten hurt. And they’ll find out about Gwen. That a*shole husband of hers will find out where she is and how he can get to her. If it was just me, I could deal. I could push through that shit until they find another bone to chew on and get bored with me. But I can never let that happen to Gwen. Her and Emma’s safety depend on her ex never knowing where she is.

“You’re a good man, Mr. Marshall, and I just don’t want to see you or your lovely family get hurt,” Eve finishes as she walks my way and goes to the front door, pausing next to Layla’s suitcase and the guitar case Finn brought with him.

“Where the hell did you get that?” Eve asks with an anxious whisper, pointing at the guitar case.

“Finn dropped it off. Why?”

I step close to Eve and see that she is shaking from head to toe, like she’s seen a ghost.

“That’s impossible. That thing was destroyed years ago,” she mutters softly to herself, still staring at the case.

She reaches her hand out towards it in a daze but snatches it back when Finn and Layla enter the room.

“Mother, what are you doing here?” Layla asks as Eve whips her head around and stares at her daughter in horror.

“What the hell have you done to your hair?” Eve shouts angrily across the room.

I move forward and place myself directly in front of Eve so she can’t see Layla without bending to the side.

“I think it’s time for you to go now, Eve. I’ll make sure to keep you updated on what’s going on here, so you can adjust Layla’s schedule as needed,” I tell her, taking a few steps in her direction and forcing her to move backward towards the door.

She reaches behind her and fumbles for the knob before finally getting it open. “Thank you, Mr. Marshall, for all of your help.”

Eve isn’t looking at me when she says it. She’s staring to the side at the guitar case, and I see a muscle tick in her jaw. She quickly blinks her eyes back into focus and looks up at me with a smile that is as fake as her entire personality. “We’ll be in touch soon.”

Closing the door behind her, I take a moment to look over at the guitar case that had Eve so enraptured. It’s just a standard Gibson case. It’s not like it’s plated in gold or something. Why the hell would Eve care about an old guitar case?





“I just want you to be careful, Lay. That’s all I’m saying,” Finn said softly as he perched on the edge of Brady’s bed next to me.

“I am being careful. For the first time in my life, I’m happy. The future doesn’t seem so bleak or hopeless. He makes me want to be a different person, Finn. He makes me want to be me.”

Finn looked at me quietly for a few minutes before reaching into his back pocket and pulling out a few pages of folded up paper and hands them to me.

“What’s this?” I asked, unfolding the pages and smoothing them out on top of my thighs.

“Just read them.”

I looked away from Finn and scanned the pages. I immediately falter when I see Brady’s name.

“Finn, where did you get this? I shouldn’t be reading this. It’s his private life,” I told him angrily, thrusting the papers that have copies of newspaper articles and printed information that looked like it came from a government website.

“There’s a lot you don’t know about this man, Layla. I just want you to go into this with your eyes wide open. He’s had a lot of problems in the past. A lot. He f*cked up on his last SEAL mission and it got people killed. He f*cked up on a domestic disturbance call when he was with the PD and it got people killed,” Finn explained. “You just told me not moments ago that he feels guilty for not being there for his sister, so now he’s doing whatever he can to keep her safe, and that includes keeping her hidden away from their family and her husband.”

I scoffed at his words and angrily crossed my arms in front of me.

“That man beat the hell out of her, Finn. He deserves to be in the dark when it comes to her whereabouts.”

Finn placed the pages back on top of my thighs, but I refused to look down at them.

“That’s not the point, Lay. The point is he doesn’t care about the law or going through the proper channels to get something done. He does whatever it takes because he feels guilty. He’s trying to make up for the fact that he wasn’t there for his sister by holing her away in his home, thousands of miles from where their family lives. All of that death, all of that loss, it gets to a person. I’m just saying maybe what he feels for you and what he’s doing with you has a lot to do with trying to make up for the past.”

I stared at Finn in silence for a few minutes, refusing to comment on his theory. There was no way he could be right. Brady wasn’t transferring his guilt over to me. It wasn't possible. What we had was real and it meant something to him. I could tell by the way he looked at me, the way he touched me.

“I just don’t want to see you get hurt again. I know his type, Lay. SEALS are all the same. He doesn’t care about you. He’s just trying to make up for his mistakes with you. Getting close to you means you’re never out of his sight, and that means he won’t f*ck this up. He won’t have another death on his conscience.”

I looked straight ahead at the wall and wouldn’t allow myself to look at Finn. He finally got up from the bed with a sigh and headed towards the door.

“I hope I’m wrong about all of this, I really do. But for your sake, please, just ask him about it.”





Sitting cross-legged in the middle of Brady’s bed, I gently strum my Gibson Hummingbird as it rests on my lap, thinking about the conversation I had with Finn that morning. Brady has been on the phone all day, going outside a few times to talk or whispering so softly I can’t hear him. When I asked him what was going on, he just told me he was researching some leads and would tell me what was going on as soon as he had something concrete. Gwen has been just as secretive, tapping away on the laptop at the kitchen table and changing the subject when I ask her if there’s anything new.

I know there’s something they’re not telling me, and it pisses me off that they think they need to keep it from me.

The door to Brady’s room clicks opens a few minutes later, and he pauses in the doorway when he sees me, my fingers immediately stilling on the strings. He gently closes the door behind him and walks over to the edge of the bed.

“When did you learn how to play?” he asks as he climbs up onto the bed and faces me, mirroring my position by pulling his legs up in front of him.

I stare at his face for a few minutes, wondering if I have the courage to ask him what he’s doing with me. Finn’s words have gotten to me, even though I swore I wouldn’t let them. Is he really doing whatever this is with me out of misplaced guilt? Does he feel like if he solves this stalker case and I’m safe it will make up for all the bad things that have happened in his life? And what then? He just goes back to his life and I go back to mine?

I look down at my guitar and I can’t help but think about my father. I wonder if he felt guilty when he walked out the door nine years ago.

“My father taught me when I was little. We used to go down into the recording studio, just the two of us, every single day after school. It was my absolute favorite time of the day,” I quietly admit to Brady as I run the palm of my right hand down the top of the guitar, feeling all of the nicks and scratches from years of use, each one reminding me of happier times.

Placing my the fingers of my left hand on the proper frets, I strum my right hand down the strings, quickly moving my left hand as I play the notes for the song that has been in my head all evening. The fact that I stood on a stage in front of strangers and played when I’d done nothing but hold this guitar in my arms for almost ten years makes me feel almost invincible. The song I play now is an original; it’s the first time I’ve ever played one for anyone, and the fact that I’m fully opening myself up to Brady and not afraid to do so speaks volumes. I’ve never played a single note of one of my original songs on this guitar, no matter how many words I’ve written that I know would be perfect for it. Regardless of the confusion I’m feeling about Brady and his feelings for me, I still trust him. I trust him enough to show him this part of me.

Brady doesn’t speak as I open my mouth and let the words softly build while I play. It’s a song I wrote during one of the darkest times in my life, when I thought ending it all was the only option I had to be free. I close my eyes and let the music flow through me. I strum the guitar slowly, and my words match my playing as I gently sing about the story of my life.

I put everything I have into this song and show him who I really am. I want him to see me, I want him to hear me, and I want him to finally understand me. I’m opening up my heart and soul to him here on this bed, and part of me doesn’t care if he’s with me because he feels guilty. As long as he’s here, I’ll take what I can get.



I’m standing on the edge,

close to falling in.

I know I could just let go,

close my eyes and let them win.

If I take that step there’ll be nothing left

of who I used to be.



Do I let the darkness swallow me?

Do I let go and finally be free?

This pain leaves a scar that you cannot erase.

Only the darkness can take away my disgrace.



Everyone thinks I have it all together.

They look right through me,

and refuse to see the truth.

That it’s all just a great big mess,

and I’m so far from being blessed.



Do I let the darkness swallow me?

Do I let go and finally be free?

This pain leaves a scar that you cannot erase.

Only the darkness can take away my disgrace.



I’m surrounded by so many,

but I’ve never felt so alone.

It would be so easy,

to say goodbye and make my way home.



Do I let the darkness swallow me?

Do I let go and finally be free?

This pain leaves a scar that you cannot erase.

Only the darkness can take away my disgrace.



I close out the song with a few gentle strums, pressing my palm against the strings over the sound hole, swathing the room in sudden silence. I can hear my heart beating in my ears and the ticking of a clock on Brady’s nightstand. I slowly open my eyes and look directly into Brady’s as he sits completely still right in front of me.

He doesn’t say a word as I slide the guitar off of my lap and stand it upright next to the bed against the nightstand. Just like on the stage at June’s, playing my guitar gives me courage and strength I never knew I had. It makes me feel bold and in control, and now that I’ve played one of my songs for the first time, I have a mass of excess energy and excitement that I need to channel elsewhere.

Getting up on my knees, I crawl over to Brady and straddle his lap, letting my arms rest on his shoulders and my hands dangle loosely behind his head. He hesitates for a few seconds before wrapping his arms around my body and pulling me close, and I ignore the look of guilt that I see on his face for a split second before he turns it into a smile, tipping up one corner of his mouth in the way I love so much.

I love this man. I can’t keep pretending like I don’t.

“You are amazing, Layla,” Brady whispers as he looks at my face and brings his hand up to use the tips of his fingers to brush my bangs off of my forehead, moving his fingers down the side of my face to tuck my hair behind my ear.

He’s staring at me so intently. I can feel that he wants to say more, but he’s holding himself back. His brow furrows as he looks at me, and I’m so afraid I can barely breathe. I’m afraid of what he’s not saying, and I’m afraid of what he might say. I want him to tell me he feels the same way I do; I want him to reassure me that guilt has no part in his feelings for me. I want this man to always be a part of my life and to continue giving me the strength and courage I need to survive. I know we need to talk, and there’s so much we’ve left unsaid between us, but I can’t do it right now. Right now, I just want to feel. I just want to lose myself in him and not worry about anything else.

I lower my head and kiss him. I pour everything I am into that kiss and hope that he can feel it. I slide my fingers through his hair and hold his face against mine and hope he knows that he’s the only man I’ve ever given this much of myself to.

Without breaking the kiss, Brady moves his legs out from under me and pushes me back on the bed, gently resting his body on top of mine. The few times we’ve had sex, there’s been a kind of desperation to it that I loved, like we can’t get enough of each other, and it quickly explodes like a bomb as we crash into one another, giving and taking and pushing us both to our limits.

This time, we slowly undress each other, taking our time to touch and kiss and feel. When he finally rocks into me, it’s unhurried and with ease. He moves on top of me slowly, and he never takes his eyes off of my face as we leisurely move against one another. When my orgasm washes through me, it’s gentle and delicious and no less powerful than all of the other times, just less frantic. When Brady’s own release comes seconds after mine, he holds himself still inside of me, entwining the fingers of one of his hands with mine and holding it between us, against his heart.

He slides out of me without a word and moves behind me, pulling my back up against his front and wrapping his arms tightly around me. I lie there next to him, listening to the sounds of his breathing as they gradually slow until I can tell that he’s finally asleep. I can’t stop the tear that falls down my cheek, and I bury my face into the pillow so I don’t wake him.

I should be happy that what just happened between us wasn’t sex, it was making love. I could feel his love for me in every part of my body even if he didn’t voice the words.

So why am I not happy? Why do I feel like he was saying goodbye?