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Chapter15
I was back home.
Fuck, I hated it here. This whole town needed to sink back into the ocean so the earth could reabsorb it and start over. They gave it a try. It failed. Let's try again.
But no. Even though the factories closed decades ago, there were still a smattering of homes and trailers on overgrown plots of land that had been reclaimed by nature, occupied by locals who refused to leave for greener pastures.
The only economy here was drugs and prostitution, and the prostitutes didn't make nearly enough money, considering the clientele. It was why Daisy and I had done everything in our power to get the hell out of here.
But Layla couldn't even leave this house.
Living with Mrs. Wunch had been a temporary arrangement after the incident. None of us, not even Layla herself, had realized how quickly she would become dependent upon that house.
Mrs. Wunch had proved to be dependable enough, as long as I kept the rent checks coming. Layla's income was steady and had actually been increasing as her skills with web design had been improving, but she didn't know that Mrs. Wunch had been raising the rates every few months.
Because she could. Because she knew that there was no way Layla would ever be able to move out. Not with her phobias and fears.
As though Talon Rock wasn't hell enough, now it wouldn't even let my sister go. She wasn't returning my calls. Had Black Thorn got to her? And how was I supposed to keep her safe if she wouldn't even leave the house?
I brought the Escalade to a stop in front of Mrs. Wunch's two-story blue home with brown shudders that looked atrocious. Thank goodness Layla never left the house to see how bad Wunch was at decorating. Though, in Talon Rock, standards weren't that high.
Layla had the entire upper floor, but as usual, the curtains were drawn, so there was no way of telling where she was. Hopefully I could get my eyes on her, verify that I was worrying over nothing, and then get back on the road to Miami before Borya tracked me down.
By now he was surely after me. Even if Daisy had kept my secrets, he would've found some way to track the phone or the car.
Not wasting any time, I took the porch steps two at a time and pounded on the door. "Layla," I called as I knocked.
She would be freaked if she thought there was a stranger at the door.
A moment later, the door inched open a crack—just enough for me to see one of Layla’s big blue eyes peeking out at me from behind the revealed space.
“Becks? What are you doing here?” She asked me like I was the crazy one. Like she wasn’t the one ignoring my calls and making me lose my mind.
I shoved forward, using my full bodyweight to push the door open, causing Layla to stumble back. “I’m not talking to you from the porch. I’ve been calling you all day!”
Her eyes widened, practically taking up half her face. Even though she was only a year younger than me, when she got like that, it made her look like she was twelve again instead of eighteen. Guilt shot through me. “I’m sorry,” I said quickly, even if I couldn’t keep the annoyance out of my tone. “I was worried and there’s been… things going on back in the city.” I don’t want to give my already paranoid sister any reason to be even more afraid, but I couldn’t lie to her either.
She wrapped her arms around herself as though warding off all the evil I’d brought to her doorstep. “Is it Dad?”
My heart broke for her. I should’ve led with that. “It’s not Dad. I haven’t heard from him in over a year.”
She shook her head as though clearing the evil thoughts away. “Of course it’s not him. He hasn’t left the motel outside of Tallahassee in two weeks. He found a girl naïve enough to believe him when he says he loves her. She is buying him drugs from the money she makes on the street corner. No reason to come hitting us up for anything.”
“How do you know all of that? How do you know any of that?”
Instead of answering, Layla turned away and started upstairs to where she lived, leaving me to either stand there like an idiot or follow. As she moved, she tried to hide her limp. Anyone else might not have noticed. But I was her sister, and I knew that being cooped up in this stuffy house was the worst place for her, especially considering her past injuries.
She was only going to get worse the longer she stayed here.
When people found out I had a sister who refused to leave her house, they thought she was weird or crazy.
The things that made Layla crazy didn’t come from her homebound habits. They came from a bunch of other habits that nobody ever had a chance to see because no one ever got a chance to meet her.
The upstairs loft was one giant studio that was Layla’s entire life. Two if I counted the bathroom, which I didn’t.
Sure, there was the normal stuff like a table, bed, couch, fridge, and small kitchenette. But the majority of the space was taken up with computers. There was a pile of desktops on one side of the room not being used, surrounded by a tangle of wires. Next to the bed was a desk with a wall of six monitors, all in different shapes and sizes, but hooked up to work together to make one giant screen.
She might never leave the house, but her mind would travel on vacations every single day. It wasn’t healthy, but no matter how much I tried to convince her to try to branch out, nothing worked.
Without looking at me, she sat in a squeaky computer chair and started to click away at a keyboard. I waited for her to say something, anything to me. To somehow acknowledge my presence.
Layla and I were only fourteen months apart. The result of a lot of poor planning and bad decisions on the part of our parents. Dad had always made sure we knew that we were nothing but a burden—something both of us had absorbed into the fabric of our beings in very different ways.
It had molded me into a caretaker, desperate to be helpful to those I loved in some way, while Layla had retreated into her shell more and more. It didn’t mean she loved the ones she was around any less. On the contrary. In her mind, the smaller she was, the less she moved, the less she used, and the less space she took up, the less of a burden she would be.
In some ways, she was more of a caretaker than I would ever be, and she had proved that on that fateful day years ago in a way I’d never be able to repay.
“Layla,” I said softly.
It was enough to remind her that I was here, making her jump and turn to face me.
“Sorry, I got sucked into something.”
She stared at a black screen with white boxy lettering of HTML coding. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it, but Layla knew exactly what she was looking at. She really was talented. If she came with me to the city and networked or took classes, she would be a force to be reckoned with.
I took a seat on her bed and clasped my hands in front of me. It had been too long since I’d seen her. Too long since I’d even called just to check in.
Layla tried her damndest to wall herself off from me and everyone else who cared about her, but I wasn’t supposed to let it actually work. She was my sister, damn it. Except for Daisy, she was all I had.
And I didn’t know how much longer I was going to have Daisy for.
We both had the same blonde hair, but Layla let hers grow much longer. Now it was down to her waist. As much as I wanted to have an actual visit with her and catch up on some sisterly bonding, my time was limited.
Borya was undoubtedly already on his way to me. I needed to be gone before he reached Layla.
That was one explosive combination I didn’t need going off today. “I asked how you knew about Dad. Has he been in touch with you?”
“Like I’d pick up the phone for that waste of space. I make it my business to know where he is, though. If he’s going to stop by to bother me, I want to know about it. It’s not like I can hide.”
You can hide, I wanted to say. You can leave here any time you want to. Just walk out that door and the world is yours.
But telling her that wouldn’t get her past whatever mental block was stopping her from living her life.
“I found him online. I’ve been keeping tabs.”
“And his girlfriend posts about being a hooker and buying him drugs on her social media pages?”
Layla shrugged. “I didn’t say where I found him online. Let’s just say I have ways of finding out things and leave it at that, okay big sis?”
If this had been a week earlier, there was a chance I might have let it go. Sure, my sister was into some weird shit. Fine.
But now I wasn’t going to be willfully ignorant anymore. “Tell me exactly how you know what Dad is into.”
“It’s none of your business.”
