AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Best be on the forehead too.
It’s another lie I tell myself that I pretend I follow, even if only in my mind.
I’m doing just that when an unexpected movement catches my eye. White curtains fly out of the small window, the autumn wind blowing them away when a shadow creeps out and jumps off the small ledge.
“The fuck?” I growl when I see Layla silently and carefully closing her bedroom window behind her and making a mad dash through the front gate without anyone inside being the wiser.
“The fuck are you doing, sweet one?” I ask out loud, even though she can’t hear me.
I keep my eyes locked on her as she looks from left to right and crosses the street from her home. Like a sucker, I lower my broad frame so she can’t see me when she passes my car, even though my tinted windows would make it impossible for her to do so.
When she’s a few steps into whatever direction she’s going, I break my number one rule of staying hidden at all times and hurriedly climb out of my car, slamming the door a little too loudly for comfort. Luckily, Layla is so focused on her nighttime getaway that she doesn’t even register that I’m walking right behind her. Since this isn’t my first rodeo in tailing someone, I keep to the shadows and maintain a healthy distance between me and my mark.
Confusion, frustration, and ultimately anger has me quickening my pace when she turns a corner, vanishing toward the faint sound of hip-hop music. Just as I turn onto the street she disappeared to, my shoulders slump at what I find.
It’s a fucking house party on a Friday night thrown by a bunch of teenage kids, whose parents are probably out of town.
Layla doesn’t do parties. With her aunt forcing her to drop out of high school so she could have a live-in housekeeper, Layla doesn’t have time for friends, much less time to attend high school parties.
So why the hell is she going to one?
I watch, helpless to stop her, as she goes inside the house. A bunch of kids all stand in the front lawn with red solo cups in their hands, dancing and having fun.
With a good ten years on all of them, if not more, I can’t just follow her inside without alarm bells going off. Sure, some of them already look drunk as shit, but the presence of any adult at this party will sober them up with a snap of one’s fingers.
So I wait, leaning against a light post with my hands in my pockets. I wait until I catch a glimpse of her again. Unfortunately for me, Layla doesn’t come out for a full twenty minutes, making each minute that passes that much more excruciating for me to bear.
“Fuck this!”
I’ve been here long enough to get the layout of the house and its surroundings. I can sneak through a neighbor’s backyard and hop the fence into some bushes to see if I can get a better view from there and into the house.
Without a second to lose, that’s exactly what I do.
It’s through those damn bushes, squatting down like some damn stalker, that I finally lay eyes on my Layla sitting on the back porch steps, being chatted up by a pimple-faced loser.
She seems into him though.
Really into him.
Anytime the idiot opens his mouth to say something, Layla laughs a real laugh.
One I’ve only heard her give to Zoey.
Then the little dipshit covers her hand on the step between them with his.
To anyone else, that small touch would mean nothing.
To me though?
Well, the fact that I instantly grab my gun, prepared to shoot the dipshit’s head off, should be an indication of how innocent I think that touch is.
Suddenly, the idea that someone else can do that, and that she’s allowing a stranger to hold her hand, is too much for me to handle.
Instead of standing up and telling this kid who probably isn’t old enough to vote yet to keep his hands off my girl or risk dying on the spot, I turn my back on both of them and go home.
Layla deserves a bit of happiness, and if that little twerp can give her that, then who the fuck am I to stand in her way?
I’m no one.
