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I grab him by the back of his jacket, pulling him away. “Stop that. Go sit in the lounge, and we’ll sort this out, okay?”
He makes a strangled noise, turning away from me and bracing himself against the counter. For a few seconds, he’s still, breathing hard. Then he grabs a mug from the draining board and throws it at the wall. It shatters into pieces.
I jump back from the shards. “Zack, for God’s sake—”
He buries his face in his hands and starts to cry. I freeze as I watch tears drip down between his fingers, landing on the counter. “I don’t have anything else from her,” he chokes out. “She’s never gonna give me anything else. If it’s gone, she’s gone, and I’ll never get any part of her back again.” He slumps against the counter, his breathing ragged. “She’s gone. I lost her. I lost her.”
My chest hurts as I look at him.
I’ve never seen this side of Zack. He always seems so carefree. It was obvious that the booze and the girls and the crazy nights out were a distraction from something, but I didn’t realise this was what he was running from. To my knowledge, Emily died twelve years ago. She’s been gone almost half his life.
Before I can work out what to say, the flat’s front door flies open. Josh strides in, his face like thunder. I barely have time to register what’s happening before he grabs Zack by the collar of his shirt and shoves him backward, slamming him up against the kitchen wall.
“What the Hell did you do?” He snarls.
***
SIXTY-SIX
***
LUKE
“Josh,” I say warningly, “now isn’t the time.”
He ignores me, getting in Zack’s face. “What. Did. You. Do,” he repeats, each word scarily precise. “I went to the brunch this morning. My brother said he saw you dragging her out into the gardens last night. He said she left crying.”
Zack doesn’t say anything, staring down at his best friend, breathing hard.
“She won’t answer my calls,” Josh snaps. “She won’t answer her front door. I spoke to the front desk, they said she didn’t come home last night.”
My stomach dips. I suppose it’s hardly surprising that Layla didn’t want to go back to her flat, with us living a few metres away across the hall. But where did she go? Is she safe? Did she just disappear in the middle of the night, wandering London in the dark in her tiny silk dress?
I close my eyes and force myself to breathe. Layla is smart. She won’t be walking the streets or taking the Tube. She’ll have booked a taxi and gone to a hotel, I’m sure. She’ll be fine.
I really, really hope she’s fine.
“Get off me,” Zack mutters, shoving Josh away. His red eyes are hard. “I just told her the truth. That we weren’t going to do this anymore. That all of this teaching BS is done.”
“Actually, he did a bit more than that,” I add. Josh turns to me, and I recount the events of last night as quickly as I can. When I tell him about Zack sleeping with her in the gardens, he closes his eyes. When I get to my conversation with Layla in the hotel room, he looks like he’s about to have a hernia.
“You idiots,” he hisses, dropping heavily onto the sofa and running his hands over his face. “What the Hell is wrong with you?”
“Obviously, we went about it wrong,” I say. “But I think it was for the best. She said that she was falling for us. It would be cruel to keep playing this stupid game, knowing that she’s developed feelings.”
Josh’s head jerks up. “She said that?”
I nod.
“And then you left her?”
“Well—”
“Let me get this straight,” he says, his voice rising. He points at Zack. “She told you she loved you after you slept together, so you dumped her while your prick was still wet.” He jabs a thumb at me before Zack can answer. “And she told you she loved you right after she overheard her childhood teacher calling her ‘easy’ — and instead of reassuring her that she wasn’t, you just dumped her, too?” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “And neither of you thought that, given her past, that might affect her?”
My phone buzzes in my pocket.
“What were we meant to do?” Zack snaps. “We can’t love her. I can’t love her. I can’t. I said it from the beginning.”
