Page 126 of Broken Brothers

Which, I suppose, showed the feelings I had for Layla were indeed real.

“Nope,” Layla said. “After what I did to you, I felt I had fucked up so bad I didn’t need to be seeing anyone else. I decided to put myself on dating timeout for three months.”

“Dating timeout?” I said, desperate for a moment of levity. “Does that mean you have to get a chalkboard and write out ‘I will not make bad dating mistakes’ Simpsons style?”

“Hah, it should,” Layla said. “But seriously. No. I just needed to do some reflection. I let myself go with my uncle’s plan too easily and used my body to take advantage of you. That was horrible.”

“So how have you changed, if at all?”

I hated that I added the “if at all” but Layla didn’t seem to mind.

“Well, for one, I’ve taken to being much more honest in all my interactions,” she said. “That’s why I asked you that question. I had to be honest with the information I had. I didn’twant my vision of you to be false. I wanted to know the truth about you, and so I asked it. Lies, deception, tricks, games—it’s defined my family and your adoptive family.”

“That’s the goddamn truth,” I grumbled, taking a big gulp of my drink. “We seem like something out of The Prince. Everyone backstabbing everyone. We’d be Game of Thrones if only we’d be willing to stab someone in the front.”

“Violent, huh?”

“Well, the modern world doesn’t tolerate that level of violence, so it would be the modern Game of Thrones. Maybe Game of Golden Chairs, or Game of Executives.”

“Game of Executives,” Layla said, chuckling. “That’s HBO’s next special, I believe. But back on topic—I want us to be defined by honesty. Even if it hurts.”

Especially if it hurts. I need you to be honest since you’re the only one who will be, Layla.

Hell, even Morgan seems to be distancing himself… which isn’t lying, but it’s not telling the whole truth. And in that regard…

I shook my head. I had done way too much thinking. The more my mind ran, the less I’d be able to let myself go. The more likely I was to burn out. And the more likely I was to do something that would cost me and Morgan alike long before anything else could have done us in.

“I like that idea,” I said. “So here’s my truth, Layla. Let’s drink another round and go dance, shall we?”

Layla beamed in smile. Yeah, a voice in my head said I should slow down. The voice in my head said not telling her about Sarah would come back to bite me, and that same voice also said that Claire’s situation would come back to us at some point. Even if I had told her I was seeing her, Layla would surely have more words on it down the line.

But for everything that I had gone through in the past few days, I just needed a fucking break. I needed to turn off the moral compass, if not the ethical one. I just needed to let things go where they may and deal with the consequences later. Claire would have been my normal choice… except even she had felt like she was slipping away. Only Layla had seemed interested in progressing forward.

And so it was that after another drink, we wound back up on the dance floor. Unlike last time, when we started with space, this time, she wound up right up on me immediately. Hard as a rock, I ran my hands up and down her legs, feeling those curvy legs and grabbing at her ass. I whispered in her ear not as Chance Givens but as an animal in heat.

At one point, she turned around and faced me. For only the slightest of moments, I considered stepping back away. For everything that kissing her would mean…

No.

Tonight was not the night to think about that.

Before I could decide otherwise, I grabbed her face.

I pulled her close.

And I kissed her.

Oh, heavens, it was too fucking late now. If this was a bad idea, well, that was too bad. We were going back down this road again, weren’t we? All with Claire still in the picture and Sarah coming into it soon.

I had better have hoped that I made the right choice to return to Layla. I had better have hoped that she was telling the truth. Because I was now right back where I started before she fucked me over.

But those were questions for the AM.

For now, I just enjoyed tasting her lips, feeling her body press up on me, those curvy breasts on my chest, her hands grabbing my ass and squeezing.

This was only going in one direction, and that direction wasn’t separate for the two of us by the end of the night.

Our groping and dancing went on for another twenty minutes before I decided it was time to get out of there. I didn’t need my conscience overriding my sexual drive. It could in the morning, and I was sure there was a decent chance that when we both woke up, we’d wonder why we had ever done that and cut off all communication.