Page 170 of Broken Brothers

“Not for us,” Layla said with a wink.

Goddamn. You’ve really raised the bar for future dates, huh? Better get my strategy on to top this!

I was like a school kid riding that elevator to the top, mostly just utterly stunned that Layla had pulled something off like this, especially since she almost certainly didn’t have the connections that she used to with having quit her uncle’s company.Or, maybe, her uncle’s connections all hate him like so many people hate Edwin Hunt, but they like her like they like me.

At the very top, the doors opened, and we had free reign to go wherever we pleased. Though the gift shop had closed, Ialready had the perfect gift—time with Layla. We went out to the observation deck, looked out over the city, and leaned into each other.

“Not bad, is it?” I said.

“Not at all,” she said. “Gotta take it in while we can.”

That seemed like a particularly odd thing to say. At first, I tried to ignore it, thinking that it didn’t mean much of anything. But the words “while we can” gnawed at me and I began to fear the worst.

“What do you mean?” I asked, terrified that Layla was about to confess the onset of some terrible disease or something like that.

“You know how I’ve talked about new beginnings all night?”

OK, good news is, she probably wouldn’t say something like that if she had cancer or something.

“Yeah…”

“What if we made a new beginning outside this city? You and I?”

“What?” I said, mostly because I didn’t know what else to say in response to that, those words I had never expected to hear.

“Would you leave New York City with me once everything is done with Edwin?”

I had never, ever considered such a possibility. The most I had ever given thought to was getting a second or third home somewhere if I made enough money off of it, but this was… this was a very different request, a request to upend the entire lifestyle that I had had up to this point.

“Why would you want to do that?” I said, trying my best not to sound accusatory.

“It is a bit extreme, isn’t it,” Layla said, and I hoped that she wasn’t defeated by my question. I just wanted to know—it wasn’t like I was going to say no, but it was so unexpected that I couldn’t help but be thrown off-kilter just a bit. “I justthink this city has been too much for us. I know you grew up in Connecticut. Your childhood was full of flowers and grass and that kind of thing. I’ve never really had such a life. I want a life of freedom. Of nature all around me. Of loved ones all around me. I want blue skies, not gray skyscrapers, when I look up. I want something calmer, something more relaxed. For both of us.”

It did sound so much nicer, put that way. And it wasn’t like I had become a connoisseur of the city either; it wasn’t like I frequented Broadway, went to every different restaurant possible, or acquainted myself with every neighborhood possible. I worked, I interacted with girls, and that was about it. There wasn’t anything special about New York City in that regard, and the way Layla had described the chance to escape to nature was very hard to ignore.

But… that just felt so drastic, so dramatic, so different.

And I hated to sound like a broken record of “talk to me when Edwin is done,” but…

Fuck. She’s probably going to force my hand at some point too by how serious she looks.

“You know what my answer to that is.”

“Wait and see,” she said.

“Yeah. I’m not opposed to it, but, fuck, this is a great city. And to give it up… I mean, look, I lo… I like you a lot, Layla, and I think that that sort of figured itself out. I don’t need Edwin gone to know that I care about you and that this is becoming a thing once again. But as far as how much of a thing? As far as moving out of the city and, well, being with you forever, as that would be? I don’t have the time right now to sort it out.”

Most especially when it seems like every moment of mine on the streets is being watched by Edwin, perhaps even with the intent to kill me.

“Truth of the matter is, Layla, and I can say this now because we’re alone… I think Edwin has guys watching me. He told me hewas going to kill me on the phone. I just took that as the blabber of a bitter old man on the phone, but the more I see these guys stalking me, the more paranoid I get that he’s actually going to follow through. It’s not crazy, by the way. Edwin is for real.”

“Jesus Christ,” Layla said, starting to sound on the verge of panic. “You think he’d actually go through with that? You really think he’d kill you?”

“Honestly…”

The more I thought about it, the more I realized the true answer.

“Yeah.”