Page 40 of Rejected Heart (The Westwoods #5)

LIAM

Heartbeats of heavy silence passed between us.

It was like being caught in some kind of dream, and for a brief moment, I considered the very real possibility of that being the case.

Was that why it felt like everything else had faded away, even the laughter and conversation from the rest of my family?

Or were they just as stunned as I was to see her here?

Even if I wasn’t paying direct attention to anyone besides the woman standing in front of me, I could feel the tension emanating from everyone else almost as much as I could feel it radiating from the both of us.

I was terrified to blink because it hit me that this actually was a dream. I hadn’t spoken to Layla in nearly a month, so there was no way she’d know to show up here unless I’d conjured the fantasy in my own head.

Holding my niece tight to my chest, I pinched my opposite arm. I could feel the sensation, and I didn’t sit up, gasping for air in my bed.

Was she really here?

One month.

One month since I’d learned the truth about why she left me, and I was no further along now than I had been then in healing or moving on.

I was stuck, and I hated it.

No less than a dozen questions swam through my mind, but standing with just a few feet separating us, I wasn’t quite sure where to start.

Fortunately, it seemed Layla did, because she broke the silence. Her voice was hushed, just a hair over a whisper, with a nervous, trembling edge to it. “Cooper invited me to the party, but if you want me to leave, I’ll go.”

Cooper?

I had even more questions, questions I still couldn’t seem to bring myself to ask.

Curious, Layla pressed, “Do you want me to leave?”

There wasn’t a time when I’d ever wanted that, yet it seemed it always happened. Layla always walked away, always left me. I’d wished she’d been here this whole time, all these lonely, miserable years.

Now, I felt nothing but confused. Not only about why she was here, but what had taken her so long.

I was glad to see her. No matter how upset I’d been about the things she did, it seemed that would never change—but I wanted to know why it had taken a whole month for her to do something so extravagant.

I’d spent the last few weeks preparing—albeit horribly—to never see her again. This moment felt like such a gift, and I could only hope it meant good things.

Sadly, I couldn’t seem to bring myself to tell her any of this. And Layla, growing impatient, took my silence as an answer to her question and got the wrong impression. She averted her gaze to the ground and murmured, “This was a mistake. I’m so sorry for interrupting. I’ll go.”

Not again.

She couldn’t keep doing this to me.

Layla turned to leave and took one step in the opposite direction before I reached out and curled my fingers around her wrist. She twisted her neck to look back at me, and the moment her eyes were locked on mine, I spoke. “I want you to stay.”

I watched as the tension swept out of her body and relief eased its way in. “You… you do?”

“Cooper invited you?”

Layla nodded.

“Then I want you to stay.” Hope blossomed in her eyes, and a small smile formed on her face. “Can we talk privately for a few minutes first, though?”

More relief. This time, it etched itself into her features. “Yeah. Yeah, I think that’d be a good idea.”

For the first time since my eyes had caught sight of her, I allowed them to drift down from her face. They landed just below the front of her throat, where the heart-shaped necklace I’d gotten her for her birthday years ago was resting.

That was our necklace.

Liam and Layla .

She wouldn’t be wearing that if she wasn’t trying to make a statement, would she?

I looked away from Layla and in the direction that I knew I’d find my family. They were quiet, trying not to look, but doing a horrible job of it.

I found Cooper and jerked my chin up at him. He didn’t hesitate to move in our direction. “Everything okay?” he asked when he came to a stop beside us.

“Would you mind taking Rosie for a few minutes so Layla and I can talk?”

Cooper reached for his daughter and took her from me. Roselle’s tiny fists gripped tightly onto my shirt, and she refused to let me go. I had to gently peel open each one of her fingers just to get my shirt free.

“I’ll be back to play in a little bit,” I promised her.

She looked away and dropped her head down on her dad’s shoulder, her sad face breaking my heart. Cooper shifted his attention between Layla and me, and just before I was going to turn to walk off, Layla held up a gift bag. “This is for her.”

Cooper’s features softened as he took the bag from her. “Thanks, Layla. It’s good to see you.”

She offered a simple nod in return.

As Cooper turned and walked off in the opposite direction, I looked down at Layla and jerked my head toward the lake. “Come on.”

The two of us walked side by side in silence as we made our way to the edge of the property near the lake.

I didn’t know what Layla was feeling or experiencing, but my heart was pounding.

The problem was that I didn’t know if it was the result of feeling nervous, or if it was normal.

The truth was that I always felt like my heart was racing whenever I was around her.

We sat down in two of the chairs near the lake’s edge, and for a long time, neither one of us said a word. I’d been telling myself for weeks—years, really—that Layla wasn’t ever going to seek me out, that I’d never have this opportunity, so I hadn’t prepared myself for it.

Now that I was here, I didn’t have the slightest clue where to start.

Layla, to her credit, seemed to be making all the right moves, because she broke the silence once again. “Your niece is adorable. Congratulations on becoming an uncle, by the way.”

I smiled at her. “Thank you. She’s the best little girl in the world. I don’t even know how we all lived without her.”

“It took me a moment to get used to the idea of Cooper being a dad,” she confessed. “I’m still struggling with that one.”

Soft laughter escaped. “None of us thought he’d be the first to have a kid, so you’re not alone.”

Layla’s eyes roamed over my face. She seemed to be holding herself back from saying whatever was on her mind.

“What is it?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Nothing. It’s just, I don’t know that I can recall a time when you looked so happy as you did when she was taking those few steps toward your outstretched arms. ”

There was no denying how much I adored my niece. She really was the only reason I ever had moments of feeling genuine happiness in years.

“I used to feel that happy,” I said quietly. “When you were with me, I was always that happy.”

“And how do you feel now when you see me? Because, if I’m honest, I wasn’t sure I should come here today.”

I stared at her for a long time, wondering if I would be making a huge mistake in telling her precisely how I felt when I saw her.

Part of me felt like I kept spilling my guts to her, sharing every piece of my heart, only to have her stomp on it over and over.

If I did that now, knowing how she might respond, maybe I deserved to feel as miserable as I had.

But I would rather live every day knowing that I never held back how I really felt about her.

I’d tell the truth until the day I died, even if it was never reciprocated.

“Despite the fact that I often experience hurt and bitterness and heartbreak and anger over the way you ended us, I’ve never looked at you and not wanted you.

I’ve never looked at you and felt anything less than tremendous love.

Beneath all the damage, I’m still the guy who would give up everything to be with you. ”

Tears filled Layla’s eyes, and she dropped her gaze to her lap as she took a few deep breaths. When she got a hold of her emotions, she returned her attention to me and shared, “Cooper came to my mom’s store a week ago.”

My body tensed, and I sat up a little straighter in response. Layla had mentioned that Cooper invited her, but I hadn’t expected he’d actively sought her out to do it. “What happened?”

Smiling, her eyes shining with the tears, she answered, “He told me I needed to do something.”

“What?”

“He said that if I loved you, if I truly loved you, I needed to do something to make sure you knew it. I explained to him that I had used those words and told you that, but he insisted that you didn’t believe them.”

I found myself getting upset on Layla’s behalf. “Layla, I’m sorry. Cooper didn’t have a right to say any of that to you.”

She reached her hand out and covered mine.

The soft touch of her fingers on my skin sent jolts of electricity shooting down my arm.

“I’m glad he did. He got me to see things that I’d been blind to.

But I won’t lie and say that I wasn’t the least bit terrified to show up here.

I truly didn’t think you ever wanted to see me again. ”

I covered her hand with my opposite one, needing to keep hers where it was. Something inside me told me if I didn’t, she’d take that away from me, too. “What makes you think that I didn’t want to see you?”

She stared down at our connected hands, her eyes wet and dull.

“After I told you the truth about why I turned down your proposal and left you, you seemed upset. And I understood that. I believe you were justified in feeling a multitude of emotions over it. But you seemed to just accept it, like that was our fate, before you asked me to have one last meal with you before you took me home. You never reached out again, so I assumed you’d merely been looking for answers and closure. ”

My thumb stroked absentmindedly along the back of her hand. “It had nothing to do with that. In fact, I’d been hoping that after we spoke that night, we’d manage to find a way to reconcile.”

Her brows knit together. “I don’t understand. You didn’t say anything to indicate that.”

“Would it have mattered if I did?” I countered, my own brows furrowed.