Logan approached with a huge cake as everyone sang happy birthday and I got a hoot of cheers as I extinguished each one with a deep puff then I turned to my well-wishers.
“Firstly, I’d like to thank you all for coming, even if it’s a terrible feeling for you all to relish that I’m growing old.”
I paused until the laughter broke down.
“And secondly, I’d like to introduce my girlfriend to those of you that don’t know her. Everyone meet Layla Summers.”
Everyone gave Red a hello and I grinned as she went blood red, but then she went even redder when I dropped to one knee in front of her.
The room was flooded with gasps, Red’s being the loudest, and I looked up at her as my heart paused.
“Red, baby, the last three months, even if eventful, have been the most amazing three months of my life. Why? Cos’ they’ve been full of you, baby and I wanna make the rest of my life just as good, and I know if you are in it then . . . then . . .”
Suddenly I couldn’t breathe as I saw her.
She stepped out from behind Brad and my heart stopped when I saw who was stood next to her, holding her hand.
Holy-Fucking-Shit.
I could feel Red’s confusion; it seemed to flitter around me, like a mist, along with her hurt when she turned to see who I was staring at.
“Lucas?” she whispered and I looked back up at her but I couldn’t seem to form any words.
Red swallowed heavily and released my hand. “Go to her, Lucas.” She said quietly before she descended the steps from the stage and disappeared through the crowd.
I didn’t even call her back, my shock and disbelief rendering me numb and immobile.
She took a few steps towards the stage and then smiled that pretty smile she always had, “Hello, Lucas” Alana said softly but I couldn’t remove my gaze from the two year old boy beside her, the boy with the dark blonde hair and the deep blue eyes, my eyes.
Chapter 45
Layla
I KNEW IT had been too good to be true. Every time something good was happening with my life, something came along and took it from me; ripped it from me, usually, this time being no exception.
I knew the woman was Lucas’s ex from the way he had stared at her, the woman he had been so in love with before I came along. And I also knew the little boy was Lucas’s, he was the image of Lucas and it was impossible not to see the similarities.
I shovelled everything into my case and dialled Sara.
“Where are you, Lay?” she said as soon as she answered.
“In my room, I’m leaving.”
“I’ll be right up.” she told me and my heart swelled at her protective manner. We had moved on from what had happened and Sara had finally accepted and come to terms with her pregnancy.
I scooped all my toiletries and cosmetics from the bathroom and piled them in with my clothes just as Sara walked in.
“Babe . . .” she whispered as she came up to me and pulled me against her.
I would not cry. I was refusing to, knowing if they came they wouldn’t stop.
“I’m okay, I just wanna get out of here” I told her.
She nodded and zipped my case up for me before she pulled it off my bed and dragged it behind us, knowing I couldn’t lift anything heavy yet, as we locked the room and left.
We were both silent as we descended the floors in the elevator but my mind was far was quiet.
It was screaming, crying, raging, anguished, confused, distressed and agonized all at the same time and I could feel my headache slamming into me rapidly.
My throat closed in and my knees buckled when we exited the lift and my gaze settled on Lucas and Alana.
They were sat together on a long sofa in the foyer.
Her palm was on his cheek and his own hand covered hers and I could see the love and devotion in Alana’s eyes. I couldn’t see Lucas’s as his back was to me but I couldn’t drag my eyes away from his hand over hers.
I was struggling to breathe but I forced air into my lungs and took a step closer to the exit with determination and self pride.
“What the . . .” Sara hissed from beside me and I grabbed her arm before she made her way over to them.
“No Sare, please . . .” I begged. I couldn’t handle a confrontation now, I just wanted to get the hell out of there and die under my duvet.
She sighed as she gave me an agonized look but then nodded and led me through the foyer, both of us hell bent on looking straight ahead.
I didn’t think he had seen me until I heard him shout my name as we made our way through the huge glass main doors.
I didn’t turn, I just kept on moving forward, one step after another until we hit the pavement and Sara passed my case to a taxi driver who then heaved it into the boot of his cab.
“Red . . .” Lucas shouted and I grit my teeth as I turned to him.
“What? Where are you going?” he looked confused and I fought the urge to laugh.
“You can’t have us both, Lucas. I saw the way you looked at her.”
He had the decency to look shamed and I knew then that Alana still held his heart, whether she held all of it or a piece of it, I wasn’t sure, but she still held something of him.
And I knew, to fight against a woman who had his child, would be damn near impossible.
I swallowed before I climbed in the taxi and told the driver to drive, refusing my eyes to look at Lucas, stood by the roadside watching as I left him.
* * *
“What the hell is going on with you?” I asked Mason as soon as he took the chair opposite me in the café where we’d arranged to meet the next day.
He closed his eyes and scrubbed his face with his hands as he groaned, from my question or a hangover I wasn’t sure, but it was both a groan of frustration and resignation and I reached across the table for his hand.
He didn’t answer me but he took my hand in his and squeezed tightly. “How are you, Lay, after last night events?”
I shrugged but glared at him, “Don’t even try and avoid this, Mase. You need to talk to me. You do realise how much you’re hurting Ava, don’t you?”
He sighed again but nodded. “Yeah, I know” he answered quietly and I frowned at him.
“Then what are you doing it for?”
His expression was full of pain and anguish and my heart went out to him when I realised he was really struggling,
“This life, Lay. What the hell am I doing? It’s all going . . . pear-shaped. Everything I do gets turned and twisted. I put my wife and children in danger every day. I put Ava in danger that day with Kenny because of my life. And you . . . you took the repercussions of my business.”
I nodded in understanding but squeezed his hand. “And what will you do if you give it all up?”
He shrugged and looked confused for a moment and I lifted my eyebrows at him. “Mase, Ava knew what you did before she married you. If it was a problem for her, then she wouldn’t have married you, hell, the woman holds her own and if I know Ava, she relishes the life. The twins? Mason, how many children go missing nowadays? They could be playing out and then suddenly disappear. Katie and Georgie are in no more danger than any other child in this shit faced world.”
He regarded me for a moment as my words sank in but then the darkness covered it again, “But, what happened to you Lay, wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for me.”
I scoffed loudly at that. “No, Mase. What happened to me wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for Kenny. And besides, look what could have happened to me with Diablo if it wasn’t for you. There’s good and bad everywhere, Mase, everywhere, no matter what your job or your life entails.”
“What the hell?” he suddenly exclaimed and I frowned at him. “How come a little girl can make everything seem better?”
I smirked at him “I’m not that little, Mase.”
“No you’re not, Little Willow. You have the biggest heart around, and now you need to face up to things and fix it once and
for all. You’ve found your soul mate, fucking fight for him” he commanded.
“If only it were that easy, Mase. She has his child, how the hell do I compete with that?”
He stared at me for a moment before a scowl morphed his face. “You remember years ago when Rebecca told me her child was mine?”
I nodded and looked at him in confusion. How the hell did that help?
“Well, even when I believed her, it never stopped me loving Ava, not one fucking bit. Why do you think because Lucas has a kid with this woman that he’s gonna love you less?”
Oh. Well . . .
“I dunno really, but it was the way they were on that sofa. The way she looked at him and the way he looked at her . . .”
“Lay, babe, he had just discovered the woman had kept his son a secret for two years. She fucked off, left him then turns up two years later with a child in tow. How the fuck would you feel? I can imagine confusion, shock, doubt and insanity are just a few. How do you know what Lucas was thinking? You can’t read his mind Lay, you have to hear it from him.”
He was right, I knew he was but it still didn’t stop the insecurity and hurt flowing through me at the way Lucas had reacted.
He was down on one knee, asking me to marry him for god’s sake, then he just stopped and forgot about me, and I had never felt more like a fool than I had then.
I can still see everybody’s eyes on me as I walked through that room, my humiliation and hurt burning a hole straight through me as they all stared.
“I dunno, Mase,” I told him eventually. “I don’t know what’s gonna happen but I do know you need to get home to Ava and apologise your fucking arse off.”
He grinned mischievously at me “Don’t worry little Willow, what I have in store for Ava; I’ll have her fucking begging and screaming my name.”
I rolled my eyes and flapped him away “Go, before you spill even more details . . .”
He laughed loudly before he threw a twenty pound note on the table, kissed my cheek and disappeared.
* * *
I saw him pull up outside my flat as I sat in the window with my chocolate.
He saw me too as he climbed out and his face lifted to me whilst his eyes asked me to open the door and talk to him.
He had texted me and rang several times over the last twenty four hours but I hadn’t been ready to face him, so I had ignored him, thus bringing him to my door as his next attempt to talk to me.
I nodded to him and climbed off the window and went to open him the door before settling myself back down.
He emerged in the room five minutes later, his dominance and slight anger at me filling the pockets of air in the room; the sheer size of his body also sucking up all the remaining oxygen.
He didn’t say a word, just sat in the chair beside me and we both glanced at each other, both of us wary and upset.
“You gonna tell me why you ran, then refused to answer my calls?” he asked eventually. His ire was evident in his tone and I lifted my brows at him in astonishment.
He sucked in a large breath in an attempt to control his anger but it was still written all over his face.
“Maybe, because you had other things to deal with before me” I told him quite sarcastically and I chastised myself silently at my own tone.
He narrowed his eyes on me, the irritation in them boring through me and into my bones.
“You always come before anything else, Red, you know that.”
I laughed bitterly then. “Is that so Lucas? Like I came before Alana when you were down on one knee and just shut me down, leaving me feeling, as well as looking like a fucking fool.”
He scoffed as he shot out of his chair. “Is that was this is about, cos’ I made you look like a fool when I was confronted with a son I didn’t even know I had?” he spat angrily.
“Oh no, do not twist my words, Lucas. I didn’t say that and you know it. The way you looked at Alana, when you were down on one knee, well it told me and every other fucker in that room, that she was back and you no longer wanted me. I no longer even existed in your mind. That’s why, Lucas, and don’t fucking deny it. I saw it on your bloody face!”
He stomped across to me and brought his face within an inch of mine. “I will fucking deny it, Red, cos’ whatever you think you and everybody else saw, was not what was actually going through my mind at that moment.”
I stood and pushed past him, not liking where this conversation was going but he grabbed my arm and spun me around to face him. “Come on then, Red. Tell me exactly what you saw on my face cos’ I bet it was nothing like what I saw on yours when Diablo died. And Ry, oh, we mustn’t forget how much you loved him, Red” he hissed nastily and my palm connected harshly with his cheek.
“Don’t you dare drag my feelings for Ry into this. Ry is dead and buried Lucas, whether I loved him or not, he is not what matters now, Alana is.”
“And Troy?” he asked with a glare and I frowned in confusion.
“Troy—my son. Is that the real reason for this, Red? Now I have a son it changes how you feel about me?”
Unbelievable.
I stared at him in shock. “My God, Lucas. Do you even know me at all?”
He looked thoroughly chastened then and he turned, groaning loudly as he ran his hands through his hair in frustration.
“This is all a fucking mess” he grumbled and I thoroughly agreed with him.
He kept his back to me but carried on talking. “Alana had an affair with my best friend, for eight months whilst she was with me,” he divulged and I swallowed at his evident pain in their betrayal. “And whatever you might think Red, that kinda crushed any feelings I ever had for her, there and then but . . . but she is obviously the Mother of my child, a child I knew nothing about until last night, and I can’t just push that connection away.”
I nodded even though he couldn’t see me.
“When she . . . when she just stepped out yesterday, my eyes weren’t on Alana, they were on my son, so whatever you think you saw, it definitely wasn’t any emotion for her, it was for Troy, cos’ I knew as soon as I saw him that he was my son.”
I remained silent, letting him tell his story; he needed for me to listen, so I did.
He turned to look at me now and his eyes held so much hurt, that I found myself fighting against my instincts to just wrap him in my arms and comfort him, absorb all the damage and sorrow from him.
“Yes, I won’t deny I was in love with Alana, and I was gonna ask her to marry me until I found her in the bath, naked with my best mate since school, fucking like animals whilst the water slopped all over my bathroom floor.” He took a large inhalation and held me with his eyes, their intensity demanding every part of me.
“And yes, their betrayal hit me hard and I had a meltdown for a few months but only cos’ of the hurt at what they were doing, not because I loved her to the ends of the earth, not like the way I love you, Red. My love for you, it consumes me, every single fucking fragment of me. You’re inside me, your breath is my breath, your soul is joined with mine and your heart, it’s mine Red, every fucking sliver and beat of it. Mine.”
I nodded as I walked slowly towards him and he took my hands as I came to stand before him.
But then I surprised him as I dropped to one knee.
His eyes widened and I could see the pump of his heart hammering against the tight material of his shirt.
“And every breath I take, you breathe; every time my soul shudders, yours does; and every time my heart beats, yours beats along with it because you are inside me also, you own me, Lucas Hunt. You own my breath, my soul and my heart and without you they would all shut down and watch me die, and I’d rather die than lose you. I love you so much and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want you to marry me, Lucas. I want you to be with me until the day I die and then I want you to share the afterlife with me.”
He dropped to his own knees before me and cupped my face. “You are on, Layla Summers, I’ll always be yours
and you’ll always be mine, Red. Always, baby.”
I snivelled like a hormonal teenager as tears rolled down my face and nodded at the man before me.
My man, the man that I knew would love me until the day I left this world and then I knew he would be right behind me, his control and dominance refusing to see us ever separated.
“By the way, baby. Your delightful arse is gonna so connect with my palm tonight. I think we better start counting your misdemeanours. Number one, being so damn beautiful. Number two. . . .”
We never reached number three.
Epilogue
Lucas
OH GOD, THIS was so fucking hard. “I can’t do this.”
“Yes you can, stop being so bloody childish, Lucas.” My Mom scolded and I took a deep breath.
“But, she’s dying in there, Mom. I can’t watch her die.”
“For goodness sake Lucas, man the hell up.”
My brows lifted at my Mother’s words. She had never been one to curse, so I knew I was in trouble when she spat the ‘Hell’ word at me.
“Get in there and be by your wife’s side, Lucas Hunt, before I really lose my temper with you.”
I nodded frantically, knowing this woman would keep her word and thrash the life out of me in the hospital corridor.
Logan smirked at me and I narrowed my eyes on him. “Wait until Sara drags you in here.”
Logan lifted a brow and me and snorted. “Aint no chance, bro. Yeah, I love Sara to bits but . . . nah, no fucking way.”
Logan and Sara had developed a relationship after my thirtieth birthday, two years ago, and they were joined at the hip so I knew Logan’s words were just meant to torment me. I knew it wouldn’t be long before he was stood exactly where I was.
“In. Now!” My Mother barked at me and I jumped at her ferociousness.
I nodded at her again as I pulled in a deep breath and opened the door to hell.
* * *
Layla
“Jesus, fucking, Christ!” I screamed as Lucas held my hand and I squeezed tight. His whimpers at the pain had me scowling at him. “What the hell, Lucas. You wanna swap?”
The NSC Boxset: Heart of Stone Page 149