Claiming Serenity(19)

“I haven’t touched her, not for months and…” It only took one sharp glance in his direction to shut Donovan up.

Normally, Layla would have loved seeing the smug bastard reduced to a shame-faced idiot, but she didn’t love it then. She didn’t love anything about that night. Layla got no satisfaction out of her prank landing hard and lasting on Donovan’s skin. She felt stupid for reducing herself to the stupid games she and Donovan had been playing for years. Just because she hated how he made her feel. She hated herself for letting him touch her. She hated herself more for thinking about him, wondering when she’d taste him again.

“I’m sorry, Sayo. You’re right. You’re absolutely right,” Donovan said, all the fire and anger extinguished from him completely. “I’m sorry you had to see this.”

Layla hated him, hated herself for not apologizing first. To Sayo. To her friends. Never, ever to Donovan. Nope.

“Sayo—” Layla tried, but silenced herself when Mollie and Autumn pulled Sayo away from them, when Declan nodded for Quinn to follow him out of the door.

She watched her friends leave her behind, her gaze trained onto each step they took, on the glint of moonlight shining off of Sayo’s messy hair.

“This is the last time you do this shit, so help me God.”

Layla closed her eyes, pulled her arms around her waist, holding herself tight so she wouldn’t be tempted to slap Donovan. It was pointless and Sayo was right, it had been very juvenile, but damn if Layla couldn’t help herself.

Logically she knew this was her fault. She had broken the truce, had given in to that small voice that reminded her that she and Donovan hated each other, that they would never be together again. But logic, reason, got twisted with anger, with shame as Donovan stood behind her, as she smelled his clammy skin that reminded her of the pitch.

She didn’t bother glaring at him or remarking on his subtle threat. Layla stepped back, grabbed her purse from the table and didn’t offer even the smallest glance at Donovan as she left the café.

Predictably, he wouldn’t let her get away that easily. But Layla figured if she manage to make it to her car, to hold her tongue long enough, then maybe the fire would leave Donovan completely. He had to know she wasn’t in the mood to argue with him.

“That’s it? You don’t have anything to say?”

He was walking backward, following her through campus, to the courtyard parking spot she’d left her mom’s two year old Mercedes GL Class in. She was almost there, had her keys out, threaded between her fingers and the remote depressed to unlock the door when Donovan stepped in front of her, stilling her with his hands on her shoulder.

“You did this. Again. You did this and now you’re quiet? Why? You feeling like shit?”

Layla closed her eyes, took a long breath in and out, tried to keep that frustrated, lost look on Sayo’s face present in her mind. But Donovan made it damn hard.

“Get out of my way.” She sidestepped but he seemed intent on getting in her face, forcing some stupid reaction from her that she knew would kill the calm Sayo’s shaming had given her.

“Just tell me why. That’s all I want to know. Why’d you start this shit up again?” When Layla ignored him, moved to her driver’s side door, Donovan stepped back, acted as though he’d let her leave without reviving the war they’d been battling since they were kids.

Yeah. Like that was going to happen.

“Run off like a good little girl. Go home and lick your wounds and in the morning go kiss your friends’ ass. I hope it works. God knows they’re the only people that can tolerate your self-absorbed, bratty ass.”

Layla let him take two steps. She let him get just feet away from her car before the dam broke and that shame, the thick guilt Sayo had leveled at her, evaporated with the snap of her temper.

The pain of her key biting into her palm as she squeezed it, didn’t register. Layla didn’t care that there were people along the sidewalk, joggers and couples who slowed when Donovan’s loud voice interrupted the quiet.

She really didn’t care that she knew how much Donovan hated what was about to leave her mouth. She didn’t care that he’d knocked Landon Rogers out cold in ninth grade when he spouted the same thing to Donovan that she was going to say now.

Layla just didn’t care and when she spoke, she made sure her voice carried, that the nosy loiterers around them could hear perfectly well what she told Donovan.

“Fuck. You.”

Donovan slowed mid-step and Layla didn’t care that he turned, that the ugly snarl returned to his lips, that the bright flush that crept up his neck had nothing to do with the stain on his skin.