Claiming Serenity(82)

“Why are you here?” It was a stupid question, one that Layla thought she should have said, but Donovan seemed shocked, surprised to find her in her own home, hiding in her childhood bedroom. “Why did you leave?”

She opened the door, waved to her father as Donovan rushed into the room, hoping that he wouldn’t insist that she keep the door open. It was a little too late for rules about any man but her brother and father being in her room. The worst damage a man could do, in her father’s eyes, had already been done.

“Don’t let him upset you, sweetheart.” Her father nodded over her shoulder, shooting for a warning at Donovan that he didn’t quite manage and Layla swore she saw something else in her father’s eyes, something hopeful, something he tried to hide from her.

Calm breaths, she told herself. Be strong. She turned to face Donovan, watching him hold the back of his neck. He swallowed thickly, as though he needed to clear his throat before he started interrogating her. “What are you doing…” Layla’s phone chirped an alert and she reached for it, stepping back when Donovan picked it up. “I need that.”

“No, we need to talk.”

Nostrils flaring, she jerked the phone out of his hand, scanning the screen at Mollie’s message to let her know if she needed her there. “Sayo is at the hospital.”

“Sayo is always at the hospital.”

Layla didn’t move her head, just her sharp, squinted eyes as she glared at Donovan. “She’s there telling her cousin goodbye.”

Some of the desperate anger in Donovan’s features relaxed and he fell onto her bed, holding his head in his hands. “I hate hearing that.” Then, looking up at her with his jaw working, he nodded to the spot next to him, looking like he wanted Layla close.

“I’ve been in that bed all day. I’m fine here.”

She wasn’t sure what Donovan’s small grunt, what that tight line that formed his mouth meant. Layla thought maybe he was trying to calm himself, that he needed to look at her, to watch her reaction so he wouldn’t scream at her. “Why did you leave?”

“You know why I left.”

“Look, I know things have been awkward lately…”

“Awkward?” She laughed, shaking her head because it was all she could think to do. Awkward? Was he simple? “Donovan you haven’t touched me, barely spoken to me since that… that night.”

“I got a little freaked out.”

“You wouldn’t have hurt it. I told you that.”

“I also got pissed off because you keep calling our daughter ‘it’.” He stood then, towering over her, stepping so close to her that she could see the small beads of sweat between the stubble of his upper lip. “You aren’t attached. I get that. I get that you want to give her away. I understand all of that.”

“So why ignore me?”

“I… shit, Layla, I have so many damn things in my head right now I can’t focus, I can’t concentrate, I can’t even play the game I love like I want.”

And there was the lie she knew he kept, the small excuse that had been the catalyst to getting out of his home. “You play well enough that you might give New Zealand a shot.”

“That’s not…” he stopped, stepped back from her like he’d just realized she’d unearthed his secrets. “How did you…” Donovan nodded, shot a look to her door, to where her father was beyond that threshold. “He told you.”

“He mentioned it. He wanted to know if I’d go with you.”

Something close to hope, maybe curiosity shifted in Donavan’s eyes and it was then that she realized what he wanted. It was then she was grateful for her father’s disclosure and his willingness to welcome her back home.

“You’d go with me? If I went, you’d come with me?”

God how she wanted to say yes. But what she needed before she could commit to anything was something she knew he was incapable of giving her. She wanted “I love you” she wanted forever. She wanted him to tell her he couldn’t live without her. She wanted promises and emotions and all the things Donovan swore he could never give her.

Those words would never come. Not from him. Donovan was too jaded, too scared, too selfish to say them. She wanted a tomorrow that would never come.

“No,” she finally said, holding her phone tight between her fingers. “I don’t want to move to New Zealand, Donovan. That’s your dream, not mine.”

He moved his head, lips pressed together like whatever he wanted to say needed to be pushed back, kept silent behind his closed mouth.