Worth The Battle (Heaven Hill Series) (4 page)

“I’m sure you did, but I’m not pacifying you. We’ve been friends for years, Layne. Do you think I would have kept this going over a damn
ocean
if I felt bad for you?”

He shrugged and turned so that he didn’t face her anymore. “I’m sure it was good publicity.”

“Don’t insult me, Layne. It pisses me off. You know I never told anybody about our relationship after that banquet. The only people that knew about it were people that were close to me. I didn’t use you in any way. I was too scared to. Scared that they would target you. I did everything that I could to protect you.” She got up and walked over to him, touching him on the shoulder.

She must have been quieter than she thought because in the blink of an eye, he had her on the ground, his body over hers, her hands trapped at her side. Breathing heavily, she looked him in the eyes. “That was uncalled for.”

“That’s what happens when you fucking sneak up on me. Another residual effect from being overseas.” He got up off her and sat on his bed.

“That doesn’t scare me.”

“Then you’re a damn fool. I don’t know why I agreed that it would be a good idea for you to come here. Much less sleep in the same room as me. I’m a live wire.”

“You’re not going to hurt me, and I want you to stop talking like you’re going to.”

“Then stop talking like you don’t pity me.”

She rolled her eyes, getting frustrated. “Think about it, Layne. I could have gone anywhere in this world to get away from the scandal that’s about to erupt. I didn’t. I came to bum-fuck Kentucky because this is where you are. You, out of everyone I’ve ever known, make me feel the safest. Don’t act like our friendship doesn’t matter. It does.”

“I’m not saying that it doesn’t,” he argued.

“Saying that I’m your friend out of pity says our friendship doesn’t matter.”

They were quiet after those words left her mouth, both of them lost in their own thoughts. Finally, Layne spoke.

“Sorry. I’m kind of rough when it comes to certain things, and I really don’t know how to be any other way. I’ve always wondered why you picked me.”

“I just did,” she whispered. “Even though you smiled and looked happy in the video, I could see in your eyes that you weren’t happy. I could see you needed a friend, and so did I.”

“I did,” he admitted, swallowing hard. “I still do.” Those words were hard to say. The admittance about killed him.

“Then don’t turn your back on me. Let me be here for you.”

That was so hard for him to do with people besides the members of this club. He didn’t really have any female friends. Bianca and Meredith didn’t count as far as he was concerned. Since he had come back from Iraq, he hadn’t even allowed himself to spend the night in the same bed as a woman. Having her here scared him.

“I want you to be my friend, but I have to warn you. I could hurt you.”

“You won’t,” she assured him. “I know you won’t.”

He wasn’t sure, and that was the worst feeling in the world. The happiness he felt when she had decided to turn to him for help was now replaced with an overwhelming anxiety that he would do something to run her off. Mix that with the fact that just being around her made him want to dig his fingers into her hair and tilt her head back so he could bury his mouth against her throat, and he knew the two of them were a deadly combination.

“Being mean to me isn’t going to run me off, ya know. I deal with much worse than you’re giving me every day. Producers, directors, tabloid magazine writers—they are assholes. You’re just a guy trying to protect others from himself.”

She was right; he was trying to protect her from himself. “I just don’t know what I’m capable of. The only people I’ve allowed myself to be around are outlaws and whores, to be perfectly honest with you. I don’t know how to be around the public at large.”

Very delicately, she took his hand. She didn’t hold it, but she let it rest in hers, offering him just a tiny comfort. “Then I’ll do what I’ve done every day since you shipped off to the sandbox.”

Those words made him curious. “What’s that?”

A soft smile played on her lips. “Pray for you. I’ve done it every day. It started out as a prayer that you would come home, then as the days got closer to you being done; it was that you would come home safe. After a while, it was that you would sound normal when I talked to you again on the phone, and lately it’s been that you wouldn’t turn me away. Now, I’ll pray for peace, because it’s obvious that you need it. Something is eating away at you.”

It was, but it wasn’t something that he could put a finger on. It was a restlessness in his body, a churning in his gut, a ringing in his ears when he was given a few moments to himself. He had to get a grip on it.

“I won’t bug you about it, just like I don’t want you to bug me about what I’m doing here.”

“That’s fair,” he answered. “But you’re going to have to give me the whole story soon. If you want me to protect you, you’re gonna have to be honest with me.”

Those were the words she had been waiting on. “And if you want me to be honest with you, you’re gonna have to be honest with me. Friends are honest, friends help each other, and friends don’t put up with other friends’ bullshit.”

A rare smile tilted up the corners of his mouth. It stopped right before it became a full one, but she took that little expression and tucked it away in her pocket for later. Maybe, just maybe, the two of them could figure this relationship of theirs out.

Chapter Four

T
yler grunted loudly when Layne landed a well-timed punch to his gut before backing away against the ropes of the boxing ring. “Give me a minute,” he heaved.

“What’s wrong, old man?” Layne taunted.

The only person that was allowed to taunt Tyler like that was Layne while they boxed. Not many people did anything better than the new vice president, but Layne flat out kicked his ass when it came to boxing. That was the only reason Tyler gave him any leeway.

“Not old, you’re just hitting hard today.” Tyler bent at the waist, trying to get air into his lungs.

Immediately, Layne stood up straight. “Am I? Sorry, sir.”

“How many times do I have to tell you to stop with the sir bullshit? I’m a superior, but you ain’t in the Army anymore. You start with that, and I’ll beat the shit out of you just for the hell of it,” Tyler threatened. He wasn’t exactly sure he
could
beat this younger man up, but he absolutely hated the way Layne reverted back sometimes. He no longer had a contract signed with the government over his head, and it was important to make Layne remember that.

Putting his gloved hands behind his head, Layne walked over to the other side of the boxing ring and leaned against the ropes. So many thoughts rushed through his head. He was off balance, and sometimes that could be detrimental to him. “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he told the big man across the ring.

“Now you’re just gonna piss me off.” Tyler lifted himself up off the ropes and walked over to where Layne sat on one of them. Usually his height advantage intimidated people, but he could tell it didn’t this time. “You didn’t hurt me, you winded me. If you hurt me, I’d let you know.”

Layne nodded, swallowing roughly against the panic that was beginning to seize his throat.

“Are you having trouble with Jessica being here?”

His eyes widened as he looked up at the larger than life Native American. It was highly unusual for him to check on others like this. That is, unless you were a certain female about 5’3”, 140 pounds, had dark hair, and a necklace around your neck.

“Kind of.”

Tyler sighed and had a seat on the mat. “Do you want to talk about it? I’m not gonna pretend I even know what the fuck to say to you. But, as your friend, and your superior…I don’t like the look in your eyes. Liam has a new baby, Jagger’s got a new love, and Steele is as busy as ever. So if you need someone to talk to, I’m making myself available to you.”

His first instinct was to be flippant. “It’s not like I’m going to eat my own gun.”

“Nobody said you were. In fact, if you were gonna do that, you probably would have done it when you first came back. Don’t be a shit. I’m being serious here.”

“I just get this overwhelming sense of panic sometimes. It normally comes around women because I’m afraid I’m going to hurt them. I got back from Iraq three years ago. In three years I haven’t had a woman in my bed for longer than it took to get my rocks off. I don’t hang out with women, the exception being the few who are around here all the time. I just don’t trust myself,” he admitted.

“Why?”

“There’s things I can’t talk about, that I won’t talk about. At night I still have dreams.”

Tyler interrupted. “That doesn’t mean you’re going to hurt someone.”

“But do you know how many men from my unit have?”

“Those men aren’t you.”

“They could be, they so easily could be, and I just don’t trust myself,” Layne whispered.

The words he spoke were telling. This was the man who never asked why when he was told to do something; his hand never shook when he held a gun on another person. There was something else going on here.

“Is it just with women? Or is it this woman?”

Tyler was too observant for his own good. “All of them, but this one especially. This one means more than the rest of them combined.”

“She knew you before you went to Iraq, right?”

Getting up, Layne took the gloves off his hands and threw them down on the mat before running his hands over his wet scalp. “She did.” He blew out a deep breath. “Not many people did, but she did.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“I’m not that same guy. I came back completely different, and if she spends enough time with me, she’s going to see that. Hell, she already does.”

It was obvious that this was weighing heavily on Layne’s mind. That made it important to Tyler, but he had to wonder when exactly he had become the father-figure head for all of these young men. It made his palms twitchy and made him nervous to not steer them wrong. The only thing he could do was give Layne advice from his own experiences. “Who stays the same, Layne? We all grow, we all change, my brother.”

“Like this?” He put his hands on his own chest. “Sometimes I feel like I want to rip the skin off my body—it’s so suffocating.”

“Look,” Tyler shifted his legs and motioned for Layne to have a seat next to him on the mat, “the only thing I can tell you is from my experience, and I’m not going to pretend like I have any kind of experience with what you’re dealing with. While I have seen, done, and been a part of some crazy shit in my life, I’ve never been overseas with the Taliban chasing my ass. Please don’t think that I’m comparing myself to you.”

“Even if you were, you’re a great big motherfucker, I think I’d let you get by with it.” Layne made a rare joke.

Not able to help himself, Tyler chuckled. “You keep that attitude with me. Seriously though, like I was saying…we aren’t the same people any of us were a few years ago. Do you think that our life choices haven’t affected each of us? Personally, Meredith’s rape affected me in ways I’m still just beginning to come to grips with. I look at women differently; I look at my friends differently. It affected every part of my life. It’s not like tomorrow I’m going to wake up and feel like everything is a-fucking-okay with every part of it. I still get angry, and I still want to kill the bastard one more time. I have good days and bad days, just like she does.”

The silence between the two of them really was deafening, Layne could hear it echoing in his ears as he flipped the words over and over in his brain. “I feel defective in some way.”

“You aren’t,” Tyler told him again.

Shutting off the part of his brain that wanted to share these feelings with another human being, Layne put his wall up. “You know what, just forget it. You’re never going to convince me that something’s not wrong with me. So just stop it.”

The tone he used was that of a bratty teenager, and Tyler wanted to scream. Instead he did what he figured any father did that was worth his salt and brought out the disappointed shame. “I just told you not to ‘sir’ me, but you can damn well guarantee that if you take that flippant, know-it-all, smartass tone with me again, I’ll jerk a knot in your ass so fast that your head will spin. I’m trying to help you, and if you don’t want that help—then that’s fine, but don’t throw my goodwill back in my fucking face. You got that?”