Page 34 of Rescue

“Yeah, you just bum off me or James.”

“Every once in a while. You’re the one with the habit.”

She shrugs. “I’m not the singer.”

I laugh, accepting her lighted cigarette. “I love how your concern has nothing to do with my health and everything to do with my voice.”

She grins at me. “What can I say, babe, you’re my meal ticket.”

We stand in silence for a few minutes, passing the cigarette back and forth. “I slept with Lennon,” I eventually say, not really needing any prompting to talk to her about what’s been bugging me now that the boys aren’t around.

If she’s surprised she doesn’t show it, merely nodding to indicate she heard me.

“Last week. In Newcastle.” I take another drag of the cigarette, thinking about how he came outside the hotel to see James and me smoking. How I immediately recognized the anger and frustration in his eyes. That’s what led me to send James inside without me. I didn’t have any intention of sleeping with the guy, at least not then. But I found I just couldn’t look at those eyes and do nothing. I was sure my own eyes have looked that way countless times.

“How was it?”

I release a breath that’s more than a little shaky and grab the cigarette from her. “Amazing.”

She gives me her most sly grin. “Really?”

I nod, staring out at the depressing gray parking lot.

“It’s always the quiet ones,” she says.

“You have no idea.”

“I’m confused. Amazing sex usually puts you in agoodmood.”

“There’s nousuallyabout sex like this,” I murmur.

She waits for me to elaborate. “James caught me. He… didn’t approve.”

Layla makes a scathing noise at the back of her throat. “James is altogether too involved in your decisions.”

“He worries about me.” It’s true. Ever since the thing with my stalker, Randy… I close my eyes at the thought. Funny how after all this time I can’t even think his name without a physical reaction.

“We all worry about you, Haylee,” Layla says, and I look over at her, surprised. She’s staring hard at the far end of the parking lot, and I get the feeling she’s intentionally avoiding my gaze. I swallow, a slow trickle of guilt moving through me. “But we also trust you to make your own decisions. And it’s about time James did the same.”

“I don’t know that my decisions are all that trustworthy,” I say, thinking about the drinking Lennon and I did at the pub before stumbling back to the hotel. It wasn’t that I regretted what happened. But how many times have I found my direction at the bottom of a bottle?

It wasn’t like that with Lennon, a voice in my head whispers, and I have a sudden flash of him in bed, looking down at me, his eyes so intense I felt like they might burn me. In that moment, I felt so focused, so sharp, that I almost couldn’t believe there had been any alcohol involved in the first place.

“You like him.” Layla’s voice is knowing, with a slight undercurrent of surprise.

I look at her with raised eyebrows. “I wouldn’t have slept with him if I didn’t like him.”

“No, you reallylikehim.” She peers at my face in that searching way of hers. “And it wasn’t just the amazing sex.”

“You’re being silly.” I try to ignore the warmth spreading to my cheeks. “I hardly know him.”

“You spent that entire flight talking to him.”

At her mention of the flight, my mind immediately goes back to the way he looked that night. It was dim in the cabin as everyone slept around us. But Lennon’s eyes were clear to me even in the darkness, steady and focused on my face as I told him about my mother.

“He’s a nice guy.” I turn my overheated face away from Layla.

She’s quiet for a moment, taking a long drag from the cigarette. “It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, you know.”