Page 48 of Carry on Wayward Son

I’d seen it before, in people who’d been through things that rewired the calculus of threat and response. The reaction that lived below the level of decision-making, in the body’s own memory.

“It’s okay,” I said. “You handled it.”

“I caused a scene.”

“You caused a very brief scene that he entirely deserved.” I studied her profile. “The way you moved. That wasn’t just your dad teaching you to protect yourself.”

She was quiet for a moment. “No,” she said finally. “It wasn’t.”

She didn’t offer more. I didn’t ask. I started the engine, pulled out of the parking lot, and drove back toward her cottage through the quiet December village. Christmas lights twinkled in my periphery as I thought about Layla’s face in the moment before she’d let the man go. The look of someone who had gone somewhere involuntarily and was finding their way back. I thought about everything I didn’t yet know about her and everything I was increasingly certain I wanted to.

Twenty-Four

LAYLA

Koa met us at the door.

Not his usual dignified tail wag and polite check-in. He pushed straight into my legs the moment I crossed the threshold, whining low in his throat, his whole body pressed against me in the way he only did when something had registered as wrong. I dropped my hand to his head, and he shoved his nose into my palm and held it there.

“I know,” I said. “I know. I’m okay.”

He didn’t believe me. He had better instincts than that.

Jace closed the door behind us and stood for a moment, not crowding me, but letting me know he was present. I set my bag on the table and stepped out of the heels and tried to find the floor under my feet. It seemed less solid than usual.

“I’m sorry I blew the dinner.” I’d said it in the truck, but I was compelled to repeat myself. As if saying it enough times would minimize what had happened.

“You didn’t blow anything.”

“I put a man’s face into a table in the middle of a restaurant.” Without a thought. Without hesitation. Muscle memory took over before conscious thought could intervene. And I knew under the same circumstances, I’d probably do it again. Because it was one of the things I’d trained for over endless hours and years.

“He put his hands on you without your consent.” Jace’s voice was even, unhurried. “I don’t see anything inappropriate in what you did. The scene he caused by grabbing you in the first place is on him.”

“Jace.”

“I mean it.” He moved to the kitchen, not making a thing of it, and I heard him opening cabinets. “Do you want a drink?”

“I don’t drink.” Because I didn’t do things that loosened my control, my awareness. Not when staying sharp was the only thing that had kept me alive this long. Apparently, I’d done a good enough job at dinner that he hadn’t noticed the level of wine in my glass never lowered.

Whatever Jace thought of that, he kept it to himself. Instead, after a beat, he suggested, “Tea?”

I stared at him. This man. He was already checking the cabinet above the kettle, matter-of-fact about it, like making tea for a woman in a semi-formal dress who’d had a dissociative episode in an upscale restaurant was entirely within the normal parameters of his evening.

“Yeah,” I said. “Tea would be good.”

I sat on the sofa, and Koa climbed half into my lap with the complete disregard for his own size that he employed in crisis situations. I let him. I put both arms around his neck and pressed my face into the thick ruff of his fur and stayed there while the kettle heated and Jace moved around the small kitchen with the quiet efficiency of someone who was giving me space without leaving me alone in it.

It was a strange thing, watching a man like him do something as ordinary as making tea. He’d found the mugs and the tea bags, and he stood with his back to me while the water came to temperature, his suit jacket draped over the back of a kitchen chair, his shoulders easy, entirely unbothered by the silence. I watched him and thought about the restaurant and the weight of the man’s hand where it had landed on my shoulder. How my body had responded before my brain had any say in the matter at all.

I hadn’t lost it like that in years. Not since the early days, when every unexpected touch was a trigger and I was still learning what my own nervous system had become. I’d worked so hard to get past it. To build the reflexes into something controlled, something purposeful, something I chose rather than something that chose me.

Being here had undone some of that work. I’d known it would. I’d come anyway.

Jace brought the mug over and sat on the sofa beside me, not close enough to crowd, and held it out. I nudged Koa over and took it. The warmth soaking through the ceramic helped.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I just attacked a man in a restaurant.” I wrapped both hands around the mug. “What do you think?”