Page 100 of Layla

Tim shrugs. “I see a shrink out there, good guy, helps me a lot. But I try to come home for this every month or so.” He nods up at the church. “I know some of the guys, so it’s good to see them. And it’s like he said. It helps.”

Well, shit. I just stare at my friend, kind of in awe. He had told me that he’d gotten help for his issues, but I had no idea he was so open about it, going to a support group every month. With people he knows. I can’t imagine myself ever doing something like that.

It’s actually really fucking brave.

“You know, it’s been really hard for me, watching you go through all this,” Tim says in a quiet voice. “Not knowing what to say to make it better for you. Wishing I could help.”

I clear my throat, feeling shitty. “I’m sorry, man.”

He waves his hands. “Not looking for an apology. I’m just saying, it sucks to watch a friend suffer. So that got me thinking—what would you do if one of your friends was having a tough time after their deployment?”

I open my mouth and then close it again, unsure of where he’s going with this.

Tim gestures up towards the building where Damon just disappeared. “If Damon came to you after we got home and said he was having flashbacks and he couldn’t sleep, what would you do? Would you tell him to just get over it? Tell him that he’s stuck with the nightmares? That there’s no point in getting help? That’s he’s broken and fucked up?”

My throat feels thick again. “Of course not.”

Tim gives me a look like I’m the dumbest asshole on the planet. And maybe I am. “Of course you wouldn’t,” he agrees. “You wouldn’t say that to me, either. So why in the hell do you say it to yourself?”

I have no response for that. Tim claps a hand to my shoulder. “You went through some rough shit. That doesn’t make you weak. But if you keep hiding from it your entire life, letting it control you, then I’m sorry, friend.That’swhat would make you a coward.”

Then he leans a little closer, his suddenly fiery eyes fixed on mine, and I realize a weight is slowly lifting from my shoulders. His voice is low when he speaks, full of conviction I can feel in my bones. “And Johnny Whitmore is no fucking coward. So, stop acting like one.”

* * *

Tim dropsme off at home. He offers to come in and help with my dad, but I decline. I need some time to try to get my head straight. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says.

“You don’t have to get back for work?”

He rolls his eyes. “Johnny, I’m here as long as you need me.” Before I can even think about getting emotional over that, he grins. “Hopefully I’ll be giving you a ride to the airport soon, because you really need to get your head out of your ass and get back to your woman.”

I shake my head, climbing out of the car. “Or, you know,” he calls after me as I start up the front walk, “if you’re not interested anymore maybe I could give her a call. She’s pretty hot.”

I flip him off over my shoulder but I’m chuckling as I enter the house. My laughter vanishes when I see my dad in the living room, exactly where he had been when I left, still passed out.

“Dad,” I say, shaking his shoulder. “You should go on up to bed.”

His eyes snap open, red and bleary as they fix on my face. “Johnny?” he mumbles. “You came home?”

I blow out a frustrated breath. “I’ve been home for almost a week.” I pull on his arm, trying to get him to stand. “You’re just too shitfaced to remember it.”

“Aw, Johnny,” he slurs as he stands, stumbling a little next to me. I put my shoulder up under his arm and begin the slow walk to his room. “Don’t give me such a hard time.”

“Maybe Ishouldgive you a hard time,” I mutter, thinking about Tim and the way he’s refused to let up on me. “Maybe it’s time for you to make some changes.”

He snorts loudly as we reach his bedroom. He doesn’t even bother to take off his jeans, just face plants forward into the bed. “Change,” he mumbles against the mattress. “People don’t change, Johnny. Not really.”

I stare down at him as he begins to snore.People don’t change.

I believed that, once. But here’s the thing—I have plenty of evidence, in my own life, that shows that he’s wrong. Look at Tim. Look at Damon. Both of them took a shitty situation and made something better out of it. Made themselves better.

Hell, look at Layla. After what she came from, what she went through in her childhood, no one would blame her if she shut down. If she turned to the same kind of distractions that had ruined her mother. Instead, she fucking made something out of her life. She followed her dream and, like so few people manage to do, she made it happen.

I think about the way she was with me. How she slowly opened up, little by little, becoming more free. More trusting. More open.

Layla Perry is proof that people can change.

And I’d much rather be like her than the man laying passed out in front of me.