Page 58 of Carry on Wayward Son

That wasn’t what this moment was for.

I pulled into the cottage driveway and cut the engine. “Let’s go inside.”

She didn’t argue.

As soon as we got through the front door, Koa herded her to the sofa, nudging her down so he could drape himself across her lap. Her arms came around him, her cheek pressing into his fur.

Because I didn’t think she’d accept that kind of physical comfort from me, I moved to the kitchen and filled the kettle without asking, standing in the doorway while it heated.

Her eyes were closed, her breathing steady and controlled. Fine tremors ran the length of her body now that she was away from prying eyes. A release of pressure, of fear. Not all of it. Just bleeding off enough that she could keep going. Keep functioning to do the thing she’d come here to do.

My own hands curled to fists with nowhere to go, no one to tear apart.

The kettle shrieked, and I turned to douse a tea bag.

This woman—this incredible woman—sat there with her dog and rebuilt herself brick by brick with the same focused efficiency she brought to everything else. So when I brought the steaming mug, her shoulders were squared with determination.

“Tea.” I set the mug on the side table within easy reach.

“I’m fine, Jace.”

She didn’t sound fine. She sounded weary to the bone. And why shouldn’t she be? The past few days had to have left her raw, digging into old wounds she no doubt hadn’t intended to share with anyone, least of all me.

“Tea, anyway.”

She tipped her head back against the cushion and looked at the ceiling and said nothing. I sat on the coffee table across from her and waited, giving her the space to continue processing whatever she needed to.

Eventually, Layla heaved a great sigh and kissed Koa on the head, murmuring a command that had him heaving his bulk off the sofa and trotting into the kitchen to his water bowl, job done. She picked up the mug, cradling it in both hands, steady now. Color eased back into her cheeks.

“That’s what we were kept in.”

Her words were so quiet, I almost thought I’d misheard.

“Dog crates,” she clarified. “When they weren’t moving us or using us for something. That’s where we were.”

A chill of rage swept through me as I imagined her throwing herself against the bars the way the dog had this afternoon. Desperate. Terrified. I swore softly. The word fell completely short of what it needed to cover.

She turned toward me with something in her face that wasn’t quite a smile. “Yeah.”

I made myself sit with it instead of going where my brain wanted to go, which was to the men who built operations like the one she was describing, how they worked, and what they were capable of. Because going there right now served nothing and helped no one, and would leave me with even more rage that had nowhere to go. So I stayed in this cottage and looked at this woman and held onto the reality of her.

That she was here. That she’d survived it. That she’d built something out of the other side of the horrors she’d endured.

“I want you to take the rest of the day,” I said. “You’ve been through a lot this week. Last night especially. Let me run Shane Tatum down on my own and⁠—”

“No.” The word came out flat and immediate, the full force of her snapping back into place. “I’m not sitting here while you do the work.”

“Layla—”

“I had a moment.” She held my eyes. There was no apology, no defensiveness either, just clarity. “I’m out of it. That’s how this works. It catches me sometimes, and I come back, and I keep going. That’s what I’ve been doing for years. What doesn’t help is sitting in a cottage waiting for someone else to do something I should be doing alongside them.” She set the mug down. “I need to find Shane Tatum. That’s what helps.”

I looked at her for a long moment. The steadiness she’d rebuilt around herself, piece by careful piece. The absolute certainty of a person who knew what she needed and said it without asking permission. She’d been through things that would have broken most people and had instead made herself into something that didn’t break. She sat here in front of me, telling me to trust that.

I did trust it. I trusted her read of herself more than I trusted my own instinct to wrap her in cotton wool and keep the world back.

I had questions. So many questions accumulating with the slow patience of things I knew I was going to have to ask eventually and also knew this was not the moment for. She wasn’t ready, and the ground wasn’t right, and pushing now would cost something I wasn’t willing to spend.

So I let it go.