Pay Back (The Ferrari Family Book 3) Page 7

  I didn’t really know what to do now. I—

  My phone rang. I suppose answering it would be a good start, if only on the very slim and small hope that it was Layla. But no, it was Antoine.

  “What?” I said when I answered.

  “Well, that’s not a very fun answer,” Antoine said, club music in the background, girls laughing behind him. “Where the hell are you? You just disappeared.”

  “I went home. I am going to bed.”

  I had to speak as straightforwardly and bluntly as possible. If I spoke any other way, I feared how emotional I would sound and how...well, how weak I felt. And while maybe Layla could hear that, Antoine—nor anyone else—could hear that.

  “Bed?” Antoine said. “Pierre, we are at a table surrounded by literal models; it’s me and two other guys and a dozen gorgeous women. No other man is here. We are drunk and laughing and flirting. And you—”

  “I know, Antoine, I am not an idiot,” I said, my voice a little snappy. “I have been to nightclubs before. I have celebrated Miu Miu.”

  “You haven’t celebrated like this,” he said. “It’s your fortieth! Stop being a bitch and come—”

  “That’s enough, Antoine,” I said. He’d won. He’d broken me. “I came face to face with my past tonight, and it slapped me across the face. I have a lot of shit I need to think about and drowning myself in alcohol and some woman I am not going to give two shits about is not going to do that. Do not call me again, enjoy your evening, and talk to me tomorrow.”

  I could have said a lot more, but to someone like Antoine, who probably saw me as the epitome of silent and calm, that might as well have been a chair-throwing, expletive-laden storm from the depths of hell. I had never lost my cool like that, certainly not in a public setting.

  But then again, maybe that was because for the last fifteen years or so, I had refused to feel anything. How could I let myself get so angry if I wouldn’t allow myself to feel joy, love, and passion ever again?

  I put the phone in my pocket and got on an empty elevator. My whole body tensed as if preparing for a fight, but I kept it together in the elevator and in the hallway. And then I got to my room.

  And I punched the bathroom door as hard as I could.

  “Fuck!” I yelled, half in pain from the splinters in my knuckles, half out of the frustration that I was feeling. “You are such a fucking idiot, Pierre. Let yourself be a fucking idiot. What kind of a man are you?”

  What kind of a man am I?

  “I’m a fucking coward…”

  Something about those words unlocked something deep in me that had not stirred in some time. It was hard to put an exact descriptor to it, but it put a lump in my throat, water in my eyes, and a pit in my stomach. It was all of the feelings I had suppressed for so long, containing for the sake of trying to be successful in exterior ways.

  But now that the beast within had awoken, it was time for it to express itself.

  “I’m sorry, Layla…”

  I had more to say. I didn’t want to say it. I was fighting to not say it. But fifteen years of suppression…

  “I’m sorry, Justine,” I said, my voice wavering. “I’m sorry, Tony. I’m sorry, Boris.”

  I hadn’t said those names out loud in literally fifteen years. They had danced around in my mind almost every hour, but I had always suppressed them, always put them to the side so I could focus on work. I had used my stoicism and wit and charm to create distractions.

  No longer.

  “I’m sorry to all of you,” I said, my eyes watering heavily. “I am just...I am just…”

  I had no more strength to say the words. A couple of tears fell down my face, but I could barely even sob. That’s how exhausted I was. The suppressed feelings had finally won the battle to rise to the top, and I had no defenses, no energy, no resources left to deal with them.

  Outside, a storm began to erupt over Paris. I noticed the flashing of lightning, the rumble in my body from the thunder, and the sound of drenching rain coming through, but none of it affected me. I had only the strength to pull myself to the bed. I fell asleep, even as the most horrific storm in Paris in months raged, in the same attire that I had worn to the nightclub.

  * * *

  I awoke the next morning without an alarm at seven a.m. There was no celebration, no feeling of approaching the day with a full night’s sleep. The sleep had not been restful.

  I only felt I had fallen asleep because I had stopped looking at the alarm clock regularly, but that was by no means a reason to believe I had actually fallen asleep. I felt as if I had run a marathon all night for how little sleep I had.

  I thought about going to the gym, but every time a moment came where I’d have to use some muscles just to get out of bed, let alone to lift weights, I felt I lacked the strength to. I didn’t even have that inner strength to whip myself into a frenzy and push through a workout; quite simply, I just had nothing left within me.

  It wasn’t until an hour had passed that I told myself I had to at least eat breakfast, even if I wasn’t going to earn it with a hard workout. I could choose not to gain strength, but to let myself willow away in a hotel bed all day on a Saturday, on a day when even more events were happening…

  I don’t care.

  I couldn’t bring myself to care about Fashion Week, about Antoine’s parties, about chasing all the hot women. It was both too easy and too difficult. Too easy to obtain, too difficult to deal with the fallout.

  Most especially after the names I had uttered last night.

  Still, the grumbling of my stomach was enough to compel me out of bed, and once I made it to the door and walked out, the rest was just a simple procedure. Get to the elevator. Ride it down. Walk to the restaurant. Take a seat. Spot Layla at a table. Smile at the—

  Wait.

  Had I imagined that last part?

  No. I looked over again, and sure enough, there she was. Her head was down, she had headphones in, and she was finishing some food. She looked exhausted and rundown, but who could blame her? After having to deal with my bullshit, I would have been rundown too.

  And then she locked eyes with me.

  There was a fire to them, but there was a certain awareness of that fire. It defied the rest of her body, which was slumped over at the table; it was as if she had had some sort of grand revelation in the previous twelve hours that had energized her, but she hadn’t physically caught up with it yet.

  I had to imagine that that revelation was, “I don’t ever have to speak to Pierre again, and I can be strong for it.” It was my sincere hope that whatever the thought in her mind, whatever the words were that she said to herself, it let her move forward. She deserved better than to have to live with what had happened.

  And then, just as I was getting a sense of her look, she turned her attention back to her food. Understandable. I had one shot and I blew it. I don’t get a fourth or fifth or infinite number of chances.

  I ordered some food and had it laid out in front of me in less than ten minutes, bless the cook who made breakfast. Perhaps not a lot of people had made it down so early on a morning like this. It was easy to get through a Wednesday night, it was easy to get through a Thursday night, but a Friday morning...steam was running short by then.

  I kept my head down and ate my food. It went down a lot more easily than I would have thought, but I knew that my appetite wouldn’t carry over to lunch. As for what I would do the rest of the day, who knew? Probably go home, honestly. I wasn’t going to make any new business deals with everything hanging over my head. I wasn’t going to woo any women. I was just spending money, and while that was by no means a concern, it also wasn’t a cause enough to stay here.

  I was on my last bit of mashed beans when I heard the chair scoot in front of me.

  I never, in a thousand years, would have guessed it would be her.

  Layla.

  I inhaled and pursed my lips. I prepared myself for the worst. I deserved it.

  But a
fter this, there wouldn’t be anything left to be said. We could go our separate ways; hopefully, she would forgive me—for her own sake, not mine—and I could forgive myself. Easier said than done, but this morning had a certain air of finality to it.

  “You said you had your reasons last night,” she said after a long pause. “What are they?”

  Oh, Layla…

  I had admitted these things to myself last night. Did I have the courage to do so to her? Did I have the energy to do so, if I had the courage? Did I believe it was a good idea, even if I had the energy and the courage?

  I looked up into her eyes. We were both attracted and afraid of each other, albeit for different reasons. She was attracted to me for what I could do to her; she was afraid of me for what I had done to her. I was attracted to her for who she could remind me of; I was afraid of her for who she did remind me of.

  I swallowed, tried to find the words, and shook my head. I hoped that she saw the struggle as I tried to find the words, because it didn’t even matter if I had the energy or belief in it being a good idea; I didn’t have the courage to do it. It was too much right now.

  Layla sighed, put her hands on the table, and stopped. Why she hadn’t left yet was something beyond me, and I nervously waited to see what would come of it.

  “You know, Pierre,” she said, pausing for a second. “I don’t care what your reasons are. You did it, and it hurt me so badly.”

  She looked like she was about to cry. What could I say? Surely, she had to have cared. But she wasn’t speaking in a defensive tone. She was just...almost jaded.

  But almost didn’t mean fully. There must have been a reason she had come to this table.

  “I know,” I said. “I know I did. I am just now understanding to what extent. But…”

  Nope. Speaking something of the truth to Layla had not unlocked the ability to speak the entirety of the truth.

  Layla nodded, took a deep breath, and now leaned forward.

  “Did it mean anything to you? At all?” she said, her voice sounding pleading, not angry. “Or was it just a chance to sleep with an American girl?”

  “No!” I said. “No, no, not at all.”

  Did she really think that?

  Well, of course she did, now that I thought about it. What else was Layla supposed to think?

  “It may have only been two days,” I said. “But the magnificence and elegance of those memories are wondrous. The connection beautiful. Alas, I know that my actions were less than admirable.”

  “Slightly,” Layla said, folding her arms.

  I bit my lip. Did I dare to tell her the truth? Did I dare to tell her that I had dreamed of those two days many times over, especially as I saw her ascension in the wine industry? Did I admit that I admired her from afar, how perhaps my actions had been a means to make her untouchable, reached only in my dreams and in my fantasies?

  “You were not meaningless.”

  It was as much as I could say. It was all the courage I could muster. The truth would need more time to gain momentum in me to admit, because right now, there wasn’t anything in favor of it.

  Layla stood up, sighed, and lingered for a second. Even now, even with her as angry as she was, even as much as she probably hated my guts, I could not help but admire her beauty and elegance. There was a certain smoothness to her curves and a certain aura to her presence that made it impossible to hate her or wish she were gone. And if you could just say that, maybe then things would not be so bad.

  “Are you leaving?” I asked in what I hoped was not an accusatory tone.

  “What, you think I’m here for pleasure?” she said, but there was something about her tone that had softened. “I came here for work. It’s Friday. Work will run all day.”

  “And tonight?”

  I had no idea why I asked that question. It was not something that came out instinctively. It was almost like...like a part of me that I didn’t want to recognize as being there had asked the question, not me.

  “I don’t know,” Layla said. “Might hang around here some. We’ll see.”

  I nodded. She whirled around and left without looking back.

  That did not seem like her giving me another chance. I didn’t deserve another one, most especially for someone whom ultimately I’d only been with for a brief period of time. It wasn’t like I had married her and was trying to win her back.

  But I had to acknowledge that I knew where I was going to be spending my evening, and it was not going to be at whatever party Antoine would try to invite me to.

  Chapter 9: Layla

  There was a part of me, even as I sat across from Pierre, that felt I was doing quite possibly the dumbest thing I had ever done in my life.

  By sitting across from him, by asking him these questions, I was inviting something in. What, I didn’t know—or maybe I didn’t want to admit it. But the status quo of having told him to fuck right off and choosing to never engage him again was more than enough for me to move forward; I hadn’t woken up this morning with the scalding desire to understand him.

  And yet, as I saw him poke at his breakfast, looking frankly miserable and downtrodden, I couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t help but want to know what was going through his mind, what I could do to understand. Maybe, somehow, if I understood what had made him act as he had, I could find it in me to forgive myself.

  I hadn’t gotten any answers, but I felt like I had gotten some clues.

  I’d always made Pierre out in my mind to be a sex-addicted French asshole who used women for pleasure and orgasm, and to some extent, the way he’d tried to play it cool last night had lived up to that point. If I went only by a transcript of what was said, it would have seemed like Pierre had played the part of politician, saying a lot of words without a lot of actual meaning.

  And yet, I hadn’t interacted with him over email. I’d seen him face-to-face. I saw the pain in his eyes, heard the quiver in his voice, felt the pain that came from him as he spoke. There was a realness and sincerity to his words that I had never before heard from Pierre, an honesty that had me wondering where the fuck it was before.

  Well, maybe if we crossed paths again tonight, I could explore it further.

  I got back to my hotel room needing to quickly change for another day’s worth of meetings. The conversation with Pierre had not taken that long, but my sleeping in and my slow start to the day risked me being late to my first meeting. Fortunately, it was amazing how quickly anyone could shower, clean off, and get dressed when under the constraint of time. I think I finished it all in under fifteen minutes, and no one would be any the wiser.

  But a rush did not end the blazing thoughts in my mind. I really needed someone to unload my thoughts to, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be Pierre.

  I thought about my brothers. Nick was absolutely asleep at this hour; with the Giants in the thick of the playoff race, I needed to give him all the space he needed to sleep, recover, and focus. Even when I was back in the Bay Area, his focus was essentially only on his wife, his daughter, and his game.

  Leo...I thought Leo was misunderstood by most, but that didn’t mean instead of being a punkass rebel he was secretly the Dalai Lama. He had some growing up to do and wouldn’t be useful here.

  Perhaps Brett.

  But it was also, what, after two in the morning over there?

  A text wouldn’t hurt, though. Jokingly, I sent a message over, “Hey, asshole, having fun at the winery without me?” I put the phone down and went back to putting my clothes on.

  I had gotten fully dress except for my shoes when my phone buzzed. It couldn’t possibly have been him; not at this hour in the Bay Area. Clara might have aged out of the “wake up every thirty minutes” phase, but that didn’t mean that he had magically gone back to a night owl schedule.

  I picked up my phone. I’ll be damned. “Are you dead? You never reach out.”

  It was the most typical Brett response possible. Smartass and a little cocky, with a hint of
concern and connection. Though I usually hated phone calls, for once, I wanted to hear a brother’s voice.

  “So...are you dead?” Brett said, his voice not nearly as groggy as I would have guessed.

  “Well, this is me speaking to you, right? Not some ghost.”

  “I don’t know, it’s two-thirty in the morning on a Thursday; I could be hallucinating all of this.”

  “If you were hallucinating this, don’t you think your mind would create a slightly nicer Layla? Not one that called you asshole by text?”

  “Eh, I wouldn’t know you any other way.”

  We both shared a gentle laugh at that.

  “So what the hell’s going on?” Brett said, his words casual but his tone asking if I needed help. “Did you party too hard with the French? Are you going to adopt a stupid accent when you get home?”

  “No more stupid than your frat bro voice,” I said. “Well…”

  Brett and I were probably the two closest siblings in the family. Nick had spent so much of his time playing sports, it was hard for him to be around us as we were, and Leo had his own issues. But that didn’t mean that we dropped our guard entirely and opened up on everything. If anything, such an act would have raised more questions than supplied more answers.

  “Well what, are you going to start saying bonjour to customers?”

  “No, nothing like that,” I said. “Paris has just been a little harder than usual.”

  “Are they even snootier than usual?”

  I chortled with a laugh as I left my room.

  “No, Brett, the French are fine,” I said. I drew in a deep breath. “You’ve wanted to know why I sometimes get so angry whenever someone talks about France? Well, it’s—”

  In the background, I suddenly heard a sharp cry, like a child who suddenly got stung by a bee. Seconds later, full-scale crying happened.

  “Sorry, Layla, sorry, Clara’s been sick with a fever,” he said. “I just never went to sleep tonight knowing this would happen. Can I call you back?”

  I couldn’t fault Brett for focusing on his role as a father. Hell, someday, I’d have to focus on being a mother, and would I be available at two-thirty for phone calls? Maybe I should have given him more credit than I was right there.