The Side Effects of Marriage

Chapter 22

Layla bolted upright in the hotel room, hearing the hammering at the door before the click of a lock.

Someone was breaking in. The deadbolt broke easily, and she reached over in the king-sized bed before realizing what she was looking for. And before she realized that the person she was searching for wasn't there.

Hayden.

He'd told her not to wait up for him when she'd left the rehearsal dinner early, saying she was too tired to stay up past eleven pm. He hadn't told her where he was going. She should have cared, but she was honestly past the point of believing that there was anything worth fighting for.

Whatever had existed once between them had been shattered by lies and mistrust and, on Layla's end, a girl with too many facial piercings.

She didn't need him. She didn't need him to protect her from a burglar. They weren't even staying in the same room, anyway, but a conjoining suite with a door that connected the two bedrooms. So why was her gut instinct still to roll over and shake him awake?

The door was shoved open, a male silhouette illuminated in the hallway light briefly before the door slammed shut again, like the eerie sound effect of a low-budget horror movie.

She grabbed anything that could help her, rolling out of bed and staying close to the ground in a low crouch. In her position, it was too hard to reach for a lamp to swing at the intruder. She scrambled, crab-walking over to the wall that led to a balcony.

The intruder advanced, and she caught the faint glint of metal in the moonlight that slanted through the curtains. A gun.

Her hand closed around a cold metal bar: the leg of the ironing board that she had opened this morning to iron her dress. That felt like a lifetime ago. Then she moved her hand an inch further, and found the clothing iron where she had left it.

Trailing her hand along the cheap plastic surface, she touched the cord, and traced it to the iron's plug. Reaching for the wall's electrical socket, she jammed the iron's plug into it, praying that it would go in on the first try. It did, despite her shaky hands and the blinding dark.

"Who's there?" said the intruder, his voice slurred. The tenor of his voice was muffled slightly, and she realized she still wore the earplugs she had shoved in that night to avoid any sounds from neighbours through the thin hotel walls. "Come out, come out wherever you are..."

Her blood ran cold. Puffs of steam hissed from the iron as she latched onto the handle.

Should she knock over the ironing board and use it as a shield from gunfire?

Was this man a shoot first, ask questions later type of guy?

Or should she simply make an escape to the balcony?

She had no time to think when a bullet pierced through the ironing board. A scream erupted from Layla's throat. Waving a hand over the metal surface of the iron, she found that it was searing hot.

The attacker was mere feet away her. She swung the iron at him, unplugging it from the wall with the force of her volley. He hollered in pain, letting her know that she'd hit her mark. The sounds and smell of searing flesh caused her stomach to roil, but she kept her grip on the iron, slamming it down over and over, ignoring the hand that the man reached out to seize her, to push her away, his firearm forgotten on the carpet.

She didn't know how long they stayed there, wrestling on the carpet, locked into a battle with no clear victors. But it could have been seconds or hours later when she heard the knocking on the door.

"This is the Maryland Police Department! Open up!"

Seizing the gun, she tucked it into the waistband of her drawstring pants, shoved the iron back into the closet, and grabbed the connecting door, letting it shut quietly behind her.