XXXVI
• • •
Layla's POV ***
"When are you back?" I asked Ashton as he twirled his keys around his finger. He tried to shake Jake off of his leg, but he didn't let go.
"Few weeks. Then you have me for a whole two months," he replied with a smug smile.
"Oh, joy," I commented sarcastically and he laughed.
"Jake," he said softly, ruffling the the top of Jake's head as he kept his arms tightly looped around Ashton's leg. "You gotta let go bud," Jake finally let go, and Ashton knelt down to be at his level. Jake frowned as he threw his arms around him, and Ashton returned the hug. "I'll only be gone for a bit-"
A knock on the door cut him off, and all of our attentions snapped over to it. I glanced at the two of them before walking over and opening it. My eyes widened when I saw Eli. I didn't remember his face getting hit too much by Ashton, but the abundance of cuts riddling his soft skin and the black eye he sported suggested differently.
I swallowed the lump in my throat at seeing what my brother had done to him, and tried not to think about the fact that he hadn't particularly been planning on stopping, either. Eli's eyes were wide when he saw me, too, looking a little nervous to be talking to me. But then his eyes looked behind me to where Ashton was still with Jake.
Jake smiled and went to trot over to greet Eli, but Ashton put his hand on his chest to stop him. He looked at Ashton slightly confused before Ashton stood up, glaring coldly at Eli.
"Y-you're still here," Eli commented, clearly having expected him to be back at school by now. Ashton didn't reply as Eli looked down to the floor. I noticed Ashton's eyes flicker with guilt momentarily when Eli wasn't looking, the damage and severity of his punches worse than we both had thought.
"I'm leaving now. You should, too," Ashton spoke, his voice deep. I watched as he walked away from Jake and towards us. He didn't so much as offer Eli a glance as he walked through the door, purposely bumping his shoulder into his as he passed him. I sighed disapprovingly at him before he called out a half-assed goodbye to me over his shoulder.
Eli had hid it from Ashton, but I saw him wince in pain when they bumped together. He didn't look back up until he heard Ashton's car drive away. The underlying pain in his eyes made my heart sink in my chest.
"Can I, um," he started, his voice slightly more hoarse than usual. I shook off my thoughts as I peeled my eyes away from his split lip and opened the door wider.
"Yeah- yeah come in," I told him, and he stepped inside, looking over at Jake as I shut the door.
"Eli?" Jake questioned up at him with baby eyes, as if asking permission to greet him. Eli cracked a small smile and knelt down, bringing Jake in for a hug. Jake hugged him back, letting his signature beaming smile immediately spread on his face at being able to hug him again.
Eli winced again slightly as he stood back up, and I marched in front of him, looking up at his face once again observing the marks. I couldn't help myself as I reached up and gently tilted his head this way and that, assessing the damage. He only let me do this for a few second before removing my hands with a small smile.
"Hi, Lay," he finally greeted me, and I frowned at him.
"Hi, you freak," I replied as he kept my hands in his. "Jake wanna go make us all those cool chocolate treats you wanted to make earlier?" I looked down to him and his face lit up before he nodded and ran out of the room. I turned my attention back to Eli, who hadn't stopped staring at me the whole time.
"I'd give you a kiss if I wasn't worried about hurting that busted lip-" Eli cut me off with his lips on mine. His rough hand moved to the side of my face as he came closer to me, savoring the kiss with everything he had. His other hand moved to my neck as he deepened the kiss, and I felt my face heat up like fire.
When he pulled away, I was momentarily speechless as he kept out foreheads together, the two of us catching our breaths.
"I've missed you," he told me, his voice low in his chest. As someone who was pretty damn good at reading people, I could tell just how sad he was. I raised my hands up to rest on the sides of his face, but stopped them right before they touched.
"I don't want to hurt your cuts," I whispered, but he placed his hands on mine and pushed them the final few inches onto him. My thumbs gently caressed his cheeks as he moved his hands to my waist, bringing me closer to him.
I locked our lips again, letting him know that I had missed him, too. Even if it had just been a few days, we had still had enough emotional distance to almost last a lifetime. I wished I could heal all of his wounds with this kiss, both his physical and mental ones.
When we pulled away again, he looked me so deep in my eyes that I almost could have sworn I saw them get a tad misty. I backed up a step when I noticed a large bruise on his collarbone peaking out from under his T-shirt.
I slowly reached down and lifted his shirt up, revealing numerous black-and-blue bruises and scabbed wounds. I let out a shaky breath as I looked over him. When my eyes looked back up to meet his, they looked thoroughly haunted.
"I don't remember Ashton punching you this many times," I spoke, not knowing what I was suspecting, but definitely sensing that something was up. He looked back down at the ground and lowered his shirt from my grasp, covering everything up again.
The way he was injured made it seem as though it had been strategically placed on specific places on purpose. Like his abdomen, which was covered by his shirt, and obviously his leg due to his limping, which was also covered by clothing.
"He didn't," he confirmed my suspicion that something else was up. I put my hand on his arm and brought him over to the couch. He sat with a sharp wince, and I helped him straighten out as I sat next to him.
"And to think I convinced myself you hated me," he said matter-of-factly.
"Unfortunately for you, I think you are stuck with me for the long run, E," I responded, and he looked back up at me as Jake came bounding back into the room.
"I put them in the fridge," he smiled, still struggling to pronounce his R's the right way. "Can I go play outside with Max for a few hours?" He asked, and I nodded. Max was a new neighbor of ours, and he seemed like a pretty sweet kid. He was only a year older than Jake.
Once Jake shut the front door, Eli turned to me and leaned in, laying me down onto the couch and bringing his lips to mine again. I let out a giggle at his apparent eagerness, and pushed him back after a few delicious moments.
He hovered over me, and I'd be lying if I said that I didn't want him to continue, but more than that I wanted him to feel okay inside. And sadly that would come from talking more than kissing.
"What happened, baby?" I asked him as his face remained above mine. My hand came up to rest on the side of his face again.
He let out a sad sigh and I scooted back a bit on the couch so that I was sitting slightly upright. While I did this, he sunk down so that he was lying on top of me, my hand now softly brushing through his hair as his head rested on my stomach. My legs wrapped around him to make the cuddle even more comforting as he spoke.
"My dad..." he trailed off, and I couldn't see his face from the way he was angled, but I could visualize it almost perfectly as his words cracked ever so slightly. "My father, he... he can get really mad sometimes."
My mind quickly put the pieces into place, and my heart broke.
"And not just at me. At everything. At my mom, at the business," he listed, getting a little bit worked up, but trying really hard to conceal it. I just kept listening and holding him. "But I was always there as something he could take it out on. And he did.. a lot." His voice cracked at the end, and I felt my eyes starting to burn.
"After the other night with Ashton, I got drunk and walked in on an important event my parents were having that I didn't know about," he paused. "He hadn't beaten me as bad as that since I was 14," he added softly, and I bit my lip to keep it from quivering, even though he couldn't see me.
It was hard to keep drawing in steady, composed breaths as I felt a drop or two of moisture fall into my shirt from his eyes, the tears warm. I slid my hand gently from his hair to his upper back in a comforting caress. The way he held onto my stomach tighter at it and the way I felt another few tears sink into my shirt told me that it was in fact helping.
"No one will hurt you when you're in my arms," I whispered down to him, and he pressed his face more into me, holding me even tighter at that as he shook a tiny bit from his dead-silent crying. "I've got you."
We stayed like this for a really long time. It honestly felt like an hour, but I was always really bad at judging how much time passed, so I couldn't tell. When he eventually brought himself up off of me, he brought his legs off the side of the couch and rested his elbows on his knees. He lifted his shirt to wipe his tears, and I had to look away from his terrible bruises.
"Does Ashton know? About your dad?" I asked gently, and he shook his head before resting it in his hands.
"When Ashton and Jake lived with me, it all stopped. But when they left again..." he didn't finish the sentence, knowing it was implied. "I never told him- or anyone-"
"Until me," I finished for him, and he looked up at me, the smallest hint of a smile in his expression.
"Until you," he repeated, and this time he did let his lips turn up a bit at the corners.
"Layla," he started, not able to meet my eyes. My heart cracked when his voice did, "you know I would never hurt you, right?" A tear fell down his cheek. "You know I'm not my dad," he finally looked back up at me, and the pain I saw in his eyes made me reach out and put my hand on his leg.
I wasn't sure about exactly what in this moment made me realize it was the right time to say it, but something had. I took a deep breath, and spoke.
"I've always had a really fucked up perception of love, Eli," I swallowed, and then continued.
"I really thought it didn't exist up until recently. I always thought that Love was nothing more than the notion of being hopelessly devoted to someone that you thought meant more to you than they actually did... but, now I'm hopelessly falling in love with you in every way.
"And not just the kind of love that makes me want to hold your hand on a snowy sidewalk, or feed you a cupcake at a wedding... but the kind that makes me want to hold you when your feeling broken, and give you half of my heart whenever you need it to fix you. And it's scary as hell, but it's true," I paused as I saw tears forming in his brown eyes, and then continued.
"Nobody knows how to define love, really. It's not necessarily a feeling or an emotion, but it's very much real. And I very much love you, Eli Parker. No matter if your parents treat you like absolute shit, no matter if my brother forgets from time to time how precious you are, no matter any of it- I love you, and you will always have that. And you'll always have me," I added, and he kept staring at me as thought he was seeing right through me to my soul. I continued one last time.
"I promise to not hurt you like everyone else, because I love you differently than everyone else- more than everyone else. More than you probably love me." I finally finished, a few tears finally sliding down my cheeks rather gracefully, as if my tear ducts were kindly celebrating my heartfelt words.
"I don't think it's possible for anyone to love someone more than I love you, Layla Monroe," was all he could say before a tear slipped from his eyes.
For a moment, my instinct of making a joke to diffuse the emotions radiating around us presented itself, but I quickly pushed it back down, embracing the raw power of our mutual love in the moment I was currently living in.
Love, I thought. I couldn't believe it really existed. And in my life, especially.
I had always loved Eli, the same as I loved Kevin, or Crystal. But then it transformed into so much more. It became Love. It became infinite- beautiful beyond its multitude of boundless limits, all encompassed in that one simple word. Love.
"Now can I please kiss you again before I explode?" He asked hoarsely, and I chuckled, letting another tear fall as I leaned forward to bring my lips to his.
He leaned into me right after our lips connected, bringing me back down into the couch and pressing his body tightly against mine as he passionately kissed me, wanting as much of us to be touching as possible.
He no doubt was experiencing some pain with some of his movements, but his need to kiss me was apparently much greater than this physical pain.
After a little while later, we relocated to my bedroom, and I let him have full control so that I didn't accidentally hurt him. My heart was beating so fast the entire time that I thought it might actually give out.
Our breaths mingled as he moved in me, my hands tangled through his hair and our lips brushing together as he carried on. My eyes squeezed shut as I tilted my head back onto the bed, but I could feel his eyes still on me as he continued hovering above me, making me feel as though the light of million suns was burning inside of me in this darkened room.
He returned his lips to my neck as he went on, and I felt myself let a single tear slide down the side of my face- one of pure euphoria and love. There wasn't quite a way to describe how right I felt in that moment.
But the look in Eli's eyes when I met his intense gaze again summed it up pretty well, I'd say.
• • •
Hey guys!!
The way that Layla feels about Eli is the same way I feel about you all, btw <3
QOTD: What are some songs that remind you of this series??
>>> I may-or-may-not be asking for an 'official' playlist that I may-or-may-not be in the process of currently making ;)
UPDATE: the link to my Spotify profile is in my bio- you can find the playlist there!
Stay positively beautiful,
Briella<3