Save Me (14 page)

"Hey," she said, her voice soft. She offered Leo a hit of her cigarette, but he shook his head.

Layla watched as he stood up, stretching his muscular arms over his head with a yawn as he searched for his clothing, pulling it on. Suddenly, the reality of what they had done came flooding back, hitting Layla like a pile of bricks. She swallowed hard.

"Look," she began, unsure of what to say, "about last night –"

Before Layla could continue, Leo grabbed her tightly by the waist, bringing her petite body crashing against his.

"Shh," he whispered, pulling her into a hug.

They stood like that for what felt like an eternity, neither one of them speaking, until finally Leo pulled away. He tossed Layla his helmet as he sat on the edge of his bike, sliding on his boots and lacing them up.

"We don’t have much time," he said, looking down at his watch.

"Time for what?" Layla asked as she climbed on the bike behind Leo.

"Don’t worry," he reassured her, starting off down the road.

But he wasn’t going in the direction of his cabin.

"I got you into this mess and I’m going to get you out of it," he said over his shoulder sternly.

Layla shivered, her heart beating fast and hard against Leo’s back as he picked up speed.

"At least tell me where we are going this time this time," she insisted.

Leo pushed down harder on the throttle, looking down at his watch. He had exactly two hours to get Layla home and to dispose of the bodies rotting away in the basement of his cabin. Two hours until Chase would follow through on his promise to overthrow him.

It was cutting it close, but Leo had never been one to give up without a fight.

"I’m taking you home," he said simply.

The Los Angeles exit ramp loomed about a mile down the dusty road and as much as it pained Leo to do – he knew he needed to bring Layla back where she belonged. What they had shared together had been…electric. But he wasn’t right for her any more than she was for him.

"No!" Layla cried out, "what about the – " she began, but Leo stopped her.

"Forget it even happened princess," he said sternly, 
"I’m telling you. Not asking. Now where do you live?"

A lump surfaced in Layla’s throat. She knew there was no use trying to argue with him.

"Take a left off the exit."

Leo did just that and less than twenty minutes later, they pulled up in front of a large steel gate, which guarded the entrance of the mansion Layla shared with her mother. Layla reached forward, pressing a button on the loud speaker in front of her.

"Yes?" a voice asked.

"It’s me," Layla said softly into the speaker, "let me in."

"Good to see you Ms. Carter," the man on the other end responded as the metal gate opened up in front of them, welcoming them inside.

Leo rode through, skidding to a stop in front of the large home.

"I guess this is where we go our separate ways."

Layla pulled the large helmet off of her head, shaking out her hair as she handed it to him.

"No," she said softly, "come in…just for a second."

Leo wasn’t sure it was such a good idea. He looked down at his watch. He had exactly an hour before his world began to crumble around him, but it would only take him thirty minutes at most – if he sped – to get back to his cabin and dispose of the bodies.

"Alright," he replied, having rationalized it to himself, 
"just for a few minutes."

He followed Layla up the cobblestone steps. Just as she reached forward to open the door, it swung open. Her mother was staring back at her, her eyes wide and crazed, her face stained with mascara from crying.

"Mily?" Leo exclaimed, confused.

She hadn't aged a wink since he had last seen her.

Leo stumbled backwards, feeling suddenly light headed. 
What the hell?

"It's Emily," she bit back, "but you wouldn't know that, now would you?"

Before another word could escape Leo's 
lips, he felt a hand make heavy contact with his face. He flinched, nearly falling off balance. His cheek stung from the impact and his tongue felt heavy in his mouth, making it impossible for him to speak.

"Mom!" Layla yelled in shock, grasping for Leo, "stop it!"

"You…" Emily pointed at Leo, her voice bubbling with rage as she reached for her daughter, roughly pulling Layla inside the large home against her protests.

"You have a lot of nerve."

Her brown eyes were as cold as ice and Leo’s head was spinning.

"Stay away from us," she said as Layla attempted to push past her, 
"from my daughter."

Then, she slammed the door in Leo’s face and just like that, time felt as though it had come to a full stop. Leo fell to the ground beside his bike, feeling light headed and unable to move. Nothing made any sense and at the same time…everything did. He stumbled over to the grass, dry heaving into it.

It was all coming together now,
 Leo thought sullenly.

The connection he had felt to her. The fact that he couldn’t seem to force himself to forget her. Layla was twenty three. That meant she was born in 1991. Around the time Leo had slept with Emily.

Which meant…there was a possibility that….

Leo shuddered in disgust and shame, unable to process it. If what he thought was true, then he and Layla had partook in one of the most illicit acts possible. He gasped for air, climbing on his bike and taking off through the heavy gates that loomed in the distance.

How would anything ever be the same?

–

It was a stench so foul Leo's breath caught in his throat. He would never get used to the odor. It was repugnant and sour, a cross between rotting meat on a warm summer day, rotten eggs and rancid milk. Leo was nineteen the first time the smell had ever invaded his nostrils. It pushed past his resolves, breaking through a barrier he hadn't known existed.

The bodies were heavy but he heaved them over his shoulders one by one, dragging both of the men by the hem of their jeans into the shallow dirt grave he had dug for them. They stumbled forward, their cold corpses collapsing against each other. Dirt began to crumble forward on top of them.

Leo spit into the distance. He ran a hand through his sweaty hair, grabbing his shovel from the matted grass. He started heaving dirt onto their bodies, the metal blade of the shovel cutting roughly against the ground. He worked quickly and rhythmically, never once stopping to digest his situation.

It was like Leo's father had always said.

Shit happened. That was life. It was how you dealt with it that mattered.

Leo snickered thinking about it. It was probably the only prose that had ever left his fathers chapped lips that Leo could agree with. He was a cold and unlovable man who had hid behind the translucent veil of religion, a hoax he sold without much effort to the unsuspecting people who gathered every Sunday in his congregation.

Leo reached forward, a sweat drenched bandana hanging from his muddy hand. He was filthy, but that was the least of his worries. Off in the distance, Layla was watching him from behind a large oak tree as he patted down the soil with the back of the shovel, taking his time to smooth out every edge. After speaking with her mother, she had stolen her Mercedes and followed him, craving answers.

She would have never realized it before but they did look awfully alike. Leo's square jaw was offset by high freckled cheekbones that were quite scarily similar to her own. His eyes, like Layla's, were dark and captivating. Bedroom eyes, her mother had once called them. The kind that burned against your soul and made you question your existence.

When Leo finally felt satisfied with the grave, he paused above it. He stared down at the patch of dirt beneath him. It was impossible to make out where it began and ended, and that was precisely the way he wanted it.

He collapsed on the rotting front steps of his cabin, stretching his legs. Layla watched as he lit a cigarette. He struggled with the lighter at first but finally found a flame, clumsily bringing it to the end of the Marlboro perched between his full lips.

Even his mannerisms reminded Layla of her own. He smoked slow and carefully, basking in each hit of nicotine that came in contact with his lungs. She watched as he shut his eyes tightly. He was whispering something. She could see his mouth moving, but the words were lost amongst the trees.

One. Two. Three.

Leo was counting down. It was a stress coping mechanism that he had picked up as a young child. The idea was, you counted backwards from one hundred and when you finally got to one, whatever you were worried about wouldn't seem that bad. Of course, Leo, like Layla had never been one to play by the rules. Counting backwards seemed too strenuous. Too complex. He decided instead that he would do it the old fashioned way. The results were the same and the habit had stuck. Now, whenever Leo felt any kind of stress surfacing inside of himself, he'd simply shut his eyes tightly and count down to one hundred until it disintegrated.

It didn't always work. It was trial and error, but then, wasn't everything?

"I can see you, you know," he finally said, flicking his cigarette.

Layla watched the burning ash flutter to the ground. She was taken aback by Leo's words. 
He couldn't be talking about her,
 she told herself in slight disbelief. She had picked the perfect spot to hide – just far enough away from the cabin where she could watch Leo but not close enough for him to spot her.

At least that's what she had thought. Apparently, she had been wrong. With a sigh, she stepped out of the shadows. The converse sneakers Leo had bought for her crunched against a mixture of gravel and leaves. She flattened her hair, ducking underneath a low patch of branches near the entrance of the clearing that opened up to Leo's cabin. Layla clung to the fabric of her sweaty tank top as she stood in front of him. She crossed her skinny arms over her chest. Leo willed her to look at him. Instead, she focused on a butterfly perched on a leaf just a few inches from her feet.

"What are you doing here?"

Each word carried its own bite. Had he really thought she wouldn't come?

My daughter.

The words Emily had spoken replayed over and over again in Leo’s head, clawing at the depths of his mind. He couldn't quite push the reality of it all to the surface. Denial, Leo had realized, was just as sweet a drug as any other.

Layla didn’t know what to say. The truth was, she didn’t understand what she was doing any more than Leo did. She tried to tell him so but he didn’t hear her. His eyes were dark and glazed over. Layla knew that he had been drinking. She remembered the liquor. Four shiny glass bottles, which sat empty against a collection of hundreds of others just like it.

She didn’t blame him. Burying the bodies of two corpses, Layla had figured, was the kind of act a person had to be drunk to follow through on.

"I don't know," she said again, her voice small.

It was the most honest statement Layla had made in days. She didn’t know why she cared so much about Leo. Two days ago, she hadn't even known of his existence. Now, she relied on him like air.

"I need to know if what my mother said was true," she finally said, allowing the truth of her presence to bubble to the surface.

She listened to herself speak but couldn’t seem to stop the words from leaving her lips. This was exactly what she had told herself she wouldn't do. Pry. But her conscious was eating away at her, almost painfully so.

"How do you know my mother?" she was breathless, her normally confident and flirtatious demeanor having been mustered down to something far more tired and disheveled.

She knew the answer. It was buried deep in the pit of her stomach, behind other realities she knew but couldn't bring herself to come to terms with. If there was any truth to her mother’s statement, Layla already knew it. But it was funny what a person could hide from themselves if they really tried.

–

Past

The first time Layla ever deceived herself, she was fourteen. She had went on a three day coke binge with a fellow cast mate after the final day of filming a movie and they had destroyed her mother’s apartment in the process. When Emily walked through the front door, she didn't recognize the home she had come back to.

It was a war zone. Valuable antiques were shattered and ruined. Glass covered nearly every square inch of the hard wood flooring, trash, drug paraphernalia, beer cans and half eaten food was scattered across every counter top, and urine and throw up had inevitably been left unflushed in the porcelain toilet.

Emily dragged teenage Layla out of bed by her hair, hauling her emaciated body into the rummage.

"You will clean every last inch of this," she said, pointing a sharp red manicured finger at her intoxicated daughter.

Layla was smacked. She shielded her eyes, moaning in disapproval as her mother pulled open the blinds, nearly ripping them off the walls in the process. Layla shrieked. She hadn't seen the sunlight in days, a reality that the dark bags beneath her eyes more than accentuated.