Author's Note: Takes place during (and after) the events of 2x13, "It's All Wrong But It's All Right" and 2x14, "Too Far Gone".
I don't own Nashville, or anything affiliated.
I.
Layla falls asleep on top of the covers that night, her guitar propped up against the bed. He puts it back in the case and slides it next to where her bags are piled in the corner, then takes the legal pad she'd been using and sets it, cardboard side-up, on top of the closed case. He doesn't want to look, even by accident. Given how many lies he's told in this relationship, he figures Layla's entitled to her own privacy, her own secrets.
He slips quietly downstairs, where it's empty and dark. Gunnar's stayed away, probably sensing that everyone here isn't thrilled with him right now. Will figures he'll probably stay over at Zoey's tonight, to avoid dealing with any potential awkwardness in the morning.
He takes a beer out of the fridge, pops the top and then sets it down on the counter without taking a sip.
He doesn't want to think about it, but it's kind of a relief, really. Not having Gunnar in the house. And not just because it'd be uncomfortable after today's little drama. These days, Gunnar can't look at him without Will seeing the worry in his eyes, and that's why he finds it hard to ever look his way. Because every time he does look at Gunnar, it's like they're still back on Echo Ridge, and Will's just admitted that he stood on those tracks and was relieved it would finally be over. Even when Gunnar's trying to be cheerful and make Will smile, he can't hide that expression, like he doesn't actually believe Will's okay.
(Any more than Will really believes it himself.)
Will knows he's lucky to have Gunnar, always trying to be the supportive friend. Hell, he's lucky they're even friends at all – all things considered. But it's exhausting for the both of them. He knows Gunnar's tired of constantly having to worry, the same way Will's tired of constantly brushing him off. He's tired of those not-so-sneaky half-glances Gunnar keeps giving him over his shoulder, as if he's always got to make sure Will hasn't vanished again, and the way he's careful not to crowd Will or push anything too hard. But even when he's trying his best to act casual, Will can still feel the fear coming off Gunnar in waves. And he's tired of feeling responsible for putting it there. Tired of being responsible for putting it there.
God, he's just tired.
He picks up his beer, puts it down again. Stares at the rim of the untouched bottle, sighs and rubs his hand over his eyes.
Will knows what he has to do to keep control and handle all of this. He just wishes Gunnar would just stop trying to force something that isn't gonna happen, or force him to talk about all of it, like that's gonna do anybody any good.
He takes a long sip of his beer and almost drains it in one gulp. He doesn't want to sit down here and drink in the dark, alone, but he doesn't feel like going back upstairs to Layla, not just yet.
His stomach does that knotted thing it's been doing all night. He takes another long gulp of beer to try and make it go away, but of course it doesn't.
He knows he's lied to Layla from the very beginning. And he knows there isn't a part of their relationship that isn't made up of them. But he thinks about what happened upstairs, the things he'd said to her as she cried on his shoulder, and Will can't help feeling like this lie, the lie of hope, might be the worst he's ever told her.
And now he's thinking about the hopelessness that radiated out of her earlier, and it made no sense that she thought writing a song would make that feeling go away, except he knew it made perfect sense, and he knew that for the first time since all this hashtag bullshit started Will knew exactly how Layla felt; how raw and fragile and helpless, completely fucking alone in the world she felt.
Suddenly, they were on the same page. Or at least, as much as they could ever be.
Will downs the last of his drink. Slams the bottle down, leans against the counter, tries to take a deep breath and fails, so he puts his head in his hands, trying not to feel like his chest just got too tight to breathe.
What the hell was he even thinking, back up there?
Layla's just a kid. It's bad enough that she thinks he's the World's Best Boyfriend, and he hates that he has to deal with her wanting that much from him.
But this? He's never been able to help anybody before.
Shit, he can't even help himself. He still lies awake at night feeling the walls caving in, the air going out of the room and squeezing his whole world into nothing, smaller than the head of a pin, as he holds his breath and shuts his eyes and wonders if he's dead yet.
It's how he felt upstairs. Holding Layla against him while her small body shook, her tears wet on his shoulder as he ran his fingers through her hair, told her what she needed to hear. There were crumpled wads of looseleaf tossed around all around his bedroom, and he'd watched them and wondered if words might really help her feel like she'd started to see a light at the end of the tunnel, the kind he'd only been able to see staring down an oncoming train.
Will shakes his head, closing his eyes. Who does he think he's kidding. He can't make Gunnar and Layla feel less afraid. Gunnar because he's the only person Will can't lie to, and Layla because she's the one person that he has to keep lying to. And right now, both of them seem impossible, and he still has to do to them, anyway.
He's not used to other people, and how he fits into their lives. It's always just been him, looking after himself. And there were times he wished he didn't have to do it all alone, but whatever, that's how it was, and he just had to put on his best smile and deal.
Or do something else. Like the train, or a noose, or a loaded gun.
And now he actually had other people, people who stayed with him like it or not, and it wasn't just that he needed them – they needed something from him, too. The kind of somethings he couldn't fake with a tip of his hat and a few chords on his guitar, sung to some stranger at Tootsie's with a nice rack and a phone number that would end up in his pocket before the night was over.
It's scary, to be needed. And all he can think about is how different it looks, from this end – being the one people actually need something from. He's not an island, not anymore.
Maybe he can't be, after Brent. After the train, after Echo Ridge. Maybe he doesn't want to be anymore.
II.
When he finally makes himself go back upstairs, Layla's still curled on top of the sheets in her clothes, surrounded by wrinkled pieces of paper. He reaches over and picks up one of the sheets, carefully peeling it out from underneath her foot. Doesn't read it, but follows the spidery swoop of her handwriting, not just on the neat lines of the paper but also squeezed in the narrow margins, amid blotches of cross-outs and scribbles. That same tight, airless feeling curls in his chest as he traces those swoops, and he sets the paper down quickly, blowing out a breath.
When he slides onto his side of the bed, still dressed, he curls up beside her and slips an arm around her body, while his heart beats into her back. She's breathing so easily, so soundly, worn out from a day of disappointments and revelations and hope – and maybe that last one is what makes it so easy for her to keep still, keep breathing. He tries to match that calmness with his own chest, but still can't ignore the heaviness inside him, the familiar sinking ache.
Layla's surrounded by pages and thoughts and words, her fragile steps towards becoming something he can't even imagine letting himself be, and he can't shake the feeling that he's responsible for something, now.
Because she'll be looking up to him.
It scares the shit out of him, knowing that. Being accountable. Knowing that she's looking to him for what to do next, that she'll be taking her cues from him as to how she thinks she's supposed to act. To be free.
Once again, Layla Grant, his fake girlfriend in a fake relationship, thinks Will Lexington is something he's not. And god, this is worse than pretending to be her boyfriend.
She thinks he's actually capable of hope. And worse, that he can give it to her.
A rush of protectiveness comes over him. It's sudden and overwhelming, and makes him clench his jaw and grip Layla's hand tightly, her fingers limp in sleep. He looks at her and it hurts because she's hardly older than he was when his whole life officially went to hell – that's an irony that definitely didn't escape him, among the dozens of others that the two of them have built this relationship on – and god, she's just so fucking young, and she's got no idea how hard it all is, how much.
And it's not like anything about them is the same. Will can't exactly compare the notes of his own fucked up life to Layla's stories of pageants and ballgowns and Harvard. She's like this princess, and he's…he's just a mess. A disgusting, fucked-up mess.
But if there's anything he understands, it's that he knows what happen, when you feel like there's no hope left.
He pulls her closer to him, laces their fingers. She shifts in her sleep, a reflex, and he closes her eyes into her hair. When he opens them, he's staring straight up at his ceiling, the pattern of lights dangling overhead. They look like stars, gripping onto their last big of sky before they come crashing down.
It may just be the combination of not having slept in a few days and his head still spinning, but he thinks he can hear the faint whistle of an oncoming train coming through the night. It slips through the shadows as sleep sucks him under, pulling him downward, downward, deeper into nothing.
III.
Then Brent's fired and Will sings Gunnar's song in the dark, which was a stupid stupid stupid stupid STUPID idea that he can't ever take back, and why does this kind of thing keep happening to him?
He shoves the lyric sheet into Gunnar's hands and doesn't look at his roommate on his way out the door. Works all day in the studio, and when he comes home Gunnar's not there and Will puts his guitar in the closet to avoid having to fight the urge to pick it up.
That song will never see the light of day. And it's bad enough that Gunnar saw him sing it; saw him feel it.
He spends the night hours staring at the ceiling. When he gives up on that, he pulls his phone out to delete Brent's number, and instead hovers his thumb over the ERASE button until he's actively trying not to remember the digits.
It's around 4 AM that he gives up sleeping. While he brews the coffee in his dark, silent kitchen, he stares at the shadows on the floor and thought about how he told Gunnar he wasn't broken.
Somehow, that was worse than their kiss.
IV.
The journal is silver, decorated with glitter swirls, and it looks like it's trying so hard to be important in that dollar bin full of junky throwaway items that nobody else wants; packets of colored tissues and Post-It notes shaped like letters of the alphabet, pens missing their caps and little stamps of kittens and snowflakes. It looks so odd, so dark and out of place against the brightly colored mess, and Will really needs to let the stupid thing go but he can't.
He's never bought a present for a girl before – never bought one for anybody, actually, now that he thinks about it – and he's almost thirty now, and when he picks the silver journal out of the bin the first thing that comes to mind are Gunnar's words from the other day; about how he needed to end things with Layla before someone got hurt, and he meant Will ending up on those train tracks again but now Will thinks he also might have meant Layla, too.
The stupid little diary, or whatever, it's ninety-nine cents and it dribbles fucking glitter all over his hands that he hastily wipes off on his jeans, but he plucks it out of the bin of the broken and the useless, and holds it in his hand carefully, not wanting to take off any more of the sparkles or tear any of the pages or do anything to screw it up. It may be small and dumb and cheap, but takes care not to ruin it, because he's never been careful with the things he's been given, or even knows what to do with them once he has them.
The cashier doesn't say anything when she takes the silver journal from him, barely even looks at Will when she blinks the total at him and gives him the change. Then he grabs the bag and hurries out the door, refusing to making eye contact with anyone.
He walks home tucked against the winter wind. That little book rests in the pocket of his worn fleece jacket.
V.
Before they know it, the both of them are shipped off to Cleveland, because with Rayna bought out of Edgehill and Jeff on the anti-Juliette warpath, he's plucked Scarlett out of her spot as Luke Wheeler's opening act and put him and Layla in her place.
So now he's in upstate Ohio in January, freezing his ass off, and that stupid little book is still buried in the bottom of his suitcase.
Ever since her failed writing session with Gunnar, Layla's been carrying around a yellow legal pad everywhere, and she's been writing on it everywhere – on the bus, in the airports, on the planes and in the hotel rooms before the show. It's only been a few days, but it's already near-full, words he's never read and wouldn't ask to, and wouldn't know what to do with even if he did.
Right now, she's sitting cross-legged on the hotel bed, balancing the pad of paper on her thigh while he gets ready for the show tonight. He stands in the mirror, fiddling with the buttons on his shirt, and realizes that he's missed a button. Again.
"Layla?"
She glances up, wearing that same expression he's starting to recognize from the past few days. It comes out whenever she's really concentrating – eyes wide, taking a minute to blink back to earth, hand poised over her paper and gripping the pen like it might actually run out of her hands before she gets the words down.
He digs into his bag, feeling sheepish as he pulls out the journal – it probably smells like his dirty socks, why didn't he think to put it in the lining instead? – and hands her the little journal. For some reason, it feels like he's giving her an apology.
She stares at it for a moment.
"What's this?"
He shrugs one shoulder, feeling like an asshole.
"I know you been writin' a lot lately, and that notepad looks almost full, so I thought…" he gestures vaguely at his measly offering, which strikes him now as the same dull, tarnished color of a dirty nickel, and why did he ever think it looked silver before? It just looks old, and beat-up. Half-broken. Useless.
Layla blinks.
"You bought this?" she asks slowly. "For me?"
He scratches behind his head, shrugging again. Damn, he shoulda just stuck to buying her roses. At least that time, she smiled.
Layla stares at the journal, silent, and when she looks up at him he's surprised to see her eyes watering.
"Y'all right?" he asks, worried.
Layla stares back at the book, turning it over and over in her hands, and then when she looks up again Will's relieved to see she doesn't look a second away from tears.
"Thanks," she whispers. "I love it."
Then she smiles, and forget roses, the way she looks at him now is like he has just given her every answer she'll ever need, even if she doesn't know the question yet. And it knocks the wind out of him.
He can't manage a "you're welcome" – can barely manage a nod of his head.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.
Why did he decide to give her more hope?
VI.
They spend weekends at Luke's shows and weekdays in Nashville recording their albums, and between the long nights in the studio and the hours they spend in airports and arenas, they stop seeing much of each other except when she crawls in at 2 AM after laying down vocals or when he crashes on top of the hotel bedspread with her, still in his clothes from the show.
Between the constant back and forth, sleeping together at night doesn't always mean sleeping together, and neither of them mention it but it's kind of a relief. Something's shifted in the air between them lately, and whether it's just the weirdness of almost being able to understand each other for once or just being buffers for this Juliette scandal that still won't blow over, they don't care as much anymore for reasons why. It's a good change, though.
Will doesn't sleep, he thrashes, but Layla sleeps like the dead, so it's okay. She mutters in her sleep, not quite words, but it all sounds very insistent, and sometimes she whimpers. The nights they keep each other awake, they end up trying to let some of the tension out, their bodies slipping through the darkness under covers, shadows malleable as water against the bare white walls. It's not comfort and it's not enough, but he's not the kind of person who's used to getting what he wants, anyway, and he can't be, so he acts like he can get used to it.
The weird part? He kinda does get used to it, in some ways. He gets used to the weight of her lying against him, the warmth of her side of the mattress; the shape of her body under the covers and the feeling of her head on his shoulder, because she likes to fall asleep there and he lets her. When he can't fall asleep, he listens to the pattern of her calm, warm breaths against his chest, and feels the way her own moves in and out against him.
He could just get up and go to his own empty hotel room down the hall and listen to the TV blaring all night, but this is better, for some reason.
She's not that awful, and she's better than an empty room.
VII.
Soon, her words are everywhere. A few words on a Starbucks napkin, as they're getting coffee while the sun rises. Some more scrawled on the back of a receipt from the airport convenience store, where she buys a water bottle and granola bar before their flight. She ends up writing through an entire dinner once, scrawling on a grease-spattered placemat at some stakehouse chain while he steals a few fries off her plate and watches, half-amused. She starts hoarding hotel paper pads at every place they stop, and Will starts giving her the ones in his own hotel room. She tucks them gratefully into her purse.
"You're the perfect boyfriend," she gushes, cupping his cheek and kissing him. He lets her.
She writes until her hands are so stained with ink that it becomes normal for her to have black and blue fingertips; she writes until her hand cramps, and then she wrings it out and keeps going, her pace feverish, chewing at her bottom lip as she focuses on making one letter come after the other. She hardly seems to notice anything else, when she's putting pen to paper.
She starts carrying around Post-Its in her pocket, so she can start writing things down on the go. She has a notebook that she carries in her suitcase, but it's too big for her to keep in her purse or coat pocket and carry around with her all the time, and when they're out it's not unusual for Layla to come back to the hotel with her pockets full of sticky notes, raining onto the floor when she peels her clothes off layer by layer. There are so many of them, and she doesn't want to lose anything, so she starts keeping them in gallon Ziploc bags that fit in the lining of her suitcase.
Sometimes, she falls asleep trying to write. Knocks out in a pile of her own emotions, like all of it's exhausted her – the words she never thought she could say, everything inside her spilling out and forming a place where she can rest. When that happens, Will picks up the pages and stacks them neatly on her table by the side of the bed so he can climb under the covers. Sometimes he can't help glancing at a page he finds, glancing at her handwriting spiral across the margins, and feel something loosen inside him.
When he crawls in beside her, sometimes he slides an arm around her waist, taking her hand even though she's not awake and doesn't expect him to because that's what the dutiful boyfriend does. He just does it, because he's not sure why, but something about seeing those pages, picking up her scattered words, makes him want to, all on his own.
It never stops being weird to him: that he's fighting the feeling that the walls are closing in and he's given her the idea that she can break the walls down.
He watches her one night, staring at page after page of her words. She's working her way out, and he can't even find the first step to take because he knows what will happen if he does.
Layla might be able to figure out who she is and what she wants, but both of those have never been options for Will. He hasn't even played Gunnar song since that night.
He envies her. Because of him, she's latched onto the idea that she's nobody's wind-up doll or broken puppet anymore, not a failure or a disappointment just because someone else told her so. She's writing, writing, writing, and it makes him jealous to see how many words she scrawls. She's not just repeating a lie for the sake of being able to wake up in the morning, unable to look in the mirror and see what your life has become.
He keeps swearing that he can't give her more hope.
VIII.
The second journal is yellow.
He's on a snack run at the closest convenience store (which of course is, like, a full twenty minutes away from their hotel in Salt Lake City) and he spots the little journal on one of those spinning things on the countertop, right next to a box of leopard-print cigarette lighters and a rack of personalized keychains that look like license plates. It's smaller than the silver book was – the one Layla had already filled up last weekend when they were in Tulsa – and it even looks too hopeful, printed with little dandelions. A million little wishes, scattered to the wind.
He thinks he's going crazy, when he slides the book across the counter with his beer and Doritos and the bag of pretzels Layla asked him to get for her.
He doesn't know why he's doing it. But he thinks, maybe the more she writes, the more she can find her way out of this for the both of them…
No, not really. He doesn't think anything like it.
But the more he sees her write, the more he watches her face as she seizes onto one idea and then another, spilling out everything she's held back, it makes him feel less…trapped. Like he can actually breathe, for once.
It's crazy, but even though what she writes about has nothing to do with the life he's led every day since being left on the side of that highway at seventeen, it still feels like it does, in a weird way. Like maybe, if she can save herself, then he isn't a total waste of a human being.
He tells himself it's bullshit and doesn't mean anything the entire way back to the hotel, because it sounds insane, and anyway, Layla isn't him. Even with her mommy and daddy issues she's still Layla, annoying as ever and getting under his skin, buzzing around like a fly he can't ever seem to swat away. It's not like he trusts her, or really even likes her.
And even if he did, what good would it do? He's still not the person she thinks he is, either way. And he can't help her if she knows that. She needs to have faith in something, and he has to keep pretending like he's someone worth having faith in. For both their sakes.
IX.
He slips the yellow journal into her purse when she's in the shower, and pretends to be sleeping later that night when she crawls into bed beside him and kisses his cheek, wrapping her arms around him.
The next morning, they're on a flight home before the sun's up. He slips his earbuds on and closes his eyes, but not before he catches Layla slipping the little book out of her backpack and resting it on the tray in front of her, chewing on her lip as she starts to write.
He shuts them tight, as her pen hits the paper.
X.
The more Jeff presses down, the more she's up all night. They are the future of Edgehill, and the more Jeff pounds those words into the two of them, the more it starts to sound like a threat instead of an encouragement.
And the more Jeff says those words, the more Layla's own seem to overtake her. Sometimes he wakes up at night to the sound of her pen scratching against paper, the lamp dim on her side of the scratchy hotel bed, and she'll be propped up on a pillow balancing a notebook on her bare leg, scribbling furiously like the words can't leave her alone. Not until she commits them to paper, almost like an exorcism.
That same feeling settles over him sometimes, when he's watching her write, or when she falls asleep on top of her notebooks, or when she watches her with her guitar, hearing her gingerly pick out a new chord while he's taking a shower. That ferocious, protective rush.
XI.
The next time, it's a red journal with little white diamonds on it that he gets from Walgreens, when he's out buying deodorant and a new toothbrush. Then a blue-and-white striped one he sees at a convenience store at Newark International, when they're stuck on a layover. Then one that looks like Mardi Gras on acid, purples and greens and golds, from a hotel gift shop somewhere in Florida that's surrounded by Disney.
And he starts to like it, the way her eyes light up every time she finds a new blank book. She never says anything, but he likes it better that way. Makes it easier. He can't explain himself. Never has been able to.
Will knows he started something he should never have begun. But for some reason, he can't make himself stop. Or feel like he wants to.
XII.
It takes about two seconds for him to realize that something bad happened, when he comes back to the hotel with some take-out for dinner and a coffee for Layla. He slips his passkey in the door and finds the room completely dark, shades drawn and lights turned off, and the floor covered with little white bursts that look almost like clumps of snow.
Layla sits on the bed, knotted in the sheets, her hair spilling over her face. Her shoulders are shaking, and she doesn't look up when he comes in the door, setting the food down on the table and slowly walking towards her. He's careful not to step on any of the white piles, which he notice now are little bits of paper littered on the floor.
Awww, shit.
"Layla?" He keeps his voice low. "What happened?"
When he gets to the bed, he sees them, and can only stare for a moment. Her journals, each one that he's given her since that first silver book. Every one of them gutted, pages ripped out and binding coming apart. They're all husks now, just pieces of cheap cardboard with shiny packaging.
Layla is hunched in the middle of all these empty shells, sobbing in dark silence, the ruined pages of her work scattered around her like casualties.
Gingerly, he sits on the one space on the bed that isn't covered with broken bindings. He reaches out, touches her shoulder.
"Layla?" he repeats.
She looks up at him, and he can tell right away she's been crying for hours. Her eyes are swollen and bloodshot, rimmed with heavy black bags, and she grips her head in her hands like it's too heavy to hold up on its own. Tears drip from her eyes and the end of her nose, soundless and constant, and she has to blink a few times before she can finally focus on him.
He touches her shoulder, and her head drops down, a shudder rippling through her.
"What happened?" he asks quietly.
There isn't an answer, just more shudders, and the occasional whimper.
"Hey." He climbs on the bed, still careful not to touch those destroyed notebooks, and puts his arms around her. She collapses into them, her face pressed into his chest, and her hands grip his shirt tightly. "Hey. Come on, tell me what happened."
Another whimper; a round of tears soak into his shirt, and all he can do is run his hand down her back and hold still, trying not to let on how it's starting to really freak him out.
Another shudder, and then he hears her voice. It sounds like salt water being poured over a cut.
"I can't do it," she says simply.
He looks down at her, her face still tucked into his shirt.
"Can't do what?" he asks.
She sniffs, curling more tightly into his hold.
"This," she whispers.
Then, she adds, "anything."
He glances around the room at the piles of torn paper, the empty notebooks surrounding them on the bed. "What can't you do?"
"Anything!" she repeats, shrieking, and pulls away from him. She runs her fingers through her hair, messy and tangled, and gestures around the room at the mess.
"I can't do anything!" Layla cries, and her voice heaves as the tears come pouring down her face. "I s-s-spent a-all this…time on these stupid j-j-j-ournals, trying to…figure everything….o-o-o-out, and all I figured out is that I can't!"
She wails, and with a swipe of her hand knocks a few of journal shells off the covers.
"I can't do it!" she sobs, and then gasps for air. "I can't do it, I can't be this! I can't be anything, I'm just nothing!"
She folds over herself, and when he tries to reach out a hand she shrinks away.
"I tried," she says, and her voice is more quiet this time. "I tried s-s-s-so hard to n-n-n-not be this way. So fucking useless. But th-that's all I-I-I am. I c-c-can't."
She takes a long, shuddering breath, and then looks over at him, wiping her eyes dry with the back of her hand.
Will's stomach sinks, or maybe that's his heart.
"Layla –" he says softly.
"No!" Her head snaps up. "I'm not! I can't! I can't do anything! I know that now! I'm never gonna get away from it all!"
"From what?"
"From everything!" She throws her hands up. "I figured out today that I can't be the person who doesn't give a shit about what other people think. And I can't do anything about it. I can't do it. To be you. To be like you."
Her eyes are empty as she lifts her head to look at him.
"You have to be able to save yourself." She shakes her head. "And I'm...I'm just not. I can't do that."
Layla sniffles. Then she pulls her knees to her chest, curling into herself on the covers.
"I can't do it," she says, her voice soft, then repeats it: "I can't do it. I can't."
She says it a few more times, tears still soundlessly falling down her cheeks.
Will pulls her into his lap, her head resting on his shoulder. Puts his arms around her and just stays like that, trying not to shake as he runs his hands down her back. For weeks, she's poured out so many words, but now all she can say are the same four – "I can't do it, I can't do it" – over and over again, as she lies in a heap in his arms, like some stunned refugee who's still in shock.
He looks across the room, eying the shadows of the rain dart against the wall silently, like bullets. It's how he focuses on breathing, keeping it together, and how he keeps his hands from shaking as he runs them through Layla's knotted hair.
He keeps his voice steady as he whispers to her, words neither of them can hear. But even if he doesn't know what he's really saying, they both know what they mean – the voice everyone wants to hear after a bad dream, after a sudden slip and fall down the stairs; the voice you want the first time you learn the world is unfair, and the first time you really learn what it means to get your heart broken. It's the exact voice you want to hear right after you realize that this will keep happening to you, over and over and over again, and that realization leaves you stunned and breathless and raw, like you've been turned inside-out and everybody can suddenly see you for what you really are – small and helpless, with all your damages.
"Shhhhh," he says, his voice so low in the dark little room, suddenly crammed with shadows that seem to stretch the silence. "Shhhh, it's all right, it's all right, everything's all right…"
He's told so many lies that one more shouldn't be hard. But this one is, just like the feeling that sweeps over him as she buries her face in his collarbone. His lies had always been necessary to keep himself able to put one foot in front of the other, but this time it's for someone else.
And that makes him think of everything in his head, the things he's always heard and used to control until he ended up on those train tracks.
He grits his teeth and tells all of them to shut up, and for once, they do.
"It's all right," he keeps saying. "It's all right. Everything's all right."
Against his chest, Layla cries. She cries so hard she's gasping for air in between every few sobs, and he sits there and just rubs her back with one hand, the other stroking her damp cheek.
Eventually, she falls asleep, exhausting herself into silence. She's still in his arms, arms limp at her sides. He pushes the damp bangs out of her eyes and fits his hand around the back of her head, cradling it against his shoulder while fingers comb through her hair. Keeps rocking the two of them on the hotel bedspread, still littered with bits of paper and the empty shells of her journals, just rocking back and forth, back and forth. Even though she can't hear him; even though he can barely hear himself.
XIII.
He's in the studio working on back-up vocals, and it's been almost a week since he's seen Layla write anything.
She's in L.A for the next two days, doing some Conan O'Brien-type thing and playing her single on the show. One of Edgehill's drivers picked up from the airport this morning before dawn, and he'd pretended to be asleep when she pulled her clothes on and tucked the bedsheets over his body.
Will had felt her hovering there for a moment, just standing by his side of the bed, and he figured she was going to try and wake him up, to make him kiss her goodbye. But she just sighed, sounding older and more tired than nineteen, and grabbed her things off the dresser before heading out the door.
They haven't talked about what happened the other night, or why she hasn't picked up a pen and paper since. He didn't expect them to, and it's not like he really wants to talk about it, but still. Sometimes he can't help himself from thinking about it, and for some reason whenever he does all he feels the same way he did when he played Gunnar's song.
But it wasn't like he could say anything to her about that, or make her understand anything about it, and he sure as hell wasn't going to ever try to explain. So that was the end of that.
The crazy thing is, he kind of wishes he could. Talk to her. Which was weird, because some days he could barely make himself touch her – even now.
It was like the notebooks. Or Gunnar, with that song.
There was no one else to tell things to, even the stupid things. Like: he'd been scared of dogs when he was little. He always hated the taste of peanut butter. He secretly loved stupid horror movies, because they made him laugh. He once hit his little sister when she was a baby because she wouldn't stop crying, and was so afraid he'd hurt her that he picked her up and sang her one of his mom's favorite songs, something they sang in church, and pretty soon he was crying harder than she was. He burned himself with a Bic lighter when he was twelve, because he realized he wanted to kiss the linebacker of his middle school football team. He'd put his dad's pistol in his mouth two years after that, and not a day went by that he didn't think about why he should have pulled that trigger.
He might have been in love with Brent, back in Austin.
Except there's no one, and he doesn't honestly think he would say those things, even if he could. Which was why he ended up in Layla's room night after night, counting the times he made her back hit the mattress with her nails dug into her back, while she wrapped her legs around him to anchor him to nothing but right now.
Even now, he still doesn't really have anyone. Not even Gunnar, who thinks he knows everything, but he couldn't possibly.
And anyway, even if Will did actually want to talk about those things (which he definitely doesn't), he knows he can't. Cecause Gunnar's still scared shitless that he'll disappear again, and Will's not stupid, he can always feel his friend's eyes on him whenever he walks out of a room, like it's the last time Gunnar's ever going to see him again.
God, he is so tired of that look.
Who knows. Maybe, if someone had sat him down when he was Layla's age, just reached out and held onto him – or tried to, he wasn't much for touching – the way that he did for her, and just told him that it would all be okay, Will might have –
– All right, he probably wouldn't have believed that person.
But it sure as hell couldn't have hurt to hear that someday, he might be able to make sense of it all.
To hear that one day, he'd be able to move without the weight of everything crushing him with every breath, and that he'd be able to sleep at night. That one day he'd wake up and just not care anymore that he'd looked at the one person who was supposed to love him no matter who he decided to be, and only saw a reflection of all the worst, horrible things he'd ever thought about himself on his worst, horrible days. That it wouldn't be what he still saw, every time he looked in the mirror.
Who knows, it actually could have helped. Even a little. Even if the best he could do was sit in the darkness and play a song that he'd never sing in the light; let the words come for once, even if it was only to himself in an empty room.
XIV.
A few nights later, when he finds the darkness of the hotel room and the darkness behind his eyes impossible to deal with and Layla isn't even pretending to be asleep, they both give up trying and end up in the parking lot of an Exxon station off the highway, sharing a bag of sour cream & onion while they sit on the bench outside. They're somewhere near Topeka, a gold fat moon hanging in the blackest night sky he thinks he's ever seen, and the radio inside the convenience store is set to an oldies station that's piped into the parking lot, warbling "Dream A Little Dream Of Me"
He's got the bag of chips in his lap, Layla's hand digging around towards the bottom.
"You ever gonna just pick one?" he says, grinning at her.
She tries to smile back. She still looks so tired, he's noticed. She hasn't slept much since that night she tore up her journals, and he still hasn't seen her write.
"The ones at the bottom," she says, determinedly sinking her hand deeper into the bag, "always have all the flavoring on them. Ahhh."
She pulls out a chip, triumphant. "See what I mean?"
"It looks like every other chip."
"It'll taste better," she insists.
He smirks. "If you insist."
"Okay, between the two of us, which one got into Harvard?"
"Oh, so that's the card you wanna play?"
"Damn right." She reaches over and takes the bag out of his lap, digging down to the bottom.
A smile fights its way across his lips, watching her root for another chip. "Whatever you say."
She elbows him. He does the same back to her. She laughs, and it sounds like an out-of-tune guitar with a headcold but it's a still laugh, anyway.
There's a pause while they watch headlights pass by on the single-lane highway. Someone has the windows down blasting "Cruise", and he thinks how much better the world would be if that song never existed.
Layla watches the car disappear down the highway, the tail lights disappearing into the humid Kansas night.
"Maybe I should quit the tour," she says.
He laughs – he can't help himself.
She punches him in the arm.
"I'm serious," she grumbles.
He still has a smile on his face. Doesn't know why. "Come on."
"I'm serious!" she repeats. "Don't fucking laugh at me!"
"I'm sorry," he says, and Layla punches him again. "Okay! Okay. I'm sorry, all right? Just, don't punch me again."
She frowns. "You think it's stupid?"
"I think Jeff will shit a brick if you do anything to rock the boat."
She scowls. "Oh, who gives a shit?"
"You do," he says simply.
Layla opens her mouth to retort, but then snaps it shut. Then she buries her head in her hands.
"Or he'll just drop me from the label altogether," she says.
Will nods. "You're probably right about that," he says quietly.
Layla brushes her bangs out of her eyes, sighing.
"There will always be another runner-up on American Hitmaker next year," she adds, her voice barely above a whisper.
She scuffs the ground with the toe of her shoes.
"Hey," he murmurs, then reaches his arm over and pulls her into his hold. She leans against his shoulder tiredly, reaching over to take his hand. The skin on their palms is greasy from potato chips and sweat, slip-sliding together as Layla takes hold of his rough, calloused fingers.
"Hey." His free hand tangles with her hair. "Just quit tellin' yourself that. You made it this far, right?"
Layla shrugs.
"I don't know," she says, sounding tired. "Just – I wish everything didn't feel like such bullshit." Then she shakes her head. "I don't know."
She peers up at him. "That's literally the only answer I have now. For anything. 'I don't know'." Her eyes water, and she bites her lip, looking away. "I guess I really am a blank."
He finds Gunnar's words coming back to him, an odd echo of firelight and cold mountain air.
"Come on," he says gruffly. "You…you're too good to give up. On anything."
Layla stares at their hands, intertwined on his knee.
"'Specially music," he adds. "I mean, so many people love you!"
"They love Layla Grant," she says simply, and he doesn't have to guess what that might mean.
He looks away.
"They love American Hitmaker Layla Grant," she goes on. "And Country Weekly Layla Grant, and Luke-Wheeler-headlining-tour-Layla Grant!" She shakes her head. "They don't want the girl who sits outside a gas station at two AM, eating junk food and throwing herself a pity party. Like some pathetic loser."
Will has to grin at that, in spite of himself.
"Well," he says, "I guess that makes us equally pathetic, then."
She sighs. He crumbles the empty potato chip bag and aims it for the trash can, where it bounces off the rim and hits the ground.
Shit. His hands ball into fists. Can nothing just go fucking right, these days?
"How did you do it?" she asks.
He stares at the cracked pavement under his feet. It's littered with cigarette butts. He pokes at one with the toe of his boot.
"Do what?" he says, knowing perfectly well what she means.
"Any of it," she says. "Get away. Break free. You know. Become the person that didn't care who they disappointed."
"I care," he says, before he can stop himself. He kicks the cigarette butt until it rolls off the curb . "I care a lot, actually."
"But you don't act like you do," she argues. "You act like it's no big deal. Like everything's just easy for you to do."
"Well it's not," he snaps.
When she leans backward in surprise, he says, more quietly, "it's never been easy."
"Then how'd you do it?"
Will sighs, shrugging one shoulder.
"I didn't," he says.
She looks over at him, eyes wide.
He shakes his head. "Look, Layla, I got the same boss you do, all right? The same people that tell you what to do with your life and own your every move. Jeff, my manager, everyone else at Edgehill…all those people got a piece of me, just they do with you."
Will stares up at the dim light above them. From the crackling speakers, the oldies station goes from "Love Me Do" to Fleetwood Mac, as Rhiannon sings like a bell through the night. And wouldn't you love to love her?"
"I don't get to do just do whatever I want," he says.
Then, he adds, "and it sucks. A lot."
Beside him, Layla slumps, sinking into the craggy wood of the bench. She sighs, running her hand over her face.
"I'm sorry," he says. "I know that's not what you wanted to hear."
She squeezes his hand.
"I just…" she says, "I just want to know that it's not all bullshit. Like, I don't have to just smile and wave and be some beauty queen perfect little darling, and whatever. I can just…"
She kicks the ground, knocking a shower of gravel into the parking lot. "I don't even know. God."
He smiles a little, for some reason. It's not funny seeing her so frustrated, lower lip jutted out, stubborn and angry. It hurts, to see that disappointment. To see her feel it, and realize this is going to keep happening. To see that life owes you nothing, and you don't get what you want just because you want it, or because you try your hardest to be good and do everything right. To know that trying to please everybody else still won't get you what you want. That in fact, most of the time doing everything that everybody else wants just leaves you with nothing, and you still feel completely empty inside.
He knows it is all bullshit, and nothing is ever fair, or owed, or earned.
But he doesn't say that, just slips an arm around her.
"Does it get any easier?" she mumbles.
No. He knows.
"Come on," is his answer, because he won't say what he really thinks to her, and because Gunnar keeps trying with him, even if he's still scared Will's going to end up on those train tracks. About as scared as Will is, in some really dark parts of the long nights. "You can handle this."
That's not an answer, but he can't give her anything more. He just keeps his arm around her shoulders – those slim, fragile shoulders, realizing the weight of the whole world against nothing but skin and bones.