The Open Skies

by yellowcottondresses

The world didn't stop. It felt like it should have, when Will told her the truth, but it all kept spinning, even if she felt like she was frozen here, trapped in place. Takes place up to episode 3x05, "Road Happy".

Author's Note: Goes up until the latest episode, 3x05 "Road Happy".

"I keep burning time away until I hit the top/One day I'll wake up and take up to the open skies" – Ingrid Michaelson, "Black & Blue"

I.

The air smelled like rain.

That heavy, airless tightening. Like the feeling in her chest, right before a hard cry.

She didn't have anywhere to go. But she couldn't be in the house.

So she hit the highway. Kept going, going, farther, farther, faster, faster, away. Free, except not really.

At least, for now.

The A/C felt too cold blasting on her, so she turned up the music louder, like the lyrics and pedal steel would keep her warm. She drove with the same song playing through the speakers, too fast around the curves and too jerky on the stop. At one point she nearly crashed into the back of a white Honda Civic because she couldn't stop quickly enough, the wheels of her car leaped across the asphalt.

For a moment, she nearly choked on her heartbeat, hammering at the base of her throat. But then the car jerked to a semi-stop, her head whacking against the seat. She slowed down for a moment, catching her breath, hands slipping along the wheel.

The CD changed to another song, and she flipped it back to the one she'd had on repeat since she left the house. The drum beat faster, faster, faster, banging and rattling and smacking against the windows, jolting through her bones.

She ought to just destroy the car. Light it on fire, slash the tires, take a baseball bat and go all "Before He Cheats" on this piece of crap.

She'd just make Will buy her a new one, because she could do that to him. She'd make him buy her a Porsche. A Lamborghini. A Ferrari.

Whatever she wanted.

Like she said – she owned him.

The same song beat through her body. The bass ached through her bones, making her teeth rattle. She just knew everything was bursting underneath her skin in spastic, horrible beats, like her body could burst open any second and release all the fire and electricity underneath her thrumming, aching skin. It would hurt, but not as much as she wanted it to.

II.

The world didn't stop.

It should have. It felt like it should have. It's what she felt after Will finally told the truth.

But no matter what she felt, it didn't. Everything kept going, even if she felt like she was frozen here, trapped in place.

Nothing stopped.

There were still interviews and photographs and tabloids and radio and tours and people wanting pictures on their phones whenever they stepped out –

Of Will. Never Layla.

It all buzzed over her. Nothing made it through the fog, except the same thoughts on an endless loop:

Her husband was gay, she couldn't leave him, and her career was falling apart around her. And she had to still act like the person everyone expected her to be.

It was like seeing the world from behind plate glass – she could see, but never touch.

Everything just below the shimmering surface.

When she wasn't numb, she was so angry that her whole body hurt. And when she was somewhere in the middle, she always felt a dull, constant pain. It wasn't heartbreak or heartache or any of the crap she used to believe in from song lyrics, but real PAIN, physical and visceral and world-shaking. Like her skin was electric and kept finding new ways to shock her in and out of her stupor. Every time it happened, her teeth would rattle and her fingers would shake, her stomach tied in knots.

She watched her husband talk to the fans, producers, radio deejays, Jeff Fordham and Gina and the cast of the Today Show, Regis & Kelly, Good Morning America, VH1 and MTV and all the late-night talk show hosts. Will talked to so many people, smiled for all the cameras and said all the right words.

Like he actually gave a shit about someone other than himself.

He was a better actor than she was. Maybe he should have auditioned for the damn Patsy Cline movie, gone to Hollywood instead of Nashville. At least then he never would have met her.

She kept driving, turning on her high beams to see along the stretch of dark highway. Her hands were shaking so badly she could barely hold the wheel. Hands so slick and cold and numb.

She smacked them against the wheel, just to see if she could feel anything. Then again. Waited to feel something, but her hands felt /e icy frozen cold hopeless /e.

It all felt so hopeless; so trapped.

Her stomach was still twisted into furious snarls, her eyes still blinked back tears. She let them fall, sliding down the edges of her cheeks and down her neck, making her skin itch.

Maybe she'd wake up and it would all be okay. Like he used to promise her.

He promised her a lot of things.

III.

When all was said and done, she thought that losing her virginity reminded her most like getting her ears pierced.

There was minor discomfort, some weird pressure, a second of pinching, and when it was over she figured that the anticipating of pain was worse than the pain itself. But then it was over, and she was different in a way she hadn't thought of before; a way she thought would leave more of a mark. It changed her, but it didn't really hurt, not like she'd wondered. It hurt the morning after, between her legs, but it wasn't anything worse that a hard work-out.

He didn't spend the night with her, that first time. He just got off of her, got dressed, and said goodbye. She sat under the covers, drawn up over her chest, and tried to act like it didn't matter.

She must have been a better actress than she thought.

After he left, she didn't sleep. She stayed up watching reruns of some show she didn't like, and every time she closed her eyes she felt that same pressure, that same pinch. That moment of being…changed.

She gave up sleeping around four AM, and decided to go down to the hotel gym. Her skin felt itchy in a way she knew she wouldn't be able to scratch. Between her legs hurt, but it was more like a dull throb, like a pulled muscle. This early the hotel gym was empty, and she grabbed a treadmill, cranked up the speed, and started running.

It hurt down…there. When she ran. That was the only thought she could keep in her head. She tried to think about anything else – the song beating through the ear buds, the way her feet slapped on the treadmill, the blank walls of the gym – but nothing around her could stay where it was. Everything dashed and darted, like chasing comets or fireflies. Nothing stayed where it was long enough for her to focus on it.

She switched the song on her iPod. Once. Twice. Again, again, again.

It hurt, still. But not like she always thought it would.

How had she thought it would feel?

She switched to another song. Tried to focus on the pattern of her breathing. Kept running. Kept moving. Kept –

A Martina McBride song came on her iPod shuffle. Something she sang at pageants when she was little; she forgot all about until just now.

She took another step. Another. Then another, then another. And all of a sudden she was crying, so hard she couldn't stop, so she ran out of the gym with the treadmill still on and ran straight out the hotel front door.

It was the middle of winter and freezing, but there was nobody outside the hotel this early, so no one noticed when she hunched on a bench in pink running shorts and a black tank top, crying so hard she couldn't breathe. Bubbles of snot flew out of her nose, spit choked her, her chest and her stomach and her whole heart shook while she felt herself shrink small enough to fit inside a matchbox, a locket, on the head of a pin.

She didn't really know why she was crying, but she couldn't stop.

There was suddenly an awful gaspy sound from somewhere in her car, and it confused her at first because she couldn't tell if it was the engine or a tire popping or the car breaking down. But then she realized it was coming from her. She was hiccupping on more tears, snot bubbling out of her nose and down her chin while the tears ran down her face.

It had become so normal for these things to happen to her. Like getting dressed in the morning. Wake up, brush your teeth, put on a clean shirt; get demolished by the earthquake inside you.

IV.

If someone asked her, she would say the whole fight started because of the sheets.

Nobody would – certainly not Will, and it wasn't like Jeff or Gina or that trainer boy-toy her husband was screwing around with these days – but the sheets were really where this whole thing started.

She remembered – being a kid and going to the science museum on a fieldtrip. There was a bed of nails. The attendant explained that due to laws of pressure, you could lie on the nails and not feel anything. You didn't feel it when they were altogether. It was only individually that they were enough to break the skin and draw blood.

It had felt like that earlier – the sheets were clean and smelt like fabric softener, but individual nights came back to puncture her. The night she cried because he turned away from her and made her feel like she was ruining something without knowing what it was; the first time she woke up in this bed as his wife; the times he touched her body and made her feel something she didn't know she could want so badly. Hands, eyes, lips, tongues, fingertips, all in new places she had never felt them before.

This was something she never told Will, and didn't know how she would have been able to even in better circumstances:

Sex made her feel…kind of gross.

After she told him, Layla wished she'd never said Will was her first. It had made things so awkward between them; more so than they already were, because every time the lights went off it got more and more tense, and eventually Will started coming home later from the studio, crawling into bed beside her and pretending she wasn't there. He stopped touching her completely, and she figured then it was all because he finally knew she'd failed – that she was some boring, inexperienced little schoolgirl, unable to give him what he wanted, and just like Jeff he believed she fell drastically short of his expectations.

That whole "homespun American Girl" act that made her so popular on /e American Hitmaker /e wasn't completely a lie; she really was a singer in the church choir, and had been going to the same parish her whole life. She really was saving herself for marriage.

Or so she'd always believed. It was what she'd always been taught, her entire life. Drilled into her by pastors, youth group leaders, her parents: sex was for marriage. Marriage was sacred. You saved yourself for the person you were going to be with forever, and nobody else.

Except, she got older. And started to question. And once she met Will, it seemed like every time she figured she knew the answer, somehow the question was changed.

She knew he was experienced. She knew his reputation. But it hadn't just been about the sex. It never had been. Maybe at first it was, because he was desirable, everybody wanted him, and she knew everybody wanted him and that's why she HAD to have him. Because she always had to be the most desired one in the room by the other most desired person in the room.

So she'd zeroed in on Will solely for that – because he was important, and she needed to be, and he was the one who would help make her that way. And at the start, all she needed was to be his any way she could be. So the hashtag had sealed their fate, and she figured that the rest would follow, not to mention all the free publicity.

And sex, she figured, was all just part of the package.

She needed him to like her at first. And then, somewhere on the road, she wanted him to like her. And then she just wanted him. And she figured, if he knew she was a virgin, he wouldn't be interested. So she acted like she could handle it. Like she was okay with it.

Like she wanted it.

And maybe at first she'd needed him to want her, and that finally ending up in her hotel room in Houston should have been it for her but it wasn't. Because when Layla was with Will, she was somebody important. Nobody's second-place runner-up, nobody's second. Nobody's lackluster star. Nobody's diva. She wasn't a wannabe reality TV star show loser, she was wanted. A winner. A star.

Being with him made her feel like she belonged here - in Nashville, in history, in Will's arms and in his bed. That when she was with him, everything good bubbled up inside her, and who cared if they were a hashtag at first? He chose her, eventually. In Houston.

He chose her. People chose Juliette Barnes, trailer-trash whore and two-bit talentless bitch, but Layla was chosen, too. She was somebody's star, as well.

But for some reason, she still felt wrong. Bad. Dirty. Even when Will was gentle, or took it slow, or didn't push her into doing something she wasn't ready for.

Even when he held her when it was over, and told her he loved her.

She gave him a blowjob once. It was back when they first started having….problems…in that area. Back when she thought him unsnapping her bra and kissing down her collarbone was the most loved she'd ever feel. Back when he could make her feel beautiful just by touching her hair afterward, when she felt shaky and quiet and unable to quit feeling like she'd done something wrong, somewhere along the line.

Then she decided to be brave, and put her mouth on him.

She almost gagged, putting her lips against the skin for a kiss. Letting her tongue run up and down the length of it, the hardness she tried not to be embarrassed by. Then actually feeling it inside her mouth, scraping the insides of her cheeks, the tips of her teeth.

Will was totally taken by surprise by her boldness. But she could tell that this time, at least, he was actually feeling something. Responding to her, letting her know he actually wanted this. Wanted her. For the first time in so long.

So she kept going.

After, she remembered feeling dirty somewhere she knew she couldn't clean. Even though Will was her boyfriend, not some stranger. Even though he didn't push her to do it, or even ask for it.

Later, she huddled in the shower, crying into her hands while the roar of the water muffled the noise. She cried like she had outside the hotel, the first morning after. Hard and breathless, choking on her sobs, not really sure why she was crying but still unable to stop.

Even when they went through long periods without sleeping together, the dirty feeling never really went away. She never understood why sex was so hard for her, why it made her feel like that. She had loved Will; believed that Will loved her. He never forced her to do anything she didn't want to do. It wasn't like she believed she was going to hell for having sex before he put that ring on her finger.

She didn't believe that it was wrong anymore. But it still didn't explain why she made her feel the way it did.

And now here she was. Stuck in this house. With him.

Sleeping in their bed.

It all hurt. Like those nails, dragging across her aching skin.

She'd wished she could suffocate herself with the pillows. Or her own screams.

But she'd had to get rid of those sheets first.

She tore them off the bed, so quickly she ripped the seam on the comforter. Stuffed all of it – the cover, the pillow cases, even the thin sheet covering the mattress – into a heavy-duty Hefty bag, and then dragged it out to the garbage, shoving it down next to coffee grounds and empty beer bottles and boxes of stale cereal.

She'd stared at them, barefoot by the dumpster that reeked of rotting, spoiled food, almost sinking to her knees on the pavement. Her heart sunk through the rest of her body and weighed her down. There were no words to say, nothing making a clear thought: sheets gay cold lost hands lie husband

Will, Will, Will, Will…

V.

The windshield wipers swept away the onslaught, only to be savaged again by the rain. Whenever they brushed away the waves of the storm, Layla could barely make out the lights in front of her.

She'd changed the song by them, something just as loud and insistent. She had to drive slower; these single-lane country highways didn't believe in things like definable mile markers and streetlights, and the rain only made it harder to move forward.

She stared out the window, at the bob and weave of headlights in front of her. They were so far ahead that she could barely keep her eyes on them. It made her eyes tear, but her head already hurt so much, and she was so sick of doing that.

"Why don't you tell me what's wrong?"

His voice was in her head. The tone he used, whenever she was upset. It buzzed in her chest and made her stomach tighten, but at the same time, made her face warm and blood hum through her whole body and her skin feel like it needed his skin because for months, he was the only person she had to run to while the world fell apart, and now she couldn't anymore.

Once upon a time, she thought it was a no-brainer why Scarlett melted down. The girl was barely more than smoke & whispers. That annoying little babytalk thing she always did; her stupid, scattered, little country mouse routine in hideous clothes. So what if the girl could sing. She had the personality of a wet dishrag and the ability to make people want to shake her whenever they looked at her stupid folksy little homespun self. She wasn't strong enough. Hell, she didn't even WANT this – she just walked into it, didn't work for it, didn't dream and ache and slave over it, the way Layla had.

But now, Layla thought she might get it.

She used to feel the same way about Scarlett as she did about the girls who quit the pageant circuit after going through since they were toddlers, saying they were "burned out". Layla always thought – they could be smarter, stronger, better, more focused. Eyes on the prize. Know all the right words to say, and you can keep it up. She just assumed, because she had never been broken, that she WAS smarter and stronger; that she had it all figured out.

Now she knew how those girls felt. How Scarlett felt.

Trapped. Numb. Angry. Helpless. Exhausted. You look at everything you've done and think, what does it really matter? Why is it important?

And there wasn't any answer to that. You just woke up one morning and your husband was gay, and everything you ever knew was a lie. Every time he smiled at you and held you, said he loved you; every time he touched your body and made you feel like you were loved and wanted; every time he said he believed in the person you were, for better or for worse, and took you exactly as you were.

All of it was just a lie.

Her foot slammed the gas. She sped up to fifty, then sixty. The urge to let go of the wheel was unreal. The whole highway stretches out in front of her, the glossy black sky reaching with it. It was like being sucked into nothing, a black hole.

Maybe if she just let go of the wheel and let herself spin into it, the nothing of it it would suck her in. Like the anger growing inside her.

She could imagine crashing. The sparkle of the broken glass, the rank copper-penny stench of blood, the black and orange smoke curling from the wreckage. The metal wrapping around her, deadly arms that wouldn't let her go...

No.

She wouldn't do it. Not really. She had too much she still wanted; too much she still wanted to do. Too many dreams she would make happen, no matter what.

Nobody would keep her from it.

Will would never take anything else from her. He had already taken too much.

She stared at the black sky above her. Still, it felt so tempting. It was scary, but only in an abstract way; she didn't really find herself feeling the fear she ought to, as she the car screeched further and further into the darkness.

VI.

Focusing on the road took most of her concentration, so she didn't realize at first that the CD had kept going, and ran all the way to the end. The first few chords of the opening number startled her, the drums and vocals blasting through the hazy wall of her focus as she tried to keep her little car steady in between the lines.

The next track on the list was one she that was getting heavy rotation on the country stations lately. A newbie, signed by Capitol Records – much to Jeff's chagrin. Layla met him a few weeks ago, when she did an interview with Sirius XM, and he'd been playing a few songs from his upcoming album.

She figured the whole interview had something to do with her threatening Jeff, because the interviewer didn't seem interested in talking to her at all. Not that anybody else did – she hadn't done an interview in months that didn't include Will, or talking about Will, or their marriage, or their show.

It was clear this talk show host didn't have much else to ask her about, either. No one had, since "Tell Me" failed to chart and Will had made it to number one. She answered the normal questions with the typical rapidfire responses, the same hollow answers she'd been forced to keep giving. Jeff might have been giving her recording time, but so far he hadn't pushed for any big press releases, or getting her interviews, or working towards pushing a single to radio. She hadn't had a radio interview in weeks, and even that, it had been mostly about Will.

Just to rub salt in the wounds.

It was the one good thing that bitch Gina Romano had been able to do for her. The one good thing that came from this nightmare that her life had suddenly become. Teaching her to keep a cool head and smile, smile, smile.

You're never fully dressed without a smile.

She'd sung that in a pageant once. Her best Shirley Temple smile, perfectly styled helmet of wringlet curls, twirl twirl twirl shuffle-ball-change-step smile to the judges and always remember to smile.

She'd never really believed it. But the judges had seemed to think differently, because it was her first time winning Grand Supreme.

That moment should have clued in her little seven-year-old self that life was full of crap. That the truth didn't matter. Just how prettily you could package your lies.

Especially when you felt like screaming the truth until you'd never be able to speak again.

"Any plans for a family?"

The question was like someone knocking the planet out from underneath her. Like the universe suddenly revolving the other way. Like the man she loved more than she thought it was possible to love anything in the entire world looking her in the eyes and saying, "I'm gay".

She stared at her for a long moment. Time seemed like it got sucked away. It made her sick to her stomach.

They had only talked about kids once. Jeff asked them, right after they got married, if Layla was pregnant, and if they were covering up a potential scandal by eloping. When they both said no, he glanced at Layla, as if he could already see her with a huge belly, pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen where he no doubt thought he belonged.

"I would hope that you two would be more sensible than that," he said, his voice silky. "After all, Edgehill's number one artists has a big year ahead of him. Wouldn't want to compromise that with a pregnant missus at home."

Will kept quiet, staring at the floor.

"Well," Layla said, staring at him out of the corner of her eye, not really sure what she was saying but not willing to let Jeff tear into the two of them like he always seemed to think he could, "I don't think that would necessarily mean the difference between his success and failure…"

Jeff stared at her, the look in his eyes mocking her.

"You just keep telling yourself that," he snorted.

Will didn't say anything. That right there should have been all the information she needed to let her know that when it came to Jeff, her husband would never stand up for her, never fight for her; that would be entirely up to her.

Her fingers gripped the steering wheel. God, she'd been so naïve.

"I'm not saying we should right now," she had said to Will, after Jeff tore them the proverbial new one.

"But I'm saying…" Her voice was hesitant. "We could. Someday."

Will didn't answer, but she could tell by the way he was gripping the steering wheel that it wasn't because he was ignoring her.

"That's a lot to think about," he said finally.

"Well, I'm not saying it has to happen tomorrow," she replied.

When Will didn't look over at her, she turned to him.

"But…" She stared at the tenseness in his jaw, the way his fingers were practically white as he held onto the wheel, "I want kids."

Will's face turned as white as his knuckles.

"Kids," he repeated. "Kids, like, plural."

Layla folded her hands in her lap. They were sweating, slick and cold.

"I always thought I'd have more than one," she said softly.

She wiped her palms on the hem of her dress. Once upon a time her mother would have scolded her for this type of behavior, but her husband didn't even notice.

"Did you not think about this?" she asked him. "When we got married? I mean, did the idea of kids really not cross your mind?"

Will was silent for so long, she wondered if he'd actually just stopped listening altogether.

"Not really," he said. "I mean, maybe for a future." He looked over at her. "A super distant one."

They came to a red light, and Will finally let one hand off the wheel. He rubbed it over his still-clenched jaw, closing his eyes, taking a deep breath as if this was something he really didn't want to say.

"Look, Layla," he told her. "it's all crazy up in the air right now – my album's about to drop, I got Luke's tour, you got your stuff goin' on, and now this show…"

"I said that we wouldn't be doing this right now!" Layla argued. "But life doesn't just wait and drop things in your lap whenever you're ready. I mean, look at us. Did any part of you think, a year ago – heck, six months ago – that you'd be married by now?"

He went silent again, and she wanted to shake him. Force an answer out of him, not for the first time.

"It's just something that isn't gonna happen right now," was what he finally told her, with a firm shake of his head. "I'm sorry, I just can't."

"I know," she said. "Look, I don't want it right now, either. Okay? I'm being careful."

"Good," Will said, blowing out a breath.

Layla looked up at him.

"But all I'm saying is…" she murmured, "Someday."

Will went so long without speaking that she finally had to reach over and touch his arm.

His skin jumped under her hand.

"Would you please breathe?" she told him. "You're starting to change colors. We're not having a baby tomorrow. Okay?"

After that, they never mentioned it again. Will didn't bring it up, and she knew that if she tried, he'd just shut down and give her a few non-answers before storming out and refusing to discuss it.

Not long after that, Gina asked them to do the show, and they signed away their right to any privacy or control over their lives. Her husband was becoming a stranger to her more every day, and then they were in their bedroom in the middle of the night and he took her by the shoulders and said "I'm gay" and sobbed on her shoulders as he begged for forgiveness.

Before all that, though, she used to think about it. Having Will's baby.

Even when she was little, she had always assumed she'd have kids. She didn't think she'd be married, signed to a major Nashville record label, and making a reality TV show at nineteen, but still. She wasn't on the pill. The two of them were always very careful, and she kept diligent track of her period every month – always grateful when that first bit of spotting appeared – but she couldn't shake the feeling that anything could happen, right before she saw those first signs of blood in her underwear.

Once upon a time, that had made her feel this not-unpleasant thrill; her whole life could go in so many directions.

Was it really just about her?

That was one of the biggest things that kept her up at night, when she stared at the ceiling. What tortured her more than anything else

Did he like that she was so into him, and he could pull her strings without any effort? Or would he have just as easily married someone like Scarlett, if the chance came up? Could Layla's entire life of the past few months be just as easily replaced with some other girl, one just as eager and naïve and didn't know any better? Whoever else was pretty enough to come along?

Did Will pick her to be his cover only because she pushed herself in his face? Would he have picked her anyway, even if she hadn't done the whole stupid hashtag? Even if he hadn't gone on tour with her?

Was she interchangeable? Or was she just…easy?

Did he choose her because he knew she'd always say yes?

Was this her fault?

VII.

She didn't have a plan when she left the house, but figured, as soon as she merged onto the highway, that she'd just keep driving until she had a better idea. Except that she was kind of lost now, only had a quarter-tank of gas left to drive, and wasn't wearing any shoes. Or real pants, for that matter – she was still in her pajama bottoms when she left the house. And since she couldn't exactly stop at a gas station looking like this, so there was only so far she could drive before she had to turn around and go back.

Her eyes strained to see ahead of her. There were less headlights, almost no streetlights, and no roadside markers to guide her anywhere. She slowed down to a crawl; no one was behind or in front of her, and on these roads, she was always worried about a deer or a coyote running into across her path.

She hated these backcountry roads. Especially driving them alone. If anything happened to her out here, who would notice. There weren't any other cars on the road now, and no one knew where she was. If she crashed, there was every chance no one would even notice she was gone.

It was new, being so alone. Her schedule was usually so micro-managed, between the show and recording and media appearances with Will, and then the tour. But now that she was stuck in Nashville and they weren't filming anything for the next few weeks, the only time she wasn't alone was when she was in the studio, and that was only because with the lack of anything else to do with herself, she kept trying to work Jeff into a corner over her record, and pushing against his lack of effort to go along with her blackmail. He had his hands full with Luke's tour, with his new album.

With her husband.

She leaned forward in her seat, focusing on the road ahead. She doubted Will cared where she was right now. Or where she went, or what she was doing. Or if he ever saw her again.

She waited for that thought to be accompanied by another sharp wave of that same hatred she always felt when she thought of her husband. But it was more like a dull pang. And she wasn't sure if that was better or worse.

Because she didn't want to get used to it – the knowledge that he never cared about her, the betrayal she felt when she realized it. She didn't want to get used to this being her life.

Back when Gunnar had first moved into his own house, she and Will had gone over for the official "guided tour". Gunnar had practically danced from room to room, he was so excited. They had a sandwich place down the block deliver, and since he didn't have furniture yet they ate on the floor with an old bedsheet spread out, laughing at their little impromptu picnic.

It had all felt so cozy. So easy. Like this was how it could be all the time.

"I can't get over these floors," Zoey said, running her hand over the hardwood. "They're so shiny! And so…soft."

"Soft?" Gunnar looked at her. "Babe, these are hardwood floors. They're not soft."

"No," Layla had said. "I get what she's saying. They're so smooth."

Zoey had tipped her hand at Layla. "See? She knows what I mean."

Gunnar had snorted.

"It's not soft," was all he'd said.

Will had chosen to stay out of this argument; instead, he was picking off the slices of tomato and cucumber that came with his Italian supreme, handing them to Layla.

"Dude," Gunnar had said, "You're taking the whole thing apart."

Will had shrugged. "I don't like tomatoes. Or the green stuff."

"You sound like a seven-year-old," Zoey was laughing. "The big ol' country superstar doesn't want to eat vegetables."

"Good thing he has a wife who makes him eat something other than pizza and nachos," Layla said with a grin, as she popped one of the tomato slices Will gave her into her mouth.

Will concentrated on picking the rest of his sandwich apart.

"There is nothing wrong with a classic American staple," was all he said.

"Technically," Zoey said, "nachos aren't American. And neither is pizza."

"Why did you even bother getting that if you were just gonna pick it apart?" Gunnar asked him.

Layla had bit into another tomato slice, and tried to remember when they had started doing this. He would always just give her the parts of his meals he didn't want. It was automatic, like when she'd order pizza for them and she'd order his with half pepperoni and hers plain cheese without sauce. He'd order a sub with everything on it and then take off the peppers, zucchini, and tomato bites and just put them on her plate.

Tomatoes. Shared pizza. The memory of it almost made her throat swell up, as she stared out the rain-spattered windshield.

Was this how it was going to be from now on? She'd look at tomatoes in the produce aisle and suddenly remember that Will had shared his tomatoes with her, and then she'd dissolve into a pathetic mess of hate and resentment and loneliness? Or she'd get sick every time she smelled pizza, because it reminded her of the times he would order for her because he knew what she wanted?

Were little things going to just pop into her head at random and trigger a reaction she couldn't control?

There it was again. The vibration she'd been waiting for. The hate that filled her mouth with metal. So strong it made her feel like her whole body was beating instead of just her heart; the feeling of being wild awake. The crazed, intimate feeling thrumming inside her.

It was dizzying. How much she wanted to destroy something. To make someone else feel as ugly and angry and ruined as she felt, every morning when she woke up alone and this life wasn't a nightmare.

VIII.

She turned on the radio, which was something she hadn't done since she'd left the house in her pajama shorts and bare feet, driving on the road to nowhere with a mixed CD of Aretha and Diana and the Jackson Five and Gladys belting "Midnight Train to Georgia".

It was a bad idea to turn on the radio these days. All she heard were love songs. Sung by cowboys, most of which she knew. And disliked. Or were married to, and currently sleeping with their goddamn personal trainers, like the world's most gross and obvious cliché.

She couldn't listen to those songs any more than she could sing them. Like false advertising. Total and complete horseshit. Entertainment value from someone else's broken heart.

Every song hurt her chest. A punch to the gut, a kick to her ribs. Someone holding her down and taking hit after hit after hit.

Could everybody see how disgusting she felt, just by looking at her? How she felt so ashamed and betrayed because she let Will's words, his lies get under her skin?

The morning after her first time, there were bruises on her thighs. The soreness down there that she'd feel for the next few days. Her robe was in a bunch, tossed in a pile in the corner, where Will had ripped it off her.

It took longer to find her underwear – Will only gave them one quick yank downward before getting inside her, so her first time had happened with her underwear technically still on, halfway down the length of her knees, bunched up right above her kneecaps. They came off later, she wasn't sure exactly when or how.

She eventually found them at the foot of the bed, scrunched into a pile under the covers. She picked them up with her thumb and forefinger, glancing at them for a moment before dropping them in the trash can beside the bed. For good measure, she covered them with the newspaper that had been dropped by her hotel room yesterday, burying the wisp of cotton in the lifestyle section of Houston's newspaper.

After her freak-out in the hotel gym, she stumbled back to her room on seasick legs, certain everyone could see it written all over her. The bruises on her thighs. The torn robe. The underwear Will didn't even take off of her. The sweat of their bodies, the friction between their legs.

How she'd responded to it.

How she'd liked it.

She hadn't known what to do with her hands, so she'd kept them at her sides. His were everywhere, though – on her breasts, on her stomach, on the inside of her thighs.

Inside her.

At one point, he held the bedboard with one hand, and braced an arm beside her, still inside. Then he pushed, and pushed, and pushed, face red and set with an expression cut from stone.

She had barely recognized him then, as he kept pressing into her, so fast he wasn't taking breaths in between thrusts. Though maybe that was just the dimness of the hotel lighting.

After she ran back to her hotel room, she showered for so long her skin pruned. The water pressure was barely more than spitting. The memory of Will on top of her made her feel claustrophobic. Like her bones were closing in around her lungs, around her heart. Cracking, breaking, crushing her.

A hand went down between her legs. A washcloth, a bar of soap. She once heard that you could get an infection down there if you didn't clean it enough. Her mom hadn't taught her that, of course – she'd had to learn it from Web MD, the same way she learned how to put on a pad after her first period, and then insert a tampon later on.

Her mother would never have taught Layla something so obscene; the word "vagina" had never been spoken in the Grant house, let alone "period" or "breast".

Certainly never something as forbidden as "sex".

She scrubbed the soreness, and whatever else might have been down there. Left over.

The harder she washed, the more it hurt. Until the ache building in her chest felt like it would crunch her bones to dust, crumbling her from the inside out.

She scrubbed the skin raw by the time she finally got out of the shower. She could see it when she stepped out of the shower, even in the steam-filled mirror.

It was red. Like something had just happened to her. Something strange and painful, and...frightening?

IX.

After she tore the sheets off the bed, she stumbled into the kitchen to Will's phone sitting on the countertop. It was before the crew showed up for the afternoon. She could hear the shower running, which meant Will was finally back from tour. It was just for a few days, a quick break in the schedule.

She knew he hadn't come home before now; she was up all night and would have heard him.

Probably with his new boyfriend.

It was a sunshine summer morning, the air smelling like honeysuckle and onion grass, the sky without a cloud, a light breeze blowing across her face as she stumbled, barefoot and shaking, into the house that would capture it on camera.

Will was still in the shower. No one else was here yet. It was too perfect outside to be the nightmare that was her life, so she snatched his phone off the counter, flicking her thumb over the screen, and deleted some of his emails. She wasn't paying attention to the subject line, just sending them to the trash without looking. It occurred to her that maybe she ought to take a peek into some of them, but she just kept deleting, until there were enough missing to where he might not even realize he'd missed something important.

It was stupid and petty, but it nursed a mean little ache inside her. Like ripping Scarlett's notecards apart or calling TMZ on Juliette.

Then she moved on to the contacts, looking for…anything. But all she saw were people she knew – Gunnar, Jeff, Gina, Will's manager, even Scarlett – and the closest Papa John's that delivered. There wasn't anything she could see that made her oh-so-perfect husband seem anything less than perfect.

Photos.

Her hands shook. She clicked on the camera reel.

There was nothing there. He couldn't tell if it was because he never took photos or if he just purged his phone, but there wasn't anything on his phone except some photos she recognized from his Twitter feed – she recognized the photos as ones she had taken – and a few older pictures of him with Gunnar & Scarlett, back when they all lived together in this house.

Before he knew her.

There weren't many photos of recent times. And the ones that she did see, she had taken and uploaded to Will's Twitter for him, because he hated messing around with that stuff and she'd kept her Twitter updated several times a day since her /e American Hitmaker /e days. It was mostly pictures of him and her together, smiling in front of various venues, during soundchecks, backstage with Luke and Deacon and other superstars they met along the way. There was the photo she took of him and Lady Antebellum when they met backstage at the Ryman a few weeks ago; one of him with Chris Young, Brantley Gilbert, and Dierks Bentley, when they all played a benefit at the Nashville Rescue Mission last winter. Then there was a photo of him and Layla with Kris Kristofferson. That had been only a few days before everything fell apart.

Then her thumb flicked over one photo she'd never seen before.

Her throat jammed. Head throbbed. Every bone felt broken, the air sucker-punched right out of her.

It was her and Will. They were goofing off in a dressing room. She couldn't tell which venue it was or even what state they were in. She had Will's hat on her head, and was sticking her tongue out. The hat was so big on her head that the brim covered her eyes, and from the way Will's face was twisted in the mirror behind her, he was laughing, probably at how silly she looked.

She looked at her image in the mirror, Will's expression as he looked at her. It was almost like –

Almost like he meant it.

Almost like he enjoyed it. Being there. With her.

Her head spun as she stared at the picture. She could hear her own happy laughter from the look on her half-hidden face, and Will's too. The smile on her face, in her voice. In her eyes.

His ring wasn't on her finger, so she hadn't asked her to marry him yet.

But by the look on her face, it looked to any outsider as if Layla Grant was already the luckiest girl in the world.

It was like the earth tilted underneath her. She looked so young there. Not just age-wise. She looked so alive, and she could see it here so much that the world spun and she hit the floor, phone still in sweating, shaking hands. Watching herself laugh with Will, it looked like she was an entirely different species of happy. Like there was something of herself trapped within the pixels, just waiting to be realized.

And now it was gone.

She could see herself in the mirror above her, and she looked nothing like that girl in the photo. And why should she? That girl was gone. Everything Will put her through was so plain on her face – she couldn't believe no one else could see it. Couldn't believe no one else is asking her what's wrong.

How couldn't they see it? Her skin was pitted with it, blood crawling with it, eyes swimming with it. If they just looked at the girl in the picture on Will's phone and then looked at Layla now, they'd have to know it. Have to realize she was different.

She stared at her reflection, and there it was. The truth on her lips, the words too big to fit on the tip of her tongue. She was staring at herself like she'd never seen her own reflection before, because it was so plain in her eyes. Her head and her throat constricted, choking everything out of her except the truth –

He hurt her. So, so much.

He hurt her.

She couldn't breathe, it hurt so much.

She felt her ankles fold underneath her, the bang in her knees as she fell to the cold bathroom tiles. Her knees ached.

There was nothing left from the girl in the photo. Just grief, and hate, and –

She moved her finger over the face of the laughing girl. Back when they shot this she had nothing else to stand on except him, and thought that would be enough. But now she was farther away from everything she ever believed in, everything she thought was real and made up her life.

She was robbed of having a real wedding. A first dance, a first real date. Even a first kiss. They hadn't even kissed at all until after they'd already had sex for the first time. It wasn't Layla's first kiss ever, but she lost her virginity before she kissed the guy she lost it to.

No way was she going to act like she was happy. Not when he destroyed her chance to be. Not when she would always wonder what someone was using her for from now on.

Not when she'd never be able to believe anyone who said he loved her ever again.

She'd never be able to trust anyone when they said those words, without wondering what they really wanted.

She wasn't going to pretend like it was okay when he took everything from her, and never gave anything back.

She was nothing but a stupid target for him. And he could do whatever he wanted with her while he strung her along. She gave up her family, her career, her love and trust and complete devotion.

And what did he give up, exactly?

Nothing. He was sitting pretty at the top of the country charts. He had a CMA award nomination for Best New Artist in the bag. His music video was number one on CMT's Hot Country Countdown, and his newest single was climbing the charts. Her husband was right now country music's biggest commodity. The newest heartthrob.

He could smile and act like he was happy, while she'd lost everything.

She missed him.

She still loved him

And she'd never hate anyone more.

She threw the phone against the wall and stood up so fast her head spun. Or maybe it was already spinning; she couldn't tell anymore, and it didn't matter. She just stumbled up the stairs to the spare room, where Will had been crashing on the couch since the night he told her everything. His guitar sat in the corner on its stand, and she grabbed the handle, staring at it for a long moment.

She stared at the guitar for a long time.

He took it with him everywhere. He'd had it as long as she'd known him. He played it during every show, from the first time she saw him play at the Stockholder's Showcase last fall to the Ryman just a few weeks ago. It was something he cherished; it was important to him.

This was really so much more important than she was?

It had been to Will.

It had always been more important to him than she was.

He decided what he wanted was more important than her.

Than her dreams, her happiness.

Her life.

With one home run swing of her arms, she grabbed the handle, swung it like a baseball bat into the bedroom wall, and splintered his guitar to bits.

It took her a few minutes to realize what she was looking at. To connect the broken parts of Will's guitar and the hole in the wall to the ache in her arms and the way her chest was heaving in and out while she gasped for breath. She stared at the floor and the broken handle in her hands, the smashed body and the dented strings.

It didn't even bleed. It didn't even cry.

It didn't even put up a fight, when she destroyed it.

X.

Through the windshield, she could see stars again. Like little bits of sugar on a black surface, or candles lined up to blow out. One by one, little wishes scattered.

If people found out what happened to her, she'd be different. She wouldn't be Layla Grant to them anymore. She'd be "The Girl Who Married The Gay Guy". It would become all she was. Any promise or chance she had would vanish under the weight of that new name she'd be given.

And people would want to know everything. No one would listen when she had been so in love with him that it completely clouded her judgment. No one would believe her when she said she never had a clue. No one would care that he had made her feel so loved, and special, and wanted, like no one ever had before.

No one would put themselves in her shoes or feel any compassion. They just wanted to hear all the juicy details, and then turn around and call her stupid bitch, a naïve little girl, a total fame whore who would have done anything to be on top.

They'd snicker when they said that last part. A joke. Just like she would be to them.

People wouldn't listen to what she had to say. Her side of the story. It wouldn't matter.

She would be another stupid girl for the tabloids to pick apart. Like Paris Hilton, or Kim Kardashian, or Lindsey Lohan. Her life, her pain, her bad decisions – they'd all be fodder for someone else to judge, to pick apart. They'd hold it all up, a crystal to the light, and look at every dirty angle, laughing and enjoying it and making it their entertainment because she didn't matter, her pain didn't matter, it wasn't important and fun for the story.

They wouldn't care that sometimes she still had dreams that he was holding her and she would wake up furious because the parts of herself she dreamed he touched were so numb and she felt like choking on screams she never let out and whenever it happened she wasn't sure who she hated more, him for making her feel this way or herself for still being dumb enough to even dream that Will was the person he said he was and she didn't know if she wanted to dream him or not because when she did, it was the only time she didn't feel alone

They wouldn't feel any sympathy for her if she ever talked about how she felt like

dying and

she'd almost taken pills that one time because she had to make it all

STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP

but the blood on her hands snapped her out of it, because something about the sudden stab of pain and then the brightness of the blood

It opened something inside her. Something that could finally breathe.

The knowledge of all this sat on her chest every single night. There was never any relief. The shame was always there. Always inside her. Always a part of her something she'd never be able to escape.

XII.

He noticed the missing cell before he found the broken guitar.

"Where's my phone?"

His hair was still damp from the shower, his shirt caught mid-buttoning when he came into the bedroom without knocking.

Layla looked up calmly.

"Your what?" she asked.

Will frowned.

"Where's my phone?" he repeated. His voice was still low, but harder, and he started looking around the room like he expected the phone to appear on the counter.

Layla raised one eyebrow at him.

"Gee," she said. "I don't know. Did you try calling it?"

Will's jaw clenched.

"Give it," he said.

Layla licked the edge of the magazine, expertly flipping the page.

"I don't have it," she replied.

He stepped closer to the bed.

"Cut the shit," he snapped. "Give me my phone."

She stared at him for a long moment over the magazine. He stared back, then leaned over until he was inches from her face.

"Layla. Where. Is. My. Phone."

She stared back, then tilted her eyes downward, and flipped another page of the magazine. Will rolled his eyes, stomping off to the spare room.

She waited. One. Two, Three.

The footsteps that were retreating were suddenly coming back. She kept her eyes glued to the magazine. Then it was torn out of her hand, and Will's red, furious face, screaming words into hers.

Something like WHAT THE FUCK LAYLA and HOW THE HELL COULD YOU DO SOMETHING LIKE THIS and I'VE HAD THIS GUITAR SINCE I WAS SEVENTEEN and YOU CRAZY BITCH WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU

The magazine was thrown into a corner, and she found she didn't mind him screaming at her. She liked it, actually – that someone else, for once, could feel like she did all the time. That she wasn't the only person who could feel this horrible. The acidic hate burning through her and eating her alive from the inside out wasn't just hers anymore. It was spreading, cancerous, feral.

Her voice got louder and louder. She wanted to be calm but she couldn't hear how her voice was wobbling.

SHUT UP! YOU JUST SHUT UP!

Will did shut up. And he flinched. She could tell it was from the hate in her eyes.

SHUT UP SHUT UP! I AM SO SICK OF HEARING YOU TALK! YOU DON'T TALK ANYMORE!

She slapped him. He stared. She did, too, just for a moment.

Then she shoved him in the chest. He barely moved backward, so she shoved him again. One more time her arms came up, and this time he blocked her, reflexes faster than she could move and stronger than she could stop. Grabbed her arm and pulled it down, his grip like iron, face hard and angry.

She screamed. She saw red.

He pushed her backward. She fell onto the bed. Almost smacked her head against the board. Her knees slammed into the bedframe.

Will blinked. He still had a hold of her, grip cutting into her arms. The flinty anger disappeared, replaced by surprise. Then he stepped away from her fast, like she'd burned him. He stared at her like he'd never seen her before, like he barely knew who he was or what he was doing.

She sat on the bed, hands in her lap. Her arms were red with fingermarks where he'd grabbed her. Will's face went red, too, then pale. He backed away from her, slowly.

She didn't register much else. The front door opening and shutting. Will's bike roaring, starting up, speeding away from the house. Then the stillness around her, a postwar quiet.

XIII.

The world didn't stop.

She didn't think it would, really, but it still amazed her sometimes. That this was the same world where she had fallen for Will when she saw him at the stockholder's showcase and decided right then and there that she had to have him, and less than a year later put he had put a ring on her finger. That this was the same world where she'd once felt like she was completely loved and wanted for exactly who she was, and waking up with his arms around her was more than she'd ever need.

She pulled over in a rest stop parking lot, which was mostly empty. She looked around, looking for someone who seemed like they took notice of a girl parked way out here alone at night, locking her doors just in case, but the guy who was smoking at a picnic table and the woman with the fanny pack and orthopedic shoes who was standing outside a junker car a few spaces down didn't even glance her way.

She leaned the driver's seat back and stared up at the car ceiling. She signed, running a hand over her face. It felt rubbery, like a mask.

She hated what she'd become. What he'd turned her into. How angry she was all the time, how lonely. Everything about her felt dirty and empty and wrong.

All because of Will.

The night he told her, she cried all night. Didn't sleep, laying under the covers all night. The sheets she'd thrown away.

She'd alternated between sobbing so hard she couldn't breathe and just lying there, staring at the wall, not thinking anything except my husband is gay, my husband is gay, my husband is not attracted to me, my husband lied to me, my husband doesn't love me, my husband lied to me, he lied.

Will lied.

She put her hand in front of her face, waved it around. The cuts were barely visible, but they were there, only if you were really looking, little silver dashes that ran across her palm and down her wrist. Not all of them were from the mirror accident.

She stared at those scars the longest.

It was weird, how physical pain had become a relief. A release. A way to breathe.

It should have been this horrible thing to know about herself. This scary, weird ritual that her life had slipped into. She'd become one of an After School Special girls, or like those goth chicks she made fun of in high school for wearing black and writing bad poetry in the lunch room. But she didn't think about it, really. When it was happening, her mind was blank. It was the only time it was ever not-thinking.

The only time she ever felt like she could turn her screaming brain up was when she could make herself hurt. Make herself feel it on the outside.

It wouldn't change anything, but it did make her stop. Stop feeling, stop hurting, stop feeling like she'd combust unless she screamed how much she hated him.

But couldn't stop missing him.

The moon above her was half-sized, a perfect slice. Half-empty of light.

She didn't think she could keep going on like this. She didn't want to keep doing any of this. But she didn't know what else to do.

A knock on her window made jump. Her hand slammed the wheel, honking the horn by mistake.

"Miss?"

A fat cop with a flashlight was tapping on her window. He motioned for her to roll it down, and when her heart stopped bursting out of her chest, she obeyed.

"Miss?" The cop peered into her car. He didn't seem to recognize her. "Are you okay? Do you need any help?"

She brushed the hair out of her eyes. Her hand was shaking.

"No. I'm fine. I just…I got tired and wanted to pull over. Before I fell asleep at the wheel." She tried to smile at him. "I'm okay, really."

The cop didn't look totally convinced – which meant she really must have looked like shit – but he nodded, backing away from the car.

"All right," he said. "Just looked like you might need some help."

She almost laughed. Almost cried. Almost threw up and screamed and tore all her hair out and howled and threw herself on the ground and let the heat rocketing through her out of her until her voice was stripped and raw and she turned herself inside-out so everybody could see what was wrong with her.

The cop was walking away. There wasn't a way out of this.

She had to go back.

She put her hand on the gearshift, but the ignition was still turned off. She waited for some part of herself to start moving, but nothing did and she couldn't make herself do it. She couldn't make herself go back to her life.

Or whatever she was supposed to call these daily tests of endurance. This black hole of color-changing heaviness that wouldn't go away.