Shockingly, tears burst up in my eyes. I blink them back furiously. “But this is all I’m good at.” I say. “I’m good at this, Zack. I am so good at my job.”
“You are,” he says, looking at me levelly. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
I throw up my hands. “I don’t know how to do anything else!” I exclaim. “I know how my business works. I know what I need to do to keep improving it. I have a plan that I’ve been checking off since I was eighteen. If I don’t follow it, then… anything could happen!”
The guys are all still for a few seconds, stunned into silence.
“You’re scared,” Zack says, watching me.
“Yeah, I’m scared. When I was a teenager, my whole life was taken out of my control. I was doing fine, enjoying school, living my life — and then one guy decided to make up a lie about me, and I lost all my friends. Everyone hated me. People decided it would be fun to hurt me. It wasn’t my fault, I did nothing wrong, and I had to live with the consequences of someone else’s actions. It wasn’t fair.” I shake my head, my chest burning. “But I let it fuel me. And now I’m living a better life than those people. I got better grades than them. I’m making more money than them. I’ve been in magazines. On podcasts. I’m going to collaborate with Anna Bardet at New York Fashion Week. They acted like I was worth nothing, but I knew they were wrong, and when I go to my ten-year reunion, they’re all going to see that. I’ll be better off than all of them, because I was smart, and I worked hard, and I stuck to my damn plan.”
I break off, breathing hard. The boys all look at me for a few moments. Then Josh slides closer to me, cupping my cheeks with his warm, dry hands.
“You want to control everything,” he says quietly, his eyes boring into mine. “But you can’t, Layla. You need to learn to let go of your plan and just… live sometimes. It’s okay.”
Luke nods behind me. “Until you trust another person to be on your side, you’ll never find a partner. You’ve never found a boyfriend because you’ve never found a man you trust will love you and take care of you.”
I swallow. “I thought it was because I didn’t know how to date.”
Luke sighs. “Layla, this was never about you being awkward on dates. People with far less social skills than you get married every day. You never got a second date, because every time you sat down with a guy, you were on the defensive. They could tell that, no matter what you were saying with your mouth, you had absolutely no interest in opening up to them.”
I bite my lip, fear rising up in me. I don’t know what to do.
The guys are right; I don’t really want to move countries. But the thought of staying here with no clear career path is terrifying. If I’m not always pushing for more, who knows where I might end up? “I don’t know how to let go,” I whisper. “I’m so used to having to fight for everything.”
“Do you want to try?” Luke asks in my ear, taking my wrists and pinning them back onto his thighs. Heat blooms in me, and I lean back into him, pressing my cheek into his soap-scented shirt. He presses a kiss to the base of my neck, his gaze flicking up to Zack. “Didn’t you have a lesson planned out for her? Now seems like an ideal time.”
Zack has been sitting silently, watching me, tugging on the chain around his neck. Now he sits back. “You like that?” He asks, pointing at Luke’s lap.
I look down. “Sitting on Luke’s knee? I bet he’ll let you try, if you ask nicely.”
“He means this,” Luke says, tightening his grip. “Do you like me holding you down?”
A breeze suddenly washes in through the open balcony window, and the shiver that runs through me is practically convulsive.
All three men laugh out loud. I blush.
Zack nods, satisfied. “I want to try something with you. Hang on a sec.”
He slips off the bed and walks to the wardrobe. I hear him rummaging around, and then he appears a few seconds later, holding a black bundle. “Here. What do you think of these?” He shows me a handful of strips of glossy black fabric, about as wide as my hand, probably a metre long each.
I touch one. “What are they?”
Zack hands one to Luke. “Care to demonstrate?”
“Gladly.” Luke takes the fabric and wraps it a few times around my wrist. Then he loops the ends around his hand and tugs my arm to the headboard, tying my wrist loosely to the bedpost.