“I miss her, Easy,” I whispered.
“I know, Doc.”
“Why did it have to be her? Why did he hit her?” I had asked those same questions for days, and there wasn’t an answer to them.
“I’m sorry,” Easy whispered.
I knew he felt guilty. I knew he blamed himself for what happened.
Yesterday, when he thought I was sleeping, I heard him crying in the bathroom.
This wasn’t his fault. He wasn’t the one who hit and killed Layla.
The blame laid firmly on Aaron.
“Don’t be sorry,” I sighed. I turned in his arms and looked up at him.
“Doc, how the hell can I not be sorry? All of this happened because of me.”
I shook my head and cupped his cheek in my hand. “No. You don’t make Aaron get back in his car and hit Layla. You didn’t make him push me ten years ago. All you were trying to do was right a wrong.”
“I promised you no one would get hurt, Birdie,” he reasoned.
I shook my head. “No one can make that promise, Easy, and keep it. You did everything you could, but you can’t control what other people do. If you would have been five seconds sooner, Aaron would have hit both you and Layla.”
“But if I wouldn’t have been hell bent on making him pay for what he did to you, none of this would have happened.”
Another thing I didn’t know was true.
Aaron could have killed me if Easy hadn’t stepped in.
The one thing we did know was we couldn’t go back.
We couldn’t change what happened.
Layla was dead, and now, we had to learn how to live with that.
“How is Snapper doing?” I whispered.
Easy closed his eyes and sighed. “Not good, Doc. We all blame ourselves for what happened, but it’s on a different level for him. I don’t know the extent of how deep he was with Layla, but it’s breaking him.”
I knew how deep Layla was with Snapper. She loved him.
I could tell by the way she talked about him. The way she looked when he called or texted her.
The same way I looked when Easy called or texted.
“She was in love with him,” I whispered. “She didn’t say it, but I could tell.”
“I’m sure he felt the same about her, Doc. King and two cops had to rip him off of Aaron in that parking garage.”
Ugh. That made my heart hurt even more. “She was so excited that we were both ol’ ladies,” I whispered.
Easy crushed me in his arms, and I couldn’t hold back my sobs. “I don’t think I’m ever going to stop crying, Easy.”
“I know, Doc. I know.”
My brain told me that with time, this would be easier. That my heart would heal, and life would move on.
