SPN Fic: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven and So On (continued...)
(Previously...)
***
Little Talbot Island State Park is a far cry from what Dean had feared when Layla first said, “beach.” When they turn off 1A and onto the park road, Dean feels the same sense of isolation he gets from endless Iowan highways and Oregon logging roads. And the tinge of salt in the air puts him right back in the middle of a hard winter for the Winchester family dynamic. He was 12 and Sammy was 8, and their dad shacked them up in a drafty summer cottage on the Outer Banks while he picked the brain of a crusty old hunter who’d retired to the seashore. Dean remembers him claiming it was the perfect place to be a hunter who actually wanted to grow old-spirits and demons and the like didn’t stand much of a chance when everything under the sun was perpetually covered in a dusting of sea salt.
That was the winter Sam almost drowned when a kelpie who didn’t much mind the brackish water on the Sound side pulled him off a dock at high tide.
That was the winter Dean decided there was no such thing as a “safe place.”
They drive a few more miles until they reach a near-empty parking lot with beach access. Layla grabs three bottles of water and the fruit, stuffs them into her purse and hops out without looking back at Dean. She starts walking like Dean can either follow or not. He grudgingly gets out of the car and stalks after her, catching up when she comes to the brushy start of a boardwalk.
Without asking, he scoops his fingers around the straps of her purse and lifts it off her shoulder. Its weight is surprising and Dean looks in to see she’s managed to stuff beach towels and God knows what else into its depths.
“Thank you,” she says softly.
The wood-planked walkway winds along toward a mound of dunes, so Dean doesn’t hear the ocean until he’s crests a hill and then he’s right on top of it. Fine pale sand stretches out to the north and south and ahead is nothing but a green sea and white, foaming waves.
He turns to Layla to speak, but loses his words at the sight of her, eyes closed, lips turned up at he corners, arms lifting slightly toward the water. She’s nothing like he remembers from the cold motel room in Nebraska. This Layla has layers he never imagined. That Layla probably did, too, only he was too wrapped up in the hunt to notice. Before, she only stood for something. Now she is something. Or someone.
“The last time I was here, I was with my mom,” Layla says suddenly. She looks up at him, her mouth now crimped in a wistful half-smile.
Dean doesn’t know what to say since this is the first she’s offered free information. He listens all the harder for it.
“Mom brought me to Florida about three months after I met you. There was a specialist who thought she could help. And I guess she did, since I’m standing here in front of you now and not...” Layla shifts her focus back to the ocean, one foot scraping at the edge of the walkway where it ends and the sand begins. “I finished the radiation and experimental drug therapy and was so sick from the treatment I could hardly stand. My hair was gone, I’d dropped 30 pounds and I’d lost all sensation in my hands and feet. But my mom dragged me out here anyway and made me walk all the way to the end of this boardwalk and then right down to the water. She told me I was going to live. She told me to me I was a part of God’s plan and I was as important to this world as every grain of sand beneath my feet-even if I couldn’t feel them.”
Dean sneaks a hand into his pocket and finds the pick tangled up with the rubber band. He squeezes it hard and for no reason he can fathom, Sam’s tear-struck face right before he turned away to shoot Madison pops into Dean’s head. Beside him, Layla’s shaky breath pulls him back.
“Two weeks later, Mom had a stroke.” She says it so softly, Dean almost misses it. His heart lurches when his brain processes what that means. “She’s been in that hospice we stopped at this morning, ever since. She can’t even feed herself. I think she knows who I am because we’ve worked out this blinking system...” Tears are falling from Layla’s eyes now, but there’s no more tremor in her voice. “I didn’t believe her that day on this beach. I felt like...like we were actually going against God’s plan at that point. I meant what I said to you. I was okay with my fate. Everything with Roy? It made things clear. Saved...or not saved. I just had to believe in God’s will...”
“That wasn’t God’s will, Layla,” Dean breaks in, vehemently. “What happened with Roy...and with Sue Anne? That had nothing to do with God.” He’s grasping at something to fight that’s solid and coming up empty.
“Maybe not. But it had everything to do with faith.”
The earnest lines on her face make Dean want grab her by the shoulders and explain to her exactly how it was Roy was able to “save” him and why she didn’t get that same “miracle.” He refrains, but his whole body is humming with anger.
“My mom was right. It was important for me to live because it was important for her.”
Dean scoffs, incredulous, “You really think your mom wanted you to live just so you could take care of her now?”
She smiles at him patiently. “Not at all. I think my mom did everything to keep me alive because she wanted her daughter to live a long and happy life. But prayers and miracles...even if they come true, that doesn’t mean they happen for the reasons you planned.”
Dean feels his chest tighten at how close she’s hitting without even knowing it.
“My mom was right, Dean. My life is important. It’s important for me to be here now, for as long as I can-for her. Parents aren’t the only ones who get to make sacrifices.”
The ocean is still pounding away, but Dean can’t hear it for all the roaring in his head.
“Why did you bring me here?” he asks in a rough voice.
Layla inhales deeply and lets it out slow and careful. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s because of what we share from Roy. No one else around here knows about it. The Mayo Clinic doesn’t exactly put a lot of stock in faith-healing.” Dean glares at her, not buying her answer. “Or maybe it’s because you look like you need someone to drag you down to the water and tell you you’re important to this world.”
With that, she steps off the edge and onto the sand. When he doesn’t follow, she reaches back with her hand. “Come on.”
He takes it.
***
Dean’s sitting on the bleached bones of an oak tree that’s rising up and out of the sand in an arc, trying to roll his jeans up his calves. They’ve walked the last hour on the hard-packed, low-tide sand, but now the water is creeping up, narrowing the beach and forcing them into the soft hills near the tree line. The sun is high in the sky and Dean can feel the back of his neck burning along the collar of his grey t-shirt. As he struggles with his pants and cringes at his shockingly white feet, he watches Layla trotting back to him, her cheeks rosy from exertion on top of her warm tan. She stops in front of him, her legs sandy and wet to her knees.
“Hand me my sun block?” she asks, slightly breathless. He roots around in the bag and finds the blue bottle, but hands her water first. She smiles, takes a long drink and then trades it for the sun block. He takes a swig of water himself and wipes the back of his mouth with his arm. “Now take off your shirt.”
“Excuse me?” he sputters, then feigns feigning shock. “Ms. Rourke, I don’t know what kind of guy you take me for...” Layla smirks at him and he laughs, waving her off. “Really, I’m fine. Like I said. The beach? Not really my thing.”
“And neither is skin cancer,” she harps back at him, but her voice is still the hushed Layla-voice and he decides that she could be lethal to a man’s independence if she chose to be. “Come on. Indulge a dying woman.”
The laugh falls from Dean’s lips and they both deflate a little in the sun. “So the treatment?” he asks. “It wasn’t permanent?”
She peers down at him, resigned. “No. It just gave me more time.”
“How much?” Somewhere in the back of his mind, he hears Sam ask the same of him.
“I don’t really know,” and she plops down beside him on the log. It feels hard like the bed back in Nebraska. “I’ve already outlived their best prediction.”
“So, maybe...?”
“No. The tumor’s still there. It’s still growing. I have good days. Today’s a good day.” She chuckles a little. “Today’s a great day. But mostly I have bad days.”
There doesn’t seem to be much to say to that, so Dean crosses his arm over his stomach and tugs his shirt over his head. Layla breaks into laughter-the first he’s ever heard her laugh. Ever. “So I have to have one foot in the grave for you to take your shirt off?”
He dips his head with amusement as she rises and moves around the log to stand behind him. He hears her tap on the sun block and he holds his breath, not quite believing she’s going to do what he thinks she’s going to do.
When her palms, thick with the lotion, slide onto his shoulder blades, he sucks in a breath that he hopes she doesn’t notice. He closes his eyes as her hands pass back and forth across his back, working the sun block into his skin. But even deeper than that, she forcing something like empathy into his tight muscles and he can’t stop himself from leaning into her hands. There’s a short, unsettling break of contact as she pours more lotion into her hands, but then she’s back and her fingers are running down the ridges of his spine, fanning out to his lower back and then gliding up his sides. He feels nails on his skin.
“Layla,” he murmurs, and swiftly twists at the waist so he can face her. She looks stunned, whether by her action or his reaction, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t wait. He reaches up the few inches she has on him and cups her cheek with his hand. It takes nothing to bring her mouth down to his.
The kiss is as soft as Layla, but the need between them is significantly harder. She opens up for him without pause but he holds himself back. He wants to taste her in stages. First her lips, smaller than his and easy to dominate. Then, as her head tilts to better reach her own desire, he tests with his tongue; shallow licks that slide and contrast with the dry warmth of her skin and mouth.
He snakes his free arm around her waist and, without breaking the kiss-and, in fact, deepening it- he leads her down onto log. The sand makes her stumble, but Dean’s hold is firm and she melts into place beside him, their legs facing opposite directions while their upper bodies are turned into each other like an entwined garden sculpture. He splays his hand across her back and feels her own arms wrap around him.
As good as it feels, though, he doesn’t think this is what he’s supposed to check off.
Like the tide receding, they both pull back from the kiss. Her face is unreadable and when she moves to disentangled herself from his arms, he lets her go.
***
“Come on.”
“No.”
“Dean, when are you ever going to do this again?”
“Never, because I’m not doing it now.”
“I’m going in.”
“Have fun digging the sand outta your crack.” But she’s already moving toward the water, sashaying in a way no good Christian girl should. Of course, Dean’s made a lot of assumptions about Layla before now that have turned out to be 15 degrees to the left of who she really is, so his downstairs brain suggests to his upstairs brain that he not rule anything out. “And if you think you’re getting back into my car soaked in dead fish and sea water, you’ve got another thing comin’!” he shouts at her back.
And then-holy shit. He has to blink to be sure he saw it right. She’s wriggling out of her shorts. And sure she’s still wearing underwear-and not even a thong, but the kind of panties girls used to wear when Dean was first learning how to get into them-but it doesn’t really matter to him how much cloth is covering her ass. All that matters is that Layla...demur, quite, God-lovin’, faith-havin’ Layla...is stripping down in front of him.
“Thank you, Jesus,” Dean rasps as his feet start walking.
On thing he notes: she doesn’t take off her top to turn her bra and panties into a bikini. But Dean quickly decides that’s a good thing. She’s wearing a white t-shirt. A white t-shirt, the promise of which is Dean’s undoing.
His cock hardens instantly.
“Is your tumor the kind that completely alters your personality?” he calls out over the sound of the low-breaking waves that creep up the sand and stop at his toes. She hoots a laugh back at him for that and he grins. “Because this?” He flicks his hand in her direction. “This ain’t the Layla I remember.”
She shoots him a bemused smirk and kicks water up as she tramps through the surf toward him. “You knew me for what, a couple of days? And a couple of my darkest days, at that? Did you think that was all there was to me? Sorrowful but brave, dying Layla?”
He’s ashamed to say ‘yes’ so instead he lobbies with, “Well what about me?”
“What about you?”
“Did you ever consider that there was more to me?”
He’s just bantering but she takes up his question in all seriousness. “More to you than what?”
This gestalts him. He doesn’t tend to think-or care-how people view him if their names don’t start with Sam and end with Winchester. Especially if they’re not in the “business.” He tries to put himself back under the tent in Nebraska with mud and sickness and disappointment in the air. He tries to imagine what she might have thought of him, and if it was as one-dimensional as his impression of her.
“More than some conflicted drifter who slid into town, got his miracle when you didn’t, and then couldn’t muster the courtesy to just shut up and be grateful.” The honesty tastes salty on his tongue.
She gives him a long, appraising look, hard to do with the sun at his back. He forces himself not to fidget. Finally, she deadpans, “And here I just thought you were cute.”
He coughs out a surprised laugh before he has to throw up his arms to keep from getting a kick-splash full in his face. She tosses her head and cackles gleefully before turning back toward the deeper water. It rises around her shins and then slides up to her knees. He watches, paralyzingly charmed-but still not enough to plunge after her. She wades further in and the waves break at her thighs. She raises her arms in a V above her head and the next surge hits and ricochets up her body.
He takes a step, worried suddenly that she’ll topple into the wave. But her feet are sure and she spins in place, her shirt wetly translucent, her lace bra showing through, and she looks so damn happy it make Dean swallow hard to know what the future has in store for her. And how little that matters in this very moment.
***
She’s peeling the oranges and handing him segments as they rest on beach towels she produced from her bottomless bag. Dean’s leaning back on his elbows and feeling the tingle of hot sun coloring his chest and stomach. He hasn’t lain in the sun in years. As kids, when they scored a motel with a pool, Sam would turn chestnut brown in under a week but Dean would only burn and freckle. His dad would tell him, “You’ve got your mother’s skin,” and Dean wouldn’t know how to feel about that.
He takes an orange piece from Layla’s fingers and pops it into his mouth, watching her watch the sea roll back out to low-ride. She’s hunched forward and her curved shoulders are honey-gold in the late afternoon sun. Her hair’s slicked back and flecked with salt and sand, but it doesn’t turn dark from the water like his; it just gleams whiter, shines more than when it’s dry. Water gathers on the pointed tip of her nose and along her eyelashes; drips when the weight drags it down. When she flicks her gaze back at Dean, her eyes match the ocean.
He parts his lips, breathing shallow, testing the truth on the air first.
Layla, you’re not the only one living on borrowed time.
Layla, I’ve got less than 10 months to live.
Layla, my ticket’s been punched, too.
She gives him a small smile and when he still doesn’t speak, she looks back out to the water and finishes off the orange in her hand.
Layla, I’m going to die in 287 days because I sold my soul to the devil to bring my little brother back from the dead.
Dean’s wary of making wishes. But he’s intimately familiar with regrets.
“Layla…I’m sorry we don’t have more time.” It’s as much truth as he can give her.
She twists back around to eye him carefully. And then, in a repeated caress from the room in Nebraska, she touches her hand gently to the side of his face. Only this time, he also feels the ghostly second hand of his wish-world mother and a hot shudder runs underneath his skin. He closes his eyes and exhales shakily as Layla pulls away, dragging her fingertips over his lips as she does. He smells oranges and salt, and imagines her mouth would taste the same.
***
Dean shrugs back into his shirt as Layla stuffs the empty water bottles, her shorts and the extra towel into her bag. The other towel she wraps around her waist like a skirt.
They talk lightly as they wend their way back down the beach, the sun a dusty filtered orange in the early evening haze. Dean tells her skeletons of stories from his and Sam’s travels, amplifying the funny bits for the chance to make her laugh. She returns the favor by divulging that she volunteers at the hospice center-hence the call to Sheryl-by reading trashy romance novels out loud to blind patients who make her repeat the sexy parts several times over.
“Do you do all the sound effects?” Dean wonders, waggling his eyebrows.
When they reach the boardwalk, Layla pauses and looks back on how far they’ve walked. How far they’ve come.
“Thanks for coming with me, today.”
Hands in his pockets, Dean gives her a lazy smile.
“So you still haven’t told me,” she muses. “The guitar pick?”
He presses his lips together, deciding, and then nods, pulling his hands from his pockets and in his right, producing both the rubber band and the pick. He smirks to himself as he stuffs the rubber band back in, then holds the pick out for her to take.
She presses it between her fingers; smoothes her thumb over the engraving. She looks up at him, confused. “Do you play?”
“Nah,” he laughs quietly.
“Then...?”
Dean shrugs, knowing he’s blushing, and stares pointedly at a spot above and beyond her head, far off on the ocean’s horizon. “I just like Clapton’s early work.”
For a second, Layla’s eyes remain squinty and quizzical, and then, with comprehension, her expression softens. “So did my dad.”
Dean sniffs with tempered satisfaction, takes back the pick as she offers it up in her palm, and starts to step onto the boardwalk. Then...
“Damn, woman,” he mutters and spins to gather her into his arms. Dean’s mouth finds hers and muffles the surprised sound she makes as it slides into moan. There is nothing tentative between them this time.
***
There are several cars scattered throughout the parking lot, but Dean’s content to believe they’re all empty as he palms Layla’s hips and deposits her onto the edge of the Impala’s hot hood. Given that they’ve already pawed and kissed and stumbled their way up the boardwalk, there isn’t one fiber of Dean’s body that isn’t hard for Layla. His right hand slams onto the black steel to brace himself and he hisses in mixed pleasure and pain from the burn.
The towel she’s been holding at her waist with a tight fist falls open as her feet scramble for purchase on the chrome bumper. Her knees fall open and Dean wastes no time wedging himself between her thighs. She wraps her arms around his neck, and his free hand finds and skates up the outside of her leg to where her panties are pulled taut below her hip bone. She arches against him, and he has to fight not to curse reverently into her mouth. He drags his middle finger along the crease of her thigh to dip just between her legs and her whole body shakes and her eyes fly open.
“Dean?” she breathes. Her tone is layered, asking for more assurances than he can maybe give. So he puts it back on her.
“What have either of us got to lose?”
The answer is, of course, everything.
“Nothing,” she agrees.
***
Dean has just enough blood in his brain to make one wise decision. He lifts Layla bodily off the hood, leaving the towel behind, and manages to negotiate them into the backseat of the Impala. He drags the door shut behind him with his bare foot as he falls onto her and immediately, they cry out upon contact with the black leather as it scorches bare skin. Both freeze for a moment, eyes blown wide in shock. For a second, they’re jolted out of their frenzy.
And then Layla begins to giggle. Which sets Dean grinning. And then she mumbles, “I think I crushed the potato chips,” and he snorts a laugh, dipping his head into the crook of her neck where instinct kicks in, drives him to mouth at her throat and run his tongue over her pulse to better feel the life inside her. And they’re back on track.
She whimpers, reaches around his back to bring his full weight down on her as she grinds up to meet him. He groans and gropes to get a hand between them; rips past her panties. She surges even higher as his fingers slide across her clit, then dip in and curl. She makes a strangled noise that does as much as any touch for Dean’s straining cock, but that’s only until her small hand slides into the gap between his belted jeans and lower belly. She finds him, wraps around him. He can’t keep himself from fisting a hand in her wild hair and thrusting into her firm grip.
They are as far as they can be from the misty drizzle and doubt of their first meeting. Dean’s body isn’t suffocating from a heart about to fail. Layla’s lips do not quiver under the weight of impossible hope.
Here, hovering between long shadows and sunlight in the back of Dean’s car, they are both achingly alive.
Four sets of eager fingers shaking with adrenaline fumble with jeans and shirts and underwear until Layla is splayed, her bra straps askew and the lace cups tugged well below her nipples, her panties off but still encircled around one knee that’s trapped against the seatback; and Dean is braced over her, naked and flexed, panting with near-shattered restraint. And there is a third party present. Thick, humid heat fills the car, takes up the remaining spaces, fogs the windows, draws sweat from their pores and steals their breath.
There comes a beat, a break in the momentum when all is still and waiting. Sweat drips from his chest and onto hers; collects in the hollow of her throat.
“Lay-la?” He needs two breaths to even mange her name.
Even with lust-glazed eyes, she looks serene to him. “Mysterious ways,” is all she says. It’s all she needs to say.
***
She comes, relentlessly, again and again, like the waves beyond the dunes. She comes until she comes apart. Dean marvels; counts in his head. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven... Beyond that he joins her because to hold out any longer might cripple him; his cock buried in her so deeply, his orgasm driving so hard. He sees sparks behind his eyelids.
***
Everything about this moment-from the elation to the melancholy; from the open windows to the open road-screams “Free Bird,” but Layla’s sleeping in the front seat and as a rule, Dean refuses to dishonor Van Zant by playing Lynyrd Skynyrd at any anything less than full blast. Since he doesn’t want to wake her, he goes for the tangential tribute and pops in The Allman Brothers, knowing Ronnie and Duane would approve.
As he drives, he’s quick to dial down the volume lest “The Midnight Rider” disturb her, though she beyond ‘asleep’ and far closer to ‘passed out.’ Clad in a cozy combination of his plaid boxers and her still-damp, white t-shirt, she’s the picture of exhaustion. And there’s a nagging pull in his gut that tells him it’s only partially due to the wracking intensity of their sex. She’s worn herself out on all levels today and he knows that can’t be a good thing. He gives her another sidelong glance, eyes sharp for any troublesome change, and resists the urge to bury the needle on the speedometer.
You can’t outrun death, anyway.
“Well, I’ve got to run to keep from hiding, and I’m bound to keep on riding,” he murmurs along to the music.
She’s bunched up a towel between her head and the car door and is slumped boneless into the corner. Her legs are curled up underneath her, but the deeper she sleeps, the more one foot slides towards Dean’s leg until her heel is pressed warmly against him.
He shifts to give her more room, sand grating between his jeans and his bare ass, inspiring a muttered curse. But she just stretches her leg out further to find him, so he drives one-handed-one on the wheel, the other on her foot.
And then he feels it: Fender Medium, angled and jabbing into his thigh. He raises his knees briefly to steer past the beach homes that have begun reappearing along the road, and fishes out the pick.
He holds it up above the steering wheel, the mixed mahogany and yellow glowing against the sinking sun.
He’ll drive Layla back to her apartment. If she’s too tired to walk, he’ll ease her out of the car, lift her into his arms and carry her up the stairs. He’ll fumble with keys he’s snatched from her bag, but won’t set her down until he can place her right in the middle of her bed. He’ll tug down the cool sheets and lift them for her to slide underneath. She’ll try to talk, but won’t make much sense so he’ll hush her, brush the hair back from her face, kiss her forehead and smile at the scent of brine, Coppertone and oranges. She’ll nod right back off and he’ll make a return trip to the car, emptying it of towels, uneaten granola bars, her bra-the remains of their day. He’ll try arranging the mess on the kitchen table and mostly give up because he’s just not fastidious by nature. He’ll pad back to the open door of her bedroom and then… And then…
Dean bites at his lip and struggles to finish the daydream as he drives inland. What would he do then? He glances at sleeping Layla in the car and easily sees her as she would be back in her bed.
Would he turn off the lights and crawl in beside her? Wake up just before midnight, ravenous, and order pizza. Both of them reeking of sweat and saltwater and now garlic, but neither caring as they made out with equal hunger?
Would he take up a post on her couch? Line her windows and doors with Morton’s out of habit? Flip channels on the TV until she woke up thirsty, sunburned and regretful? Leave with an awkward hug and a promise to call?
Would he wake her up and lead her into the shower? Drop to his knees and eat her out while the hot water sluiced down his back? Put her back to bed, sated and spent, then slink out around 2 in the morning feeling dirtier than before he got clean?
Would he call Sam; have his little brother meet him there? Go out for dinner where they’d laugh and play get-to-know you and he’d pay on a scammed credit card? Get Sam to drop them off back at her place? Stay the night? Stay for breakfast? Stay to visit her mother? Stay for more long days on the beach? Stay for more drives like this in his car? Stay, stay, stay?
He cups the pick loosely in his left hand, lifts the hand at her foot to steer, and extends his arm out the window…anxious to find the answer. Anxious to finish this list.
Find Layla Rourke- if she’s still alive.
Find Layla Rourke-if she’s still alive-and see if she found her miracle.
Find Layla Rourke-if she’s still alive-and see if she found her miracle, and if not, apologize that she didn’t get it.
Find Layla Rourke-if she’s still alive-and see if she found her miracle, and if not, apologize that she didn’t get it and tell her you’re dying anyway.
Find Layla Rourke-if she’s still alive-and see if she found her miracle, and if not, apologize that she didn’t get it and tell her you’re dying anyway so the miracle you got in her place was wasted.
Nothing sounds right in his head, so he swings his gaze back to Layla to find some inspiration there.
Her jade eyes are open and staring evenly back into his.
Dean jerks in surprise and the pick, held so lightly, trips on his fingers and is lost on the wind to the sandy highway. He freezes, his jaw unhinged in simple astonishment, as the car hurtles onward.
“Hey,” she says with a sleepy smile.
He doesn’t answer, just gapes from her to the road ahead, then ludicrously and uselessly scans the rearview mirror.
She shifts a little, but keeps the toes of her right foot tucked under Dean’s thigh. “I was thinking,” she says with a yawn, oblivious to his distress, “before you and Sam head out tomorrow, you should check out the Freebird Café.”
“The what?” he croaks, trying to mask his metaphorical fumble.
“The Freebird Café,” she repeats, grinning at him. Even in her disheveled state, Dean’s arrested by her. It’s the only thing that really manages to pull him from his shock. “It’s a tribute bar to Jacksonville’s hometown band. From the look of your tape collection, it’s right up your alley.” There’s a beat, and then, with a smirk in her voice, “My mom was nuts for the place when we moved here. Who knew, with all her piety, that a Skynyrd fan lurked within.”
She chuckles; snuggles further down into the seat, wrapping her arms around herself and closing her eyes again, aware, or maybe unaware, that everything’s fallen into place. Drowsily, she asks him, “Wake me when we get there, okay?”
Spend one day with Layla Rourke…once before dying.
Dean exhales a short, breathy laugh, and places both steady hands on the wheel. “Sure.”
Check.
Fini
***
Little Talbot Island State Park is a far cry from what Dean had feared when Layla first said, “beach.” When they turn off 1A and onto the park road, Dean feels the same sense of isolation he gets from endless Iowan highways and Oregon logging roads. And the tinge of salt in the air puts him right back in the middle of a hard winter for the Winchester family dynamic. He was 12 and Sammy was 8, and their dad shacked them up in a drafty summer cottage on the Outer Banks while he picked the brain of a crusty old hunter who’d retired to the seashore. Dean remembers him claiming it was the perfect place to be a hunter who actually wanted to grow old-spirits and demons and the like didn’t stand much of a chance when everything under the sun was perpetually covered in a dusting of sea salt.
That was the winter Sam almost drowned when a kelpie who didn’t much mind the brackish water on the Sound side pulled him off a dock at high tide.
That was the winter Dean decided there was no such thing as a “safe place.”
They drive a few more miles until they reach a near-empty parking lot with beach access. Layla grabs three bottles of water and the fruit, stuffs them into her purse and hops out without looking back at Dean. She starts walking like Dean can either follow or not. He grudgingly gets out of the car and stalks after her, catching up when she comes to the brushy start of a boardwalk.
Without asking, he scoops his fingers around the straps of her purse and lifts it off her shoulder. Its weight is surprising and Dean looks in to see she’s managed to stuff beach towels and God knows what else into its depths.
“Thank you,” she says softly.
The wood-planked walkway winds along toward a mound of dunes, so Dean doesn’t hear the ocean until he’s crests a hill and then he’s right on top of it. Fine pale sand stretches out to the north and south and ahead is nothing but a green sea and white, foaming waves.
He turns to Layla to speak, but loses his words at the sight of her, eyes closed, lips turned up at he corners, arms lifting slightly toward the water. She’s nothing like he remembers from the cold motel room in Nebraska. This Layla has layers he never imagined. That Layla probably did, too, only he was too wrapped up in the hunt to notice. Before, she only stood for something. Now she is something. Or someone.
“The last time I was here, I was with my mom,” Layla says suddenly. She looks up at him, her mouth now crimped in a wistful half-smile.
Dean doesn’t know what to say since this is the first she’s offered free information. He listens all the harder for it.
“Mom brought me to Florida about three months after I met you. There was a specialist who thought she could help. And I guess she did, since I’m standing here in front of you now and not...” Layla shifts her focus back to the ocean, one foot scraping at the edge of the walkway where it ends and the sand begins. “I finished the radiation and experimental drug therapy and was so sick from the treatment I could hardly stand. My hair was gone, I’d dropped 30 pounds and I’d lost all sensation in my hands and feet. But my mom dragged me out here anyway and made me walk all the way to the end of this boardwalk and then right down to the water. She told me I was going to live. She told me to me I was a part of God’s plan and I was as important to this world as every grain of sand beneath my feet-even if I couldn’t feel them.”
Dean sneaks a hand into his pocket and finds the pick tangled up with the rubber band. He squeezes it hard and for no reason he can fathom, Sam’s tear-struck face right before he turned away to shoot Madison pops into Dean’s head. Beside him, Layla’s shaky breath pulls him back.
“Two weeks later, Mom had a stroke.” She says it so softly, Dean almost misses it. His heart lurches when his brain processes what that means. “She’s been in that hospice we stopped at this morning, ever since. She can’t even feed herself. I think she knows who I am because we’ve worked out this blinking system...” Tears are falling from Layla’s eyes now, but there’s no more tremor in her voice. “I didn’t believe her that day on this beach. I felt like...like we were actually going against God’s plan at that point. I meant what I said to you. I was okay with my fate. Everything with Roy? It made things clear. Saved...or not saved. I just had to believe in God’s will...”
“That wasn’t God’s will, Layla,” Dean breaks in, vehemently. “What happened with Roy...and with Sue Anne? That had nothing to do with God.” He’s grasping at something to fight that’s solid and coming up empty.
“Maybe not. But it had everything to do with faith.”
The earnest lines on her face make Dean want grab her by the shoulders and explain to her exactly how it was Roy was able to “save” him and why she didn’t get that same “miracle.” He refrains, but his whole body is humming with anger.
“My mom was right. It was important for me to live because it was important for her.”
Dean scoffs, incredulous, “You really think your mom wanted you to live just so you could take care of her now?”
She smiles at him patiently. “Not at all. I think my mom did everything to keep me alive because she wanted her daughter to live a long and happy life. But prayers and miracles...even if they come true, that doesn’t mean they happen for the reasons you planned.”
Dean feels his chest tighten at how close she’s hitting without even knowing it.
“My mom was right, Dean. My life is important. It’s important for me to be here now, for as long as I can-for her. Parents aren’t the only ones who get to make sacrifices.”
The ocean is still pounding away, but Dean can’t hear it for all the roaring in his head.
“Why did you bring me here?” he asks in a rough voice.
Layla inhales deeply and lets it out slow and careful. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s because of what we share from Roy. No one else around here knows about it. The Mayo Clinic doesn’t exactly put a lot of stock in faith-healing.” Dean glares at her, not buying her answer. “Or maybe it’s because you look like you need someone to drag you down to the water and tell you you’re important to this world.”
With that, she steps off the edge and onto the sand. When he doesn’t follow, she reaches back with her hand. “Come on.”
He takes it.
***
Dean’s sitting on the bleached bones of an oak tree that’s rising up and out of the sand in an arc, trying to roll his jeans up his calves. They’ve walked the last hour on the hard-packed, low-tide sand, but now the water is creeping up, narrowing the beach and forcing them into the soft hills near the tree line. The sun is high in the sky and Dean can feel the back of his neck burning along the collar of his grey t-shirt. As he struggles with his pants and cringes at his shockingly white feet, he watches Layla trotting back to him, her cheeks rosy from exertion on top of her warm tan. She stops in front of him, her legs sandy and wet to her knees.
“Hand me my sun block?” she asks, slightly breathless. He roots around in the bag and finds the blue bottle, but hands her water first. She smiles, takes a long drink and then trades it for the sun block. He takes a swig of water himself and wipes the back of his mouth with his arm. “Now take off your shirt.”
“Excuse me?” he sputters, then feigns feigning shock. “Ms. Rourke, I don’t know what kind of guy you take me for...” Layla smirks at him and he laughs, waving her off. “Really, I’m fine. Like I said. The beach? Not really my thing.”
“And neither is skin cancer,” she harps back at him, but her voice is still the hushed Layla-voice and he decides that she could be lethal to a man’s independence if she chose to be. “Come on. Indulge a dying woman.”
The laugh falls from Dean’s lips and they both deflate a little in the sun. “So the treatment?” he asks. “It wasn’t permanent?”
She peers down at him, resigned. “No. It just gave me more time.”
“How much?” Somewhere in the back of his mind, he hears Sam ask the same of him.
“I don’t really know,” and she plops down beside him on the log. It feels hard like the bed back in Nebraska. “I’ve already outlived their best prediction.”
“So, maybe...?”
“No. The tumor’s still there. It’s still growing. I have good days. Today’s a good day.” She chuckles a little. “Today’s a great day. But mostly I have bad days.”
There doesn’t seem to be much to say to that, so Dean crosses his arm over his stomach and tugs his shirt over his head. Layla breaks into laughter-the first he’s ever heard her laugh. Ever. “So I have to have one foot in the grave for you to take your shirt off?”
He dips his head with amusement as she rises and moves around the log to stand behind him. He hears her tap on the sun block and he holds his breath, not quite believing she’s going to do what he thinks she’s going to do.
When her palms, thick with the lotion, slide onto his shoulder blades, he sucks in a breath that he hopes she doesn’t notice. He closes his eyes as her hands pass back and forth across his back, working the sun block into his skin. But even deeper than that, she forcing something like empathy into his tight muscles and he can’t stop himself from leaning into her hands. There’s a short, unsettling break of contact as she pours more lotion into her hands, but then she’s back and her fingers are running down the ridges of his spine, fanning out to his lower back and then gliding up his sides. He feels nails on his skin.
“Layla,” he murmurs, and swiftly twists at the waist so he can face her. She looks stunned, whether by her action or his reaction, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t wait. He reaches up the few inches she has on him and cups her cheek with his hand. It takes nothing to bring her mouth down to his.
The kiss is as soft as Layla, but the need between them is significantly harder. She opens up for him without pause but he holds himself back. He wants to taste her in stages. First her lips, smaller than his and easy to dominate. Then, as her head tilts to better reach her own desire, he tests with his tongue; shallow licks that slide and contrast with the dry warmth of her skin and mouth.
He snakes his free arm around her waist and, without breaking the kiss-and, in fact, deepening it- he leads her down onto log. The sand makes her stumble, but Dean’s hold is firm and she melts into place beside him, their legs facing opposite directions while their upper bodies are turned into each other like an entwined garden sculpture. He splays his hand across her back and feels her own arms wrap around him.
As good as it feels, though, he doesn’t think this is what he’s supposed to check off.
Like the tide receding, they both pull back from the kiss. Her face is unreadable and when she moves to disentangled herself from his arms, he lets her go.
***
“Come on.”
“No.”
“Dean, when are you ever going to do this again?”
“Never, because I’m not doing it now.”
“I’m going in.”
“Have fun digging the sand outta your crack.” But she’s already moving toward the water, sashaying in a way no good Christian girl should. Of course, Dean’s made a lot of assumptions about Layla before now that have turned out to be 15 degrees to the left of who she really is, so his downstairs brain suggests to his upstairs brain that he not rule anything out. “And if you think you’re getting back into my car soaked in dead fish and sea water, you’ve got another thing comin’!” he shouts at her back.
And then-holy shit. He has to blink to be sure he saw it right. She’s wriggling out of her shorts. And sure she’s still wearing underwear-and not even a thong, but the kind of panties girls used to wear when Dean was first learning how to get into them-but it doesn’t really matter to him how much cloth is covering her ass. All that matters is that Layla...demur, quite, God-lovin’, faith-havin’ Layla...is stripping down in front of him.
“Thank you, Jesus,” Dean rasps as his feet start walking.
On thing he notes: she doesn’t take off her top to turn her bra and panties into a bikini. But Dean quickly decides that’s a good thing. She’s wearing a white t-shirt. A white t-shirt, the promise of which is Dean’s undoing.
His cock hardens instantly.
“Is your tumor the kind that completely alters your personality?” he calls out over the sound of the low-breaking waves that creep up the sand and stop at his toes. She hoots a laugh back at him for that and he grins. “Because this?” He flicks his hand in her direction. “This ain’t the Layla I remember.”
She shoots him a bemused smirk and kicks water up as she tramps through the surf toward him. “You knew me for what, a couple of days? And a couple of my darkest days, at that? Did you think that was all there was to me? Sorrowful but brave, dying Layla?”
He’s ashamed to say ‘yes’ so instead he lobbies with, “Well what about me?”
“What about you?”
“Did you ever consider that there was more to me?”
He’s just bantering but she takes up his question in all seriousness. “More to you than what?”
This gestalts him. He doesn’t tend to think-or care-how people view him if their names don’t start with Sam and end with Winchester. Especially if they’re not in the “business.” He tries to put himself back under the tent in Nebraska with mud and sickness and disappointment in the air. He tries to imagine what she might have thought of him, and if it was as one-dimensional as his impression of her.
“More than some conflicted drifter who slid into town, got his miracle when you didn’t, and then couldn’t muster the courtesy to just shut up and be grateful.” The honesty tastes salty on his tongue.
She gives him a long, appraising look, hard to do with the sun at his back. He forces himself not to fidget. Finally, she deadpans, “And here I just thought you were cute.”
He coughs out a surprised laugh before he has to throw up his arms to keep from getting a kick-splash full in his face. She tosses her head and cackles gleefully before turning back toward the deeper water. It rises around her shins and then slides up to her knees. He watches, paralyzingly charmed-but still not enough to plunge after her. She wades further in and the waves break at her thighs. She raises her arms in a V above her head and the next surge hits and ricochets up her body.
He takes a step, worried suddenly that she’ll topple into the wave. But her feet are sure and she spins in place, her shirt wetly translucent, her lace bra showing through, and she looks so damn happy it make Dean swallow hard to know what the future has in store for her. And how little that matters in this very moment.
***
She’s peeling the oranges and handing him segments as they rest on beach towels she produced from her bottomless bag. Dean’s leaning back on his elbows and feeling the tingle of hot sun coloring his chest and stomach. He hasn’t lain in the sun in years. As kids, when they scored a motel with a pool, Sam would turn chestnut brown in under a week but Dean would only burn and freckle. His dad would tell him, “You’ve got your mother’s skin,” and Dean wouldn’t know how to feel about that.
He takes an orange piece from Layla’s fingers and pops it into his mouth, watching her watch the sea roll back out to low-ride. She’s hunched forward and her curved shoulders are honey-gold in the late afternoon sun. Her hair’s slicked back and flecked with salt and sand, but it doesn’t turn dark from the water like his; it just gleams whiter, shines more than when it’s dry. Water gathers on the pointed tip of her nose and along her eyelashes; drips when the weight drags it down. When she flicks her gaze back at Dean, her eyes match the ocean.
He parts his lips, breathing shallow, testing the truth on the air first.
Layla, you’re not the only one living on borrowed time.
Layla, I’ve got less than 10 months to live.
Layla, my ticket’s been punched, too.
She gives him a small smile and when he still doesn’t speak, she looks back out to the water and finishes off the orange in her hand.
Layla, I’m going to die in 287 days because I sold my soul to the devil to bring my little brother back from the dead.
Dean’s wary of making wishes. But he’s intimately familiar with regrets.
“Layla…I’m sorry we don’t have more time.” It’s as much truth as he can give her.
She twists back around to eye him carefully. And then, in a repeated caress from the room in Nebraska, she touches her hand gently to the side of his face. Only this time, he also feels the ghostly second hand of his wish-world mother and a hot shudder runs underneath his skin. He closes his eyes and exhales shakily as Layla pulls away, dragging her fingertips over his lips as she does. He smells oranges and salt, and imagines her mouth would taste the same.
***
Dean shrugs back into his shirt as Layla stuffs the empty water bottles, her shorts and the extra towel into her bag. The other towel she wraps around her waist like a skirt.
They talk lightly as they wend their way back down the beach, the sun a dusty filtered orange in the early evening haze. Dean tells her skeletons of stories from his and Sam’s travels, amplifying the funny bits for the chance to make her laugh. She returns the favor by divulging that she volunteers at the hospice center-hence the call to Sheryl-by reading trashy romance novels out loud to blind patients who make her repeat the sexy parts several times over.
“Do you do all the sound effects?” Dean wonders, waggling his eyebrows.
When they reach the boardwalk, Layla pauses and looks back on how far they’ve walked. How far they’ve come.
“Thanks for coming with me, today.”
Hands in his pockets, Dean gives her a lazy smile.
“So you still haven’t told me,” she muses. “The guitar pick?”
He presses his lips together, deciding, and then nods, pulling his hands from his pockets and in his right, producing both the rubber band and the pick. He smirks to himself as he stuffs the rubber band back in, then holds the pick out for her to take.
She presses it between her fingers; smoothes her thumb over the engraving. She looks up at him, confused. “Do you play?”
“Nah,” he laughs quietly.
“Then...?”
Dean shrugs, knowing he’s blushing, and stares pointedly at a spot above and beyond her head, far off on the ocean’s horizon. “I just like Clapton’s early work.”
For a second, Layla’s eyes remain squinty and quizzical, and then, with comprehension, her expression softens. “So did my dad.”
Dean sniffs with tempered satisfaction, takes back the pick as she offers it up in her palm, and starts to step onto the boardwalk. Then...
“Damn, woman,” he mutters and spins to gather her into his arms. Dean’s mouth finds hers and muffles the surprised sound she makes as it slides into moan. There is nothing tentative between them this time.
***
There are several cars scattered throughout the parking lot, but Dean’s content to believe they’re all empty as he palms Layla’s hips and deposits her onto the edge of the Impala’s hot hood. Given that they’ve already pawed and kissed and stumbled their way up the boardwalk, there isn’t one fiber of Dean’s body that isn’t hard for Layla. His right hand slams onto the black steel to brace himself and he hisses in mixed pleasure and pain from the burn.
The towel she’s been holding at her waist with a tight fist falls open as her feet scramble for purchase on the chrome bumper. Her knees fall open and Dean wastes no time wedging himself between her thighs. She wraps her arms around his neck, and his free hand finds and skates up the outside of her leg to where her panties are pulled taut below her hip bone. She arches against him, and he has to fight not to curse reverently into her mouth. He drags his middle finger along the crease of her thigh to dip just between her legs and her whole body shakes and her eyes fly open.
“Dean?” she breathes. Her tone is layered, asking for more assurances than he can maybe give. So he puts it back on her.
“What have either of us got to lose?”
The answer is, of course, everything.
“Nothing,” she agrees.
***
Dean has just enough blood in his brain to make one wise decision. He lifts Layla bodily off the hood, leaving the towel behind, and manages to negotiate them into the backseat of the Impala. He drags the door shut behind him with his bare foot as he falls onto her and immediately, they cry out upon contact with the black leather as it scorches bare skin. Both freeze for a moment, eyes blown wide in shock. For a second, they’re jolted out of their frenzy.
And then Layla begins to giggle. Which sets Dean grinning. And then she mumbles, “I think I crushed the potato chips,” and he snorts a laugh, dipping his head into the crook of her neck where instinct kicks in, drives him to mouth at her throat and run his tongue over her pulse to better feel the life inside her. And they’re back on track.
She whimpers, reaches around his back to bring his full weight down on her as she grinds up to meet him. He groans and gropes to get a hand between them; rips past her panties. She surges even higher as his fingers slide across her clit, then dip in and curl. She makes a strangled noise that does as much as any touch for Dean’s straining cock, but that’s only until her small hand slides into the gap between his belted jeans and lower belly. She finds him, wraps around him. He can’t keep himself from fisting a hand in her wild hair and thrusting into her firm grip.
They are as far as they can be from the misty drizzle and doubt of their first meeting. Dean’s body isn’t suffocating from a heart about to fail. Layla’s lips do not quiver under the weight of impossible hope.
Here, hovering between long shadows and sunlight in the back of Dean’s car, they are both achingly alive.
Four sets of eager fingers shaking with adrenaline fumble with jeans and shirts and underwear until Layla is splayed, her bra straps askew and the lace cups tugged well below her nipples, her panties off but still encircled around one knee that’s trapped against the seatback; and Dean is braced over her, naked and flexed, panting with near-shattered restraint. And there is a third party present. Thick, humid heat fills the car, takes up the remaining spaces, fogs the windows, draws sweat from their pores and steals their breath.
There comes a beat, a break in the momentum when all is still and waiting. Sweat drips from his chest and onto hers; collects in the hollow of her throat.
“Lay-la?” He needs two breaths to even mange her name.
Even with lust-glazed eyes, she looks serene to him. “Mysterious ways,” is all she says. It’s all she needs to say.
***
She comes, relentlessly, again and again, like the waves beyond the dunes. She comes until she comes apart. Dean marvels; counts in his head. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven... Beyond that he joins her because to hold out any longer might cripple him; his cock buried in her so deeply, his orgasm driving so hard. He sees sparks behind his eyelids.
***
Everything about this moment-from the elation to the melancholy; from the open windows to the open road-screams “Free Bird,” but Layla’s sleeping in the front seat and as a rule, Dean refuses to dishonor Van Zant by playing Lynyrd Skynyrd at any anything less than full blast. Since he doesn’t want to wake her, he goes for the tangential tribute and pops in The Allman Brothers, knowing Ronnie and Duane would approve.
As he drives, he’s quick to dial down the volume lest “The Midnight Rider” disturb her, though she beyond ‘asleep’ and far closer to ‘passed out.’ Clad in a cozy combination of his plaid boxers and her still-damp, white t-shirt, she’s the picture of exhaustion. And there’s a nagging pull in his gut that tells him it’s only partially due to the wracking intensity of their sex. She’s worn herself out on all levels today and he knows that can’t be a good thing. He gives her another sidelong glance, eyes sharp for any troublesome change, and resists the urge to bury the needle on the speedometer.
You can’t outrun death, anyway.
“Well, I’ve got to run to keep from hiding, and I’m bound to keep on riding,” he murmurs along to the music.
She’s bunched up a towel between her head and the car door and is slumped boneless into the corner. Her legs are curled up underneath her, but the deeper she sleeps, the more one foot slides towards Dean’s leg until her heel is pressed warmly against him.
He shifts to give her more room, sand grating between his jeans and his bare ass, inspiring a muttered curse. But she just stretches her leg out further to find him, so he drives one-handed-one on the wheel, the other on her foot.
And then he feels it: Fender Medium, angled and jabbing into his thigh. He raises his knees briefly to steer past the beach homes that have begun reappearing along the road, and fishes out the pick.
He holds it up above the steering wheel, the mixed mahogany and yellow glowing against the sinking sun.
He’ll drive Layla back to her apartment. If she’s too tired to walk, he’ll ease her out of the car, lift her into his arms and carry her up the stairs. He’ll fumble with keys he’s snatched from her bag, but won’t set her down until he can place her right in the middle of her bed. He’ll tug down the cool sheets and lift them for her to slide underneath. She’ll try to talk, but won’t make much sense so he’ll hush her, brush the hair back from her face, kiss her forehead and smile at the scent of brine, Coppertone and oranges. She’ll nod right back off and he’ll make a return trip to the car, emptying it of towels, uneaten granola bars, her bra-the remains of their day. He’ll try arranging the mess on the kitchen table and mostly give up because he’s just not fastidious by nature. He’ll pad back to the open door of her bedroom and then… And then…
Dean bites at his lip and struggles to finish the daydream as he drives inland. What would he do then? He glances at sleeping Layla in the car and easily sees her as she would be back in her bed.
Would he turn off the lights and crawl in beside her? Wake up just before midnight, ravenous, and order pizza. Both of them reeking of sweat and saltwater and now garlic, but neither caring as they made out with equal hunger?
Would he take up a post on her couch? Line her windows and doors with Morton’s out of habit? Flip channels on the TV until she woke up thirsty, sunburned and regretful? Leave with an awkward hug and a promise to call?
Would he wake her up and lead her into the shower? Drop to his knees and eat her out while the hot water sluiced down his back? Put her back to bed, sated and spent, then slink out around 2 in the morning feeling dirtier than before he got clean?
Would he call Sam; have his little brother meet him there? Go out for dinner where they’d laugh and play get-to-know you and he’d pay on a scammed credit card? Get Sam to drop them off back at her place? Stay the night? Stay for breakfast? Stay to visit her mother? Stay for more long days on the beach? Stay for more drives like this in his car? Stay, stay, stay?
He cups the pick loosely in his left hand, lifts the hand at her foot to steer, and extends his arm out the window…anxious to find the answer. Anxious to finish this list.
Find Layla Rourke- if she’s still alive.
Find Layla Rourke-if she’s still alive-and see if she found her miracle.
Find Layla Rourke-if she’s still alive-and see if she found her miracle, and if not, apologize that she didn’t get it.
Find Layla Rourke-if she’s still alive-and see if she found her miracle, and if not, apologize that she didn’t get it and tell her you’re dying anyway.
Find Layla Rourke-if she’s still alive-and see if she found her miracle, and if not, apologize that she didn’t get it and tell her you’re dying anyway so the miracle you got in her place was wasted.
Nothing sounds right in his head, so he swings his gaze back to Layla to find some inspiration there.
Her jade eyes are open and staring evenly back into his.
Dean jerks in surprise and the pick, held so lightly, trips on his fingers and is lost on the wind to the sandy highway. He freezes, his jaw unhinged in simple astonishment, as the car hurtles onward.
“Hey,” she says with a sleepy smile.
He doesn’t answer, just gapes from her to the road ahead, then ludicrously and uselessly scans the rearview mirror.
She shifts a little, but keeps the toes of her right foot tucked under Dean’s thigh. “I was thinking,” she says with a yawn, oblivious to his distress, “before you and Sam head out tomorrow, you should check out the Freebird Café.”
“The what?” he croaks, trying to mask his metaphorical fumble.
“The Freebird Café,” she repeats, grinning at him. Even in her disheveled state, Dean’s arrested by her. It’s the only thing that really manages to pull him from his shock. “It’s a tribute bar to Jacksonville’s hometown band. From the look of your tape collection, it’s right up your alley.” There’s a beat, and then, with a smirk in her voice, “My mom was nuts for the place when we moved here. Who knew, with all her piety, that a Skynyrd fan lurked within.”
She chuckles; snuggles further down into the seat, wrapping her arms around herself and closing her eyes again, aware, or maybe unaware, that everything’s fallen into place. Drowsily, she asks him, “Wake me when we get there, okay?”
Spend one day with Layla Rourke…once before dying.
Dean exhales a short, breathy laugh, and places both steady hands on the wheel. “Sure.”
Check.
Fini