NCT Ten | Mafia

Lie.

Layla's  P.o.v

I veer into the drive-through lane, heart thudding.

"Careful," he commands. "Party's coming up. Saw the sign on the Fashion workplace. You going?"

"None of your business."

"I'll decide what's my business or not. You're mine, and that includes you answering every single question I ask—with the truth. You do everything I say and tell me what I want to know, and I won't hurt you, got it?"

You're mine.There's this tightness in my belly. It's not right. I hate you I hate you I hate you, I think at him, repeating it like that might make it true.

"Now, are you going to this party shit or not?"

"Probably not."

"Why not?"

I look over at him, wondering how much he knows about party. "I'm not old enough. It's for Older people above my age. I can go if a they  asks me, but..."

"But what? No one asked you?"

He sounds a little indignant about that, and it makes me smile.

I think about Mingyu's fumbling kisses at the party last month. I'd liked him for so long, but his kisses had seemed as fake as my last year party. Kissing me like a prereq to some blow-off course he has to take. The way he touched me felt like the air-kiss version of touching. Like he wasn't really there.

Maybe I wasn't really there.

Mingyu asked me to go to prom with him and another couple when I was 16, but I lied and said my parents thought sixteen was too young for prom, and that I'd promised to go to the movies with Jennie. Then I'd asked Jennie to go to the movies, just to make the lie true. Mingyu is the perfect boyfriend in every way, but everything with him feels empty.

Ever since the night of my sweet-sixteen party, nothing has felt real. Except the man in my passenger seat. He feels real.

"Let's get the usual," he says when we get up to the speaker thing. "Order two of the usual." He has the gun out of sight, but it's still there.

I glare at him. "We don't have a usual."

He lowers his voice. "Order. The. Usual."

Ten's P.O.V

Layla orders two burger combos with Cokes. The burger combo—that's what I got her last time. I know better than to think it's a big deal that she remembered our usual.

I make her drive back to Big Moosehorn Park. I show her where to drive and the parking area I want us at.

We get out of her SUV. It's a nice enough set of wheels—a Lincoln Navigator. Red like cherries.

It's a warm night for April, but the ground is still cool and damp. I lead her to a grassy bluff a ways off the trail, near a few large trees. It overlooks the river where we were that night. No doubt she remembers that, too. "Here."

She looks confused.

"Wait," I say, laying out my leather jacket. "The ground is still a little wet."

"I'm not sitting on your jacket."

I give her a look. That's not how this goes. I know she understands that, even if she fights me sometimes.

She sits.

I settle in beside her.

I eat my burger, but that's not what this is about. It's more about watching her eat. About doing the things from last time. Messed up, I know. I try not to think about it too hard.