The Broken Tale

I promise...

Beautiful😍😍

            Layla looked away, her lower lip trembled but she tried her best to stay strong. "I...I'm pregnant." She mumbled so badly that she did not think they could even understand her. The words fell on the four of them like a pile of bricks. Layla felt Brian flinch next to her, Talya's face turned porcelain pale. Silence became their tune for what seemed like hours. But finally Brian broke their silence with a sigh.
"It's not your fault, Laili." He said.
"Is it Ali's?" Alexander asked.
Layla shook her head. Brian smiled a little and pecked her forehead.
"You gotta stop calling me daddy then." He said jokingly, "Because now I'll be somebody else's daddy."
Layla laughed through her tears, "You're an idiot." 
Talya was still frozen in shock. She alone was the only one who could grasp the severity of what this meant for both Brian and especially Layla.
"Look." Alexander said to her, putting a hand on her shoulder, "We'll just speed up the plans we already had."
"Does Ali know?" Talya asked quietly.
Layla shook her head, "I found out three days ago."
"How far along are you?" Brian asked.
"I don't know."
Brian let out a sigh, "It'll be okay."
"How will this be okay?" Layla demanded angrily.
He stroked her hair, twisting a lose lock of hair around his finger.
"We already have a plan." He reassured.
Alexander nodded in agreement, "We'll get you away before you start showing much."
"These few months were pretty lucky." Talya said, "We found a way to get you out in a year but we can bring it forward a bit with an extra few thousand."
Layla's eyes darted between them all one by one.
"What's the plan?" She asked fearful to what the answer might be.
Brian smiled faintly, "We'll fly to Japan under new names and new ID's. We'll stay there for a year or so and then fly to England under new names."
"That's identity fraud, Brian, it's illegal." Layla reminded.
"We'll change our names legally. The one thing we were waiting for was the changed names to be back so we can apply for visas." Alexander explained.
"We can try to bring it forward." Talya added with eyes filled with hope.
Layla shook her head, "You can't bring legal things forward, Tata."
"We'll get the names back in two weeks or something and then we'll apply for visas." Brian said, his fingers running through her hair, "If we know it'll take some time, we'll 'take you on vacation' for a while and wait till they do."
Talya squezzed her hands, "Don't worry, Laili. We can do it, you can do it."
Brian put his hand on her belly, "And now we have our child to motivate us. If we can't do it for ourselves, we can do it for our baby."
Layla looked away. The last time she had reassured herself that she could do something was when she and Talya first ran away, when they first paved away the path for this all to happen. She remembered assuring herself that she would be okay, that her life would go the way she wanted it to for at least once in her life. But this was where she had ended up like this, ended up in this desperate situation with no choice. She had let her hopes up too high last time, she was not going to do it again. To her, the higher she was, the harder she would fall.
Brian kept his arm wrapped tightly around her. Layla could hear his heartbeat beneath her head like a steady rhythm of drumming.
Dip.
Dip.
Dip.
She was clutching onto his white t-shirt, digging her nails deeper into the fabric. He ran his fingers through the tangles and knots in her hair. The bedroom was almost as quiet as the house itself. Alexander and Talya had left to speak to lawyers and agents who were going to get them to Japan, leaving Layla home alone and Brian had insisted he would stay with her.
"This new hair looks really amazing, you know?" Brian commented, "It really brings out your eyes."
Layla didn't say anything. She had tried to not think much of her hair, she avoided mirrors, showering as much as she could or even touching it. Not only had she lost something that she had seen as her own definition but the snipping sound of her hair from only reminded her of what had happened that night. Brian sighed and laid his hand on her belly.
"You know," he said, "I feel like the baby will be a girl."
Layla looked up at him with curious eyes, "How come?"
He shrugged with a smile.
"I just feel like it. Or maybe because I'm just hoping it will be a girl."
"You want it to be a girl?" Layla asked.
"I've wanted a little girl for a while, I guess. They're just so... I don't know, I've wanted a girl to take care of the way I used to take care of my sister."
Tgose last few words hit Layla like a slap across the face. She had not given much thought to how the resemblance between her own situation and his sister's death would effect him. She had never thought of whether or not seeing her suffer the way his sister did would damage him. Suddenly she was filled with all those questions. Did it hurt him? Did he love her or pity her? Did he ever cry himself to sleep missing her or his sister at night?
"Don't you want it to be a girl?" Brian asked, breaking her out of her thoughts.
Layla tried to brush off her thoughts and act normal.
"I do but..."
"But?"
Layla let out a sigh, "I find it funny how we're talking as if we're safely, happily waiting for a baby we planned."
"La-"
"As if we can live long enough to even have the baby at all."
"Layla, darling." He started very calmly, "If you can go back to your eighteen year old self when Ali first beat you, did you ever think you'd ever know any life our anything outside of a life of abuse and cleaning? Answer me honestly, babe."
Layla bit her lip and shook her head slowly.
"You thought it would be bad but did you think it'd ever come to the point you'd be pregnant with someone else's baby like this?"
"B-"
"Layla, we don't know what'll come next." He interrupted, "We never know. We may end up dead or we may end up happily together with our baby in our arms. But just because we don't know what'll come next, does that mean we should sit in our places like trees and depress ourselves to death?"
Layla exhaled deeply.
"I'm so tired." She said in a small voice, "I'm so tired of taking care of myself, I don't want to take care of another human being's life when I can't even take care of my own."
"What's that supposed to mean?" He asked with concern swelling in his voice, "Don't you want the baby?"
"No, Brian, that's not what I meant!" She blurted simultaneously.
"Then what?"
She sighed, "I'm just tired. I'm tired of the thoughts and worries, I'm tired of being scared, I'm exhausted."
Her lips began to tremble. The all too familiar feeling of warm tears flowing down her face returned to her cheeks.
"If I'm just gonna die anyway, why can't life just kill me already instead of making me suffer this much?"
Brian flinched with the last sentence she uttered. But the pain that had been building in her for so long was becoming too unbearable for her to bottle up. She could feel something like a little stone in her belly. She knew the sensation was only in her head because the baby could not be any bigger than a fingernail.
"Laili, don't say that." Brian replied.
He sat across from her, taking her hands in his lap. When Layla looked up into his eyes, she saw her own reflection glittering in tears in them.
"Nobody will touch you, Laili, no one." He said confidently despite his tears, "I'll protect you and our baby even if costs me every drop of blood in my body, you hear me?"
Layla bit down on her lips, trying her hardest to not cry. Brian pulled her into his arms, kissing the top of her head.
"I promise..."