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“What if I left?” Layla asks out of nowhere.
Tony is so startled he fumbles with the wrench, nearly drops it; Layla catches it and hands it back to him without meeting his eyes. She’s thinking of something, but he can’t guess what it is. A lot of the time, she’s like him: straightforward. It’s simple, since they’ll both tell the other when they’re angry, when they’re hurting, when they think something needs to change.
This is new. And it didn’t come from nowhere, he knows that, but he can’t for the life of him figure out where it was.
“I’d miss you?” he asks in bemusement. “And could you send Cisco in to help me instead—”
“You know what I mean, Toretto.” She rolls her eyes, a bit of an edge to her voice. “If I left. If I just… up and go. What then?”
He doesn’t want to think about this—doesn’t know why she wants to think about it, either. But it’s already started. He tightens the bolt, taking his time to think. If she wants a serious answer, he needs to figure out the right one.
“I’d apologize until you came back,” he settles on instead.
Layla raises one eyebrow. “So you did something wrong, in this scenario.”
“You’re not giving me much to work with here, Layla.” It also means, though, that it isn’t the scenario she’s thinking of. It makes his throat tight. Means she’s thinking about something that he’s not. “I was thinking you’d leave because I did something wrong. Why else would you up and go?”
Layla glances uneasily out the window. Into the distance. “I don’t know. Maybe… because I’m not meant to stay in one place for too long.” Her eyes are a little glassy, as if she’s picturing it. He is. Running out the open garage door without a word. Foot to the gas pedal, tossing a goodbye over her shoulder like it’s an ordinary thing to leave. Gone in a squeal of tires, a cloud of smoke. Gone.
It makes his stomach flip. She’s done that before, but he knew, even if she didn’t, that it was a ‘later’, not a ‘goodbye forever’. That’s what she’s talking about, and he can’t picture it.
“I’d convince you to stay,” Tony says; her eyes jerk over to him, abrupt, a little startled, and he tightens his hold on the wrench to keep from doing something stupid like taking her hand. She looks like a rodeo horse, ready to spook, ready to bolt. He needs to convince her without scaring her right out the door. “That… That nothing you did or could do would make us want you to go. That you make us better and we need you to stay.”
Layla blinks, a little color rising in her cheeks, and her hand shifts on the edge of the engine. Towards him, then away. Maybe he should take her hand… no. She doesn’t take his. “That’s not the same thing,” she starts, and then stops herself uneasily. “I’m… I’m not a selfless person, Toretto. I don’t know if you convincing me that you want me would… keep me from doing something bad.”
She has the itch, then. To go and just… keep going. If he’s honest, it grips him sometimes, too. He feels the motor purring underneath him, sees the open road… and his responsibilities are a parachute strapped to his back, pulling him back, slowing him down. And he has that thought: I could go. Leave all of this. Be out for myself and no one else, do whatever I wanted. Be really, truly free.
For him, it’s the thought of being alone that keeps him back. But Layla has never stayed in one place for too long. It’s different for her, and every time he thinks he understands that she tells him just how different their lives have been. She couldn’t rely on anyone.
But she can now. He works up his nerve, dropping the wrench, and puts his hand on top of hers. She doesn’t pull away, but turns it over, taking his hand too, and looks up at him. Waiting. Paying him full, complete attention.
Stay, he wants to tell her, but that isn’t what Layla needs to hear. That feels like obligation she could break, trust she could shatter, a prison that she fears.
She needs a safety net.
“I’d let you leave,” Tony says, earnest, trying to mean every word because Layla deserves the truth. “If that was what you really needed. But if you ever needed us, we’d be there—just like in Rio. Because even if we’re not your family… you’re ours.”
Layla’s mouth quirks in a smile that looks more like a grimace. “Kind of dangerous to speak for other people, you know.”
Tony smiles back at her. That’s a challenge, and he doesn’t back down from a challenge. “Fine, fine. Then you’re my family.”
The smile on her face widens, gets a little softer, and she looks down at their entwined hands and squeezes once. It might mean nothing, but it feels like a promise.
She’s afraid, but if there’s anything Layla Gray isn’t, it’s a coward.
“You have bad taste in family, Toretto,” she says softly. “You could do better than an ex-criminal with one foot out the door.”
“Nah,” he says, pleased when she smiles a little wider. She’s coming back. “I need someone who can keep up with me. The others are close, but… not quite.”
Layla laughs. “High praise, coming from you, crazy.” She glances back out the window, at the open horizon, at unencumbered freedom, but she’s not seeing it, anymore. She’s not dreaming about it. “I… can’t promise I’ll stay put, forever. You know that, right?”
“Yeah. I know.”
“Good,” she says brusquely, and drops his hand. “But… I think I can promise to come back. If you want me back, that is.”
One of these days, Tony thinks, she’ll understand. She’ll stop asking ‘if’, just like the others. She’ll know that that’s not the way family works, when it’s real.
In the meantime, he says, “Sure. Or I’ll find you, if you take too long.”
“You’re insufferable, Toretto,” she says, but it’s fond, and she smiles at him and this time, for the first time, she sees him. “It’s a deal. Now come on. This bolt is loose. Fix your car or I’ll smoke you next race, too.”
Tony leans over, working where she points, and they lapse back into satisfied silence.
She doesn’t look away from him again.