He’d wanted to like them, really he had. Hell, they were based out of LA and flying out the next morning. You couldn’t get much better than that when it came to unencumbering distractions. Except that they weren’t actually distracting him at all.
He wasn’t interested. Not in Holly. Not in Lana. Not in Holly and Lana, or any other combination on offer.
Not while thoughts of Elise were still whispering through his mind.
Going for his standard extraction, he leaned toward Holly’s ear, careful to keep his face out of the stiff mass of hair that had seen its way from one end of the country to the other and back. “Excuse me, I’ve got to get this.”
Normally, he’d activate the phone when he pulled it from his pocket, but conveniently enough the thing started its shimmy for attention before he’d even gone for it. Holding it up as example A, he edged out of the booth, promising to send a round on the house.
Glancing down at the legitimate message, Levi came to an abrupt halt. The air in his lungs going stale as the world around him pressed in, unrelenting, heavy and thick.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
ELISE blinked instantly awake—aware that she’d been pulled into consciousness by something beyond her own restlessness. A hard rain pelted the windows, but the insistent patter wasn’t the culprit. Sitting up in bed, she glanced at the night side table and saw it was shortly after one. No message displayed on her phone and no other clues hinting at what had disrupted her sleep.
But it had been something…a knock at her door?
Adjusting her pajamas, she padded into the hall, the sound of her weight shifting the old boards beneath her feet. She cracked the front door to peer out, blinked her surprise, then quickly released the chain and stepped into the hall where Levi’s heavy steps were taking him toward the stairwell.
Clutching her throat, she called after him in an urgent whisper. Caught her breath as he turned. “My God, Levi.”
The man looked broken. Soaked through, as water dripped from the phone gripped tight in his hand. The pale blue of his shirt clung to his arms, chest, and shoulders. His hair fell in wild, sodden spikes, and his eyes looked so lost, she wondered how he’d found his way to her at all. “What happened?”
Levi opened his mouth, but nothing more than a choked cough escaped before his head sank forward with a series of slow negating shakes that had her by his side in a second. His arms opened to her briefly, but then fell away.
“I shouldn’t have come.” His voice rasped rough through the space between them, each word sounding as though the effort to form it had been monumental. “I just—I just needed to see you. It’s late though, I—”
Elise stopped him with a quiet hush, stepping into his body, heedless of the cold and damp that instantly penetrated her thin pajamas. Strong arms closed around her, pulling her closer as a breath that felt like equal parts relief and misery teased through her hair. Banding her arms around his neck, she held fast. Offering the heat of her body and embrace.
It wasn’t sexual.
It was comfort.
Contact.
Connection.
And something that, for whatever reason, Levi seemed desperately to need.
With her every shift, he gathered her closer, burying his face in her neck, gripping her as though nothing were enough.
“Levi, please,” she whispered, her heart aching for him. “What is it?”
Another choked response. “I…can’t. Just please…let me have another minute like this.”
Working her hands free, she moved them to Levi’s face. Holding him as she kissed his jaw, nose, and eyes, she whispered that she was there for him.
It didn’t matter what had come between them before. Right now, tonight, whether he had the words to explain it or not, Levi needed her. And she needed to be there for him. To lend him some of the strength he’d given to her when she’d needed it most.
Her lips met his in a closed-mouth press of affection that lingered until her eyes fluttered open and caught in the deep blue pull of Levi’s gaze. In the need that suddenly went beyond the bounds of this chaste embrace.
Without anything more than that steady stare between them, their lips parted, coming together an instant later in a press that was wholly different than the ones that had come before. Levi’s hands fisted in the hair at the back of her neck, the gentle tug against her scalp a spark igniting her desire.
Urging her head back, Levi took more. The desperation of moments before transformed into something hot and demanding. Something as essential to Elise as it was to Levi.
More than contact, their kiss become consumption. Greedy and devouring. Deep and powerful—
Levi broke away with a gruff curse. Eyes haunted and hungry all at once, he looked down at her. “I didn’t come for this. But, hell, Elise—”
“Come inside.” Ragged breaths filled the silence as she pushed a few wet strands from his face. “Please.”
Levi searched her eyes, then, satisfied with whatever he saw there, followed her in.
* * *
They’d made love.
There was no other way to describe the unhurried union that had been a connection on every level. Levi had taken her slowly, filling her body with his, so each deliberate thrust nudged her womb. Every stroke and return brushed the full length of her body. All the while, he maintained that soul-penetrating stare that made her feel naked and exposed and cherished and protected all at once. And then, for long minutes after, he’d pressed his brow into the curve of her neck, arms braced beneath her back so he could continue to hold her close, without crushing her.
She could have spent the night beneath the decadent weight of him, her fingers trailing slow circles around his back, but eventually he’d rolled off her and left the bed. A moment later she heard the shower running, and rose herself. The sky was still black, with no hint of predawn light, but she wouldn’t sleep again.
After a quick change into a tank top and some thin sleeping capris, Elise fumbled through the cabinets, pulling out the coffee to start a pot while Levi showered. His clothes hung over the backs of the kitchen chairs to dry as she spooned grounds and filled the basin with water from the tap. When the first dark drops splashed against the glass she leaned against the counter thinking about the desolate look in his eyes when she’d found him in the hall. Something had happened that had upset him enough that the only consolation he could think to find had been to see her.
She’d never met a man who held himself more apart.
Building a life around leaving people and places behind.
But he’d told her from the start…with her it had been different. And once again, she couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if there had been more time for them. If maybe Levi would have let her become a person he didn’t have to apologize for coming to when he needed someone. If he might have found something worth holding on to.
The shower turned off, and by then the small pot had brewed.
A steaming mug cradled between her palms, she followed the hall to her bedroom, stopping at the door.
Towel wrapped around his lean hips, Levi sat at the edge of her bed, elbows resting on his knees, a weary set to his hunched shoulders.
“Levi?” she asked, setting the mug on her dresser top.
“My mother,” he said.
Bleak eyes met hers, drawing her into the room. To Levi’s side where she pressed into the warm skin of his back, waiting for the words that would come next, confirming what she already knew.
“They found her three days ago.”
His mother. A woman she’d known next to nothing about, beyond the fact that she was a piece of the puzzle that made Levi the man he was today. A man who, despite everything, she loved.
Tears pushed to her eyes as she whispered again and again how sorry she was, the words sounding hollow, too small for the kind of hole left by this kind of loss.
After a moment, Levi nodded. “Me too.”
Taking his hand,
she asked what happened.
“A maid found her in a motel room. Thought she was sleeping until she tried to wake her.” Raking a hand through his hair, he coughed out a harsh breath. “I should have done something.”
Elise stroked his back, offering the kind of logic Levi had always used with her. “You couldn’t have known.”
Levi shook his head, casting a chilling look over his shoulder at her. “I knew. She was drinking. I hadn’t been able to get her on the phone, which is what happens when she starts up again. I called the guy who takes care of her groceries. The food he’d brought the week before was rotting on the counters. He cleared it out some, and stocked the fridge, but the place was a wreck. The next week he could tell she’d been there, but it was even worse.”
Realization dawned. “She was an alcoholic.”
A single nod.
“Levi, I’m so sorry. But you can’t blame yourself for not being there.” Especially considering the word again, a telling hint at a history of problems. Which made her wonder more about what Levi’s life had been like growing up.
“Had she struggled with it for long?”
Old bitterness welled within him. Struggle seemed too strong a word…and yet he understood that was what it had been for her.
“My whole life. And probably most of hers, though I couldn’t say with any degree of certainty.” The truth was, in the sixteen years they’d shared a roof, the only things he’d really learned about her were how best to stay out of her way…when he needed to clean her up…and, most of all, not to invest too much in those brief periods of sobriety when she’d seemed to get her life in order.
Those had been the worst.
The hoping something had finally changed and maybe things would be different after all—only to come home from school one day to an empty apartment and an empty fifth lying on its side atop that old Formica table. Waiting out the hours or days until she showed up slamming into the apartment, glassy eyed, slurring. Apologizing to the new guy trailing her in, for the son she hadn’t warned him about ahead of time. Promising the kid wouldn’t be any trouble.
The lightest touch grazed his arm, anchoring him to the now, even as the lead weight of his past tried to pull him under.
“Is that why you left home when you were so young?”
“That’s why.” He could still feel the walls pressing in on him. The sense of slow asphyxia that accompanied a life he’d been helpless to escape. And then somehow, he was telling Elise all of it. The things he’d never shared with another soul. The pain. The fear. The clawing desperation to get out of there. Everything right up to the sting of the slap his mother landed across his cheek when he confronted her about the missing schoolbooks he’d been fool enough not to find a way to hide. The creeping numb through his consciousness as she threw the debt of his existence in his face, hissing her regret that she hadn’t had the money to get rid of him when she had the chance.
How he’d heard it before. But that last night was different—because he’d just turned sixteen, and he could finally leave.
How he’d gathered all the cash he’d managed to squirrel away, gone to the store, and bought enough food for a week. Smoothed the remaining crumpled bills, and left the stack next to the cans of soup on the counter. He’d known it was a mistake to leave the money, that she’d just use it to buy more booze. But it was the only way he could walk out the door. And he had to go.
“I didn’t think I’d survive if I didn’t go.” It was the right thing to do. He knew it now, as he’d known it then. “But I should have gone back for her. Once I’d built a life for myself, I should have done more to help her build one of her own.”
Tears streamed down Elise’s cheeks. Her eyes shining with both rage and sorrow.
He hadn’t wanted her pity. He shouldn’t have told her at all.
Voice trembling, Elise asked quietly, “What could you have done?”
Running a hand over the back of his neck, he let out a heavy sigh. “Something more than buying off my conscience with a few bucks for rent and groceries.”
“You continued to send her money?”
Levi let out a humorless laugh. “Hell, no. She’d have drunk it and put herself on the streets. Then I wouldn’t have been able to reassure myself she was safely stashed away on the opposite side of the country. I rented her a small house and hired a guy to shop for her.”
Her lips parted as the connection formed. “Yes. Just like I was offering to do with you, if you’d been pregnant. It’s what I do when I can’t live up to my responsibilities.”
A subtle shake of her head. “That’s not what I was thinking at all.”
“It should have been. It’s the truth.”
There was an unsettling freedom in the admission, the burden of a shameful secret being lifted—even if the guilt of the action itself remained. Maybe he’d just needed Elise to know.
Needed to give her one more reason to push him away. Show her another example—one that wasn’t in the abstract—of what kind of guy he was, so she’d lose that unbearable look of compassion and affection in her eyes once and for all.
Hell, he was so messed up. He never should have come here.
But in an ironic juxtaposition, just as he hadn’t been able to force himself to do the right thing with his mother, he couldn’t do it with Elise either.
He couldn’t stay away.
So he needed to make her stay away from him.
“Is it the truth? It sounds more to me like you’ve spent your life trying to take care of someone who never took care of you.”
Levi opened his mouth ready to come back at her, only the arguments were beyond him. He was exhausted. Aching in a way he couldn’t explain or understand. Fatigued of both mind and body. And Elise—who’d brought him into her home, her heart, her body—was beside him. Her arms looped over his shoulders. Soft cheek against his back.
She was holding him close, even as he all but begged her to tell him to go.
* * *
Elise emerged from the L station, dreading the walk back to her apartment, knowing that Levi was gone.
They’d spent the last hours of the early morning in bed. Levi’s big frame fit snug against the smaller proportions of her own. Warm breath teasing through her hair.
When the alarm had sounded at five, she’d closed her eyes, and slid from the strong arms she wished would hold her for the rest of her nights, leaving Levi asleep in her bed.
Better to just go.
The night before hadn’t been the beginning of something lasting between them. The only thing that had changed in those hours they’d spent together was her understanding of what made Levi the man he was. The way he was.
Her sluggish steps dragged slower and slower until inevitably she stood within the echoing silence of her empty apartment. Walking to the front window, she sank into the couch—giving in to the pull of gravity as she gave in to her tears.
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE sale of HeadRush was final. The keys turned over. Vendors notified. Paperwork complete. Levi had picked up the last of his dry cleaning, closed his account, and sold his car. All that remained of his disassembled life in Chicago was a bag with two days’ worth of clothes and a laptop. The sum total of his personal possessions—three boxes, a bed, and his clothing—had already been shipped.
It had never bothered him before, but this time as he examined the barren apartment he stood in, noting its resemblance to the day he moved in and pretty much every day since, a sense of loss—of waste—washed over him. He’d lived in this space more than a year and he’d never made it his own. Never filled it with furniture. Never found anything he’d wanted to hang on the walls.
It was like a promise to himself, the every single morning assurance that he wouldn’t be staying. He wasn’t trapped. This place was just temporary and he could leave at any time.
Pathetic.
Thirty years old and he was still trying to get out of that dingy apartment with his mother, wai
ting for the chance to bolt. Refusing to hope for anything more, because he wouldn’t risk the letdown when it didn’t come.
He’d built his life around a past he’d never escape. Only as he stood there, looking at the empty space that had surrounded him for as long as he could remember, he realized what he’d built wasn’t actually a life at all.
He knew that now, because for the shortest time—he’d had one. Through those weeks with Elise his counters had been cluttered, his schedule insane. His heart full.
Different.
The kind of different that happened once in a lifetime. And losing it had been every bit as bad as he’d imagined it could be.
On the street, Levi flagged a cab. Slid into the back and gave the driver directions. Checking the airline tickets with a pat to his jacket breast pocket, he leaned against the worn seats.
One last stop to make.
* * *
Elise stared desperately into the blue eyes before her, nerves making her pulse skip. “I love you. But, I just don’t know what you need.”
Dex’s quivery bottom lip jutted forward as his tiny face screwed up, turning a vivid shade of beet.
Oh, no. Here it came.
“No, no, no,” she hushed, feeling a moment of panic. “It’s not that bad, baby. Auntie will figure it out. Just—”
The wail pierced the air, nearly taking out Elise’s left eardrum with it. Pulling him against her chest, she began the gentle, bouncy walk that always seemed to settle her nephew when Ally or David did it.
The baleful cries only intensified.
He’d had a good bottle. A small burp. A fresh diaper. She’d had him on his front. His back. Up. Down. Her pinky in his mouth, her hair in his fist—but nothing seemed to soothe the little man and a guilty rush assaulted her at the idea he might have been picking up her tension.
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