She was surprisingly strong, but he’d had eight years of resisting people who’d tried to push him in various different ways, and, if he didn’t want to be pushed, he wouldn’t be. Then again, he’d made his point, so he let her shove him back a couple of steps, putting some distance between them.
He heard his name being called again—probably Gideon getting pissed with him—but again Levi ignored it, his focus entirely on the woman in front of him.
Her cheeks had an angry flush to them, her chest rising and falling fast in time with her breathing. Anger glittered in her eyes and filled the space between the two of them, tight, hot, and dense as a neutron star.
Then she stepped forward, and this time it was her turn to get right up close, to get in his face the way he’d gotten into hers. “What kind of hello is that, Levi?”
As if she were the one who was justified in getting angry. As if she had the right to demand things from him.
His own anger, already simmering away, boiled over.
He reached for her, sliding his arm around her waist and hauling her against him, eight years of rage dying to be let loose. He had so much he wanted to say to her, and yet, when it came down to it, only one thing mattered.
She had to pay. She had to pay for what she’d done to him.
Their gazes clashed, both of them furious. Her hands were flat against the plane of his chest, pushing at him hard, her body rigid. Yet despite all that, she felt so good against him. Warm and soft, everything a woman should be . . .
“Hey!” Gideon shouted from behind him. “What the fuck is going on? Let her go, Levi.”
Yeah, Jesus. Get a hold of yourself. This is not the way it’s supposed to go.
Fuck. His control was usually way better than this. He had to stick with the plan, not let her make him crazy like she always used to, damn her.
He gave a low, slightly feral-sounding laugh and released her, raising his hands in surrender and stepping back. “Nothing’s going on. Just saying hi.”
Rachel’s chin was lifted, fury glittering in her eyes. Her arms were at her sides, hands curled into fists like she was ready to throw a punch. Spots of color glowed on her cheeks, and she was looking at him like he was the devil himself.
Fair enough. As far as she was concerned, he was.
Gideon had come up beside them, giving Rachel a look before glancing back at Levi. “I don’t want this shit in my garage; I already told you that. I know you two have issues, but—”
“Issues?” Levi interrupted, unable to help himself. “What issues? Oh, right, you mean the fact that she never visited me in the whole eight years I was inside? Not once? Or even how she fucked off when it was time to deliver her statement to the police and—”
“Enough.”
It had been a long time since Levi had obeyed anyone who wasn’t a guard, and he wasn’t about to start now, especially since he was free. But years of respect and trust had ensured Gideon a certain amount of loyalty, so Levi made himself stop and shut the fuck up. Probably a good thing anyway since clearly he needed to get himself back under control again.
Rachel had said nothing, but as he watched, he could see a fine tremble shaking her, almost imperceptible, like a subtle earthquake.
Anger. Definitely anger.
Gideon looked at her. “You okay?”
Levi fought down the instinctive burst of irritation that went through him. Christ, as if he’d ever hurt her. Put the fear of God into her, sure, and maybe scare her. Make her suffer in a very specific way, definitely. But no, he’d never hurt her, and Gideon should know that.
Then again, Gideon knew how angry Levi was. Levi used to ask him where Rachel was every time Gideon came to visit. And Gideon knew how bitter the answer “she decided not to come” had been, especially when Zee and Zoe had also made the effort.
But not Rachel. Never Rachel.
She would pay for that too.
Rachel gave a stiff nod, glancing away from Levi at last. One hand lifted to rub her arm, a familiar, nervous gesture from years ago.
He found his gaze following the movement of her fingers, noticing for the first time her tattoos, a full-length sleeve of deep red roses and other flowers amid dark leaves spilling down over her skin. The drooping head of a rose hung over her shoulder too, scattering a fall of red petals like drops of blood over her chest.
It was a beautiful design. Beautiful work. And familiar. She’d used to draw stuff like that in the notebooks she had constantly lugged around with her. Was it one of her designs?
Gideon cursed under his breath. “Look, I get that this is difficult. But if you two can’t be in the same room without wanting to kill each other, maybe it would be better if Rachel went home.”
“It’s fine, Gideon,” Levi said.
“Is it?” The other man’s dark eyes were sharp. “Because it sure as hell doesn’t look fine to me.”
Levi crushed his anger flat. Made himself hard and cold, the way he’d been for the past eight years. The only way he’d managed to survive. “I appreciate your coming for me, Gideon. I appreciate everything you’ve offered me since I got back. But what’s between Rachel and me is none of your fucking business.”
“What’s between us?” Rachel’s voice was hoarse and a little thick. “There’s nothing between us. Nothing at all.”
Levi shifted his gaze back to her. He didn’t speak, just held her dark eyes with his, because they both knew exactly how much bullshit that was.
Her mouth set in a hard line, and he remembered that, her stubborn will. Like him, she hated backing down. On anything.
Well, this week she would. He’d make her.
Gideon sighed. “Okay, fine. Rip each other to shreds; see if I care. But don’t do it here, okay? Blood is very difficult to get out of concrete.”
Rachel said nothing, staring at Levi for one angry second.
Then abruptly she turned on her heel and strode out of the garage.
Oh, shit no. She wasn’t leaving that easily, not when he hadn’t said what he wanted to say.
Levi stepped forward after her, only to find Gideon’s large, powerful hand gripping his shoulder, stopping him.
“Levi,” Gideon said in a low voice. “Let her go.”
Levi stiffened.
No. This is Gideon, remember? Not Mace or any of his hench-assholes. Or one of the guards. So maybe relax and not break his fucking arm.
Levi let out a long, silent breath, making his muscles loosen. Then he glanced at his friend.
In the car on the long drive from the Central Michigan Correctional Facility in St. Louis back to Detroit, Gideon hadn’t mentioned Rachel, keeping the conversation firmly about what was happening with Zoe and Zee, and the garage. Filling Levi in on how Zee had been revealed to be big, bad Joshua Chase’s long-lost son and on his engagement to the daughter of one of Detroit’s most wealthy families. And then Gideon had told Levi that Levi had a job he could come back to and could crash on Gideon’s sofa until he found himself a place to live.
It was all typical Gideon, generous to a fault. But the guy was operating on the assumption that Levi was the same man who’d gone to prison on manslaughter charges eight years earlier.
And he wasn’t.
The Levi who’d gone into prison had been a boy compared to the man he was now. A much harder man. A man who knew what he wanted and had put into motion meticulous plans on how to get it.
After all, he’d had a lot of time to think about it.
Levi smiled at his friend and gently pulled Gideon’s hand off his shoulder.
Then he strode straight out the door after Rachel.
Chapter 2
Rachel walked swiftly along the sidewalk, her heart beating fast and her palms damp, rage bubbling inside her like a vat of boiling oil. And she didn’t even know whom she was angrier at: Levi or herself.
Levi for coming at her like a speeding train. Or herself for standing there and taking it.
Of course, what was even wor
se was the fact that getting angry with him was wrong, especially when he had every right to be pissed at her, every right to feel furious.
Every right to push you up against that door?
Her mind shied away from that while her heartbeat accelerated and her mouth dried.
She should never have stood there like a fucking idiot and let him come at her. She should have stood her ground and faced him down like she did with everyone other asshole who tried to get in her face.
But you didn’t. Because you’re afraid of him.
The summer sun was hot on her shoulders, but inside she felt cold. Like she’d been cold for weeks, months . . . years . . .
“You mean the fact that she never visited me in the whole eight years I was inside? Or even how she fucked off when it was time to deliver her statement to the police?”
She swallowed down the hard lump in her throat.
She’d known he would be angry with her, but she hadn’t been prepared for quite how furious he actually was. A small part of her had hoped that he’d understand why she hadn’t come, why she’d run away when the police came to take her statement all those years ago. That maybe he’d have thought about it and realized how impossible it had been for her.
But clearly he hadn’t. And really, she didn’t know why she’d expected he would, because she sure as hell wouldn’t have thought about it if she had been in his shoes.
The lump in her throat refused to go down.
She should never have gone to say hello the day he’d returned to Royal. She should have waited a few days. Shit, maybe even gone out of town. But she’d wanted to not be a coward, just this once.
You still are.
Rachel bit her lip. Yeah, she was. No point in denying it. She’d fucked up big time already, and now she was fucking up even more by running away. Fleeing like a scared little girl or a kicked puppy with her tail between her legs.
God, she was pathetic.
Making a cursory check for traffic, she crossed the road, heading toward the only other place in her life that she felt safe—Sugar Ink, the tattoo studio she’d set up a couple of years earlier in an old, abandoned factory building down the street from Gideon’s.
There would be time to think about Levi later. Right now, she had some clients due and her other pet project to think about—getting enough money together to actually buy the building from whoever owned it.
It had been abandoned for years before she’d moved in, another casualty of the collapse of the auto industry and Detroit’s huge population decline. She’d claimed it for her tattoo studio, and since then, she’d started encouraging local artists to use it as an impromptu art gallery. The idea had taken off, and now the once boarded-up, abandoned wreck had taken on a new lease on life. A former tattoo client had set up a café in one of the rooms, turning out the best coffee outside of downtown, and at night, one of her artist friends served drinks behind a makeshift bar. All of this was illegal of course, but the cops turned a blind eye, because hell, Royal Road needed something good and positive in the neighborhood.
It needed fewer abandoned buildings and more people going about the business of living.
Her little operation was going well, but she knew that if she wanted to keep it going on a permanent basis, she was going to have to find some way of buying the building itself. Already there were developers poking around in Royal, looking for bargains, wanting a slice of the gentrification projects that were sweeping the city.
Rachel was all for improvements, but gentrification smacked of money, and no one in Royal had money. The last thing the neighborhood needed was a whole lot of shops and apartments that no one could afford to buy or live in.
She slowed her pace as her building loomed into view, then came to a stop, hauling her keys out of the pocket of her denim mini.
The building was brick, the outside liberally coated in graffiti, which she’d left since much of it was bright and colorful and perfect for a tattoo studio. But she’d replaced all the massive windows and gutted half the interior of the ground floor, leaving a huge, airy, industrial-feeling space that was her studio.
It had taken her a long time to get it done, even with Zee and Gideon’s help, but it had been worth all the time and effort. She’d given them both tattoos to say thank you, and had paid Gideon back every last cent he’d loaned her.
It was all hers now, completely. All except the building itself.
Unlocking the big glass door of the studio, she pushed it open and went in, pausing to switch on the pink neon Sugar Ink sign she’d stuck in one of the tall, narrow windows.
Then she crossed over to the big metal counter near the door that Gideon had made for her and switched on the computer sitting on it, wanting to check her client list for the day. Xavier, the other tattoo artist who worked with her, would be starting in an hour or so, but her first client was due in about ten minutes.
She placed her hands on the counter and felt the cool metal against her palms. Then she breathed slowly in and slowly out, trying to calm herself down, because no one wanted a stressed and angry tattoo artist working on them.
The studio door opened abruptly, then banged shut.
Dammit. Was her first client here already? Clearly they were nervous if they were here this early.
Rachel sighed, plastering on a smile and looking up.
Only to meet one silver-blue eye and one dark, both staring at her with such intensity all the air in her lungs vanished for the second time that day.
Fucking Levi had followed her.
She swallowed, then straightened up. “What the hell are you doing here?”
He didn’t answer immediately. Instead he shifted his glance from her, doing a slow survey of her studio as if he owned it himself and was cataloging every piece of it. The bank of tattoo chairs and workbenches that ran down one wall, the worn but comfortable velvet couch that sat opposite the metal counter and served as a waiting area. The jewelry cases that showcased local artists’ work and the small collection of clothes racks where she sold a limited number of pieces by more local designers. The worn, exposed brick of the walls, the battered wood floor. Then, finally, his gaze settled on the big mural that adorned the wall opposite the chairs.
It was one she’d painted herself as her first claim on the building. The head of a woman with flowing black hair and sugar-skull imagery overlaid on her face—big dark eyes and roses and birds flying around her head with more roses and other flowers behind her. Like the roses on Rachel’s arm, it was a gritty reminder that there was beauty even in the middle of all the dirt and violence that was life.
His gaze lingered on the image for a long moment, and stupidly she could feel a flush rising in her cheeks.
Crazy. Why the hell would she blush at his looking at that mural? She wasn’t embarrassed about it. Shit, every client who came in here saw it. What did she care what he thought about it? What did she care if he even looked at it?
Because you’ve always cared what he thinks. And you still do.
Rachel forced the thought away. She’d been on her own for years. She didn’t need anyone’s approval, and she didn’t need his either.
Levi shifted, tilting his head as he studied the picture, and she found her gaze roving over him in return, following the way the black cotton of his T-shirt pulled tight across his broad chest and around the swell of his biceps. How it molded to the taut, ridged plane of his stomach and highlighted his lean waist.
So much power. So much strength. She’d felt it when he’d backed her up against that door in the garage. He’d come at her like an avalanche, unstoppable, inexorable, and . . . Christ, she didn’t even know why she’d backed away from him considering she never backed away from anything.
Maybe it had been the anger in his eyes, because there had been so much of it and it was so very obvious. He’d been burning with it, and something inside her had just . . . been scared. Not that he would hurt her physically, because he’d never been that kind of guy, bu
t that he’d hurt her in other ways. Emotional ways.
You deserve the hurt. You deserve the pain.
Her jaw tightened. Jesus, she’d paid enough, hadn’t she? Anyway, it hadn’t been pain she’d felt when he’d caged her against the metal of the door. There had been something else there, an undercurrent of heat beneath the fear. A kind of breathless excitement she hadn’t felt since . . .
You were sixteen.
Oh, fuck.
Rachel tore her gaze from him, staring down at the metal counter instead, her heartbeat racing. God, she’d thought she’d put that hideous mess behind her years ago. Apparently not.
Levi had lived with his alcoholic dad in the apartment next to the one she had shared with her grandma, and they’d gotten to know each other as neighbors. He’d been older than her and kind and funny and made her laugh when nothing else much did. He helped her out when she needed help. Her grandma’s dementia had gotten to the stage where she couldn’t do a lot of things herself and needed to be watched, and even though Rachel preferred looking after her grandma herself and hated to ask anyone for help in case it drew the wrong sort of attention, she had let him help. And of course, she’d fallen into the throes of a hopeless crush on him because he was also tall and unbearably good-looking, and basically the only other person in the world with whom she’d had any sort of connection.
He’d been the one who’d dragged her out to the Royal Road Outreach Center, where she’d met Gideon and Zee and Zoe. He’d been the one to make her a part of that little surrogate family.
But he’d never shown any interest in her in that way whatsoever, a fact that had caused her much heartache at the time. So she’d told herself to forget about it, to just see him as a friend. And eventually the heartache had disappeared and so had her crush.
It had been hard and painful at the time though, and she did not want to go there again. Especially not considering the mess she’d made of their former friendship—emphasis definitely on the “former.”
Wrong for Me Page 2