Levi #4
“Excuse me,” I muttered to Will. I stepped away to grab the earpieces from the inside pocket of my jacket and slide them into my ears, waiting for the beep and the soft voice confirming they had synced with my phone.
With that done, I flipped open the texts again and hit the phone button.
Dom was clearly not going to give me a moment’s peace unless I responded, so I would have to give him some attention to satiate his undying need while I tried to get some other business done.
And if the two assholes in the warehouse wanted me to come back before then?
Well, they would just have to wait to pull off their trick of pretending like they were going to cooperate.
“Oh, hey,” Dom said in a surprised voice that made me roll my eyes.
“Did you think I wouldn’t respond?” I asked dryly as I pulled up the contacts list on my phone. “It’s not as if you haven’t been blowing up my phone. Don’t you have a hobby, a family, anything?”
“Actually,” he said, and I realized I could hear him breathing heavily. “I have a few things to keep me busy, why? Don’t like the attention?”
“Not when I’m trying to do something important,” I said with a snort as I considered the list of contacts, thinking where to start. “Why do you sound like you’ve run ten miles?”
“Close enough, actually,” he said with a chuckle. “I had a lot of pent-up energy I had to get out.”
“The half a dozen texts you sent me in the span of twenty minutes were enough for me to figure that out on my own,” I said with a shake of my head. “Clearly you haven’t been taken out on enough walks.”
“If you’re that worried about me getting enough exercise, all you have to do is say...and do something about it.”
“I have enough on my own plate without making sure you’re getting enough exercise.”
“Yeahhhhh, I won’t lie, I’m a little worried when you say that.”
“And why would that be?”
There was a pause, and I could imagine the wheels in his head spinning frantically. When he spoke, he chose his words carefully. “Well...because I know you’re back in the city for a reason, probably a damn good reason by your standards.”
“By my standards,” I repeated with a snort. “I like that careful phrasing.”
“Yeah, well, you know what I mean. You and me aren’t going to have the same standards for what’s a big deal, especially with...you know, what you do.”
“Uh uh,” I said as I sent a message to Eliza first. There was no way I was going to have her send me any information over the phone, of course, but it was a good place to start, especially because getting information out of her was going to require effort.
I could order my other contacts to get me what I was looking for with an injection of cash.
Perhaps if Eliza and I were truly equals, I might be able to tell her what I needed and rely on the bond of working for the Family, but that wasn’t the case.
Oh, I was technically her equal, at least while I held this position, but technicalities were only important in strategy meetings.
Eliza was the living embodiment of criminal royalty.
She held court like a queen, working under the emperor, Augustine, and refusing to accept anything less.
I could theoretically pull rank, but that would just shoot myself in the foot.
No, I needed to be polite and respectful.
She had, after all, been in her position for a decade, not only because she knew how to bring rivals to their knees, but also because she was exceptionally good at what she did.
It was a good thing we’d already had a working relationship, and a good one.
She knew enough about me to understand I was reliable, trustworthy, and had no aspirations for her throne.
For my part, I knew how to be a decent courtier when it was called for, and I appreciated that she had a similar attitude toward Augustine when it came to merit.
She had never once brought up the blood relationship between him and me, always referring to him by name rather than as my father.
That alone was worth at least half the money I had squirreled away over the years.
It was irritatingly difficult to find people who treated me as just another member of The Family and judged me on my success rather than on Augustine.
“But now, with you being so busy all the time, I’m starting to worry that you’re here for a huge reason,” he said softly as I finished constructing the message to Eliza to arrange a meeting.
“I can see how you’d come to that conclusion,” I said. “That said, you’ve only been texting me for about a week; that’s hardly enough time to come up with a proper context.”
“Okay, well, yeah, I guess that’s true,” he said, and I could practically feel him frowning at me through the phone. “But I’ve gotten through life by listening to my gut, and it’s been making a lot of noise lately.”
“Perhaps you should consider eating more,” I said as I went back to my list of contacts. “Or changing your diet.”
“Oh, God, not the terrible sense of humor. I really thought maybe that would have gone away after all this time.” He groaned. “You’re not funny, Lee, you never have been.”
“Never call me that when someone might hear you,” I told him with a scowl.
“Aww, what? Don’t like it? I mean, Matty used to think it was cute.
Of course, she thought you were the cutest thing ever.
..probably because she wasn’t in charge of raising you,” he said with a chuckle.
“She used to say that shortening your name like that was a sign from the universe that you and I were tied to one another.”
“A nickname that just happens to be the same as your middle name is hardly an indicator of fate,” I muttered as I typed out a few messages to see what I would get back.
I used to call you that all the time too...and I also said something about how cute it was that your nickname and his middle name matched.
Yes, but Dom didn’t know that because back then, I thought the coincidence was weird rather than cute.
Being friends with Dom had been both wonderful and a torment.
Once I had managed to convince myself that if I just had a chance to be with him the way I really wanted, it would make things so much easier.
It turned out I was completely wrong. Dom’s.
..dalliances with me were sporadic, and after we fooled around, he would inevitably retreat into our friendship without ever bringing up what we had done.
It was a new kind of hell that I had been forced to find a way to make peace with, and right up until I left at seventeen, it was still torturous for me.
Looking back, I could forgive him for what felt like jerking me around.
He was just as young as I was, already dealing with so much in his head, and he didn’t know how to deal with the feelings he was having.
To his credit, he had never tried to deny what we were doing, but he had always seemed wary of the topic.
Which was confusing and contradicting when he turned around and got into bed with me with an eagerness and enthusiasm you wouldn’t expect from someone uncomfortable with the idea of sleeping with another guy.
Wow, is this really the time for that? Not that I’m complaining, it’s cute that even after all these years and all the bullshit you’ve built up in your head, you still can’t help yourself. You still want to think about what could have been, what was, and—
I cut that sentence off. It was my fondness for him, my appreciation of him, and my respect for his determination to talk to me that kept me from blocking him out of my life…
again. There was no way I was ever going to entertain the idea that there might be more than what we had right now waiting somewhere around the corner.
I was not going to fall into the same trap my teenage self had, and I certainly wasn’t going to risk dragging Dom into my life even more than he already had.
Sure, sure, keep telling yourself that.
I was going to have to ignore the part of my brain that was giving me trouble, made easier by Dom speaking again. “You know, I keep thinking what sort of things about us have changed since the last time we knew each other.”
“And have you come to any conclusions?” I said as I turned to face the warehouse again, frowning for a reason I didn’t quite understand.
“Well, I keep thinking about something I heard. I don’t remember where, but I remember hearing someone say that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
I assumed it was about life and people, because a lot of the people I knew back in the day are pretty much the same as they were then.
And yeah, you and me haven’t been talking much because you’re still pulling that shit where you’re trying to put distance between us, that’s not going to work, by the way, I can be just as stubborn as you. ”
“And there’s something that hasn’t changed,” I said, pulled away from my unknown sense of disquiet with a sudden, soft laugh. “We were always telling the other to stop being so stubborn, while never bothering to tone down our own stubbornness.”
“You know,” he said with a chuckle. “I used to try to keep score of when one of us managed to out-stubborn the other.”
“Oh? What was the tally by the time you finally gave up?”
“Oh shit, I gave that up a long time ago. I was like, what...fifteen or something when I finally decided to give it up. We kept going neck and neck for points, so I just figured it was...always going to be like that,” he said, settling into a soft voice that sent an unwanted pang of pain through my chest.
“Nothing lasts forever, Dom,” I said softly.
“Who are you telling? What was the thing Moira said once? Preaching to the converted? I know nothing lasts forever, and I know life isn’t fair,” he said crossly. “I don’t need you to tell me, and I definitely don’t need you to remind me either. Especially when you’re one of my lessons.”