Levi #6
“Right, because you’re out here for a reason that doesn’t involve Arlo’s love life or the drama that came with it.”
“Exactly.”
“So let’s get to the point, Mason. This has already been an eventful night for me, and I would like to get the hard parts out of the way.”
“Mmm,” he hummed, tilting his head up to look at the sky. It was cloudy for the most part, so even without the light pollution, there wouldn’t have been much to see except the faint glow of the moon finding cracks in the clouds. “Fair enough. See, there’s something I need you to understand.”
“What’s that?” I asked, flicking my cigarette away and reaching for another. The taste had shifted from a dirty ashtray into something closer to the smooth taste of smoke, and although I would probably regret smoking back-to-back cigarettes in the morning, it was the only thing I could think to do.
“When you left, Dom did his best to keep his shit together. The thing is, Dom is really bad at keeping his shit together when the shit starts piling up,” Mason explained, his eyes still pointed up.
“He wouldn’t talk to any of us about what was going on, or about where you went or why you left.
I tried to push him to talk a couple of times, and I’m pretty sure that last time he would have hit me if I hadn’t backed off.
I’ve never known him to be violent toward us, so I did what I thought was the smart thing, and I backed off.
In fact, I think that was the last time anyone brought you up around him. ”
“You warned them off?”
“Smart man, yes, yes, I did. He had never turned his anger on one of us before, not the violent kind. No, he always saved that for people outside the family who, if I’m honest, deserved to have their asses beat if only to learn when to shut the fuck up.
But he’d never been like that with us, so it shocked the shit out of me enough that I told everyone to back off. ”
I said nothing, letting that thought roll through and finding that it tasted just as bitter as any other memory from that time.
“I don’t know if it ever occurred to him that we backed off for a reason, but we did. And he never brought it up again. We talked about it, of course, how could we not? We were watching our brother suffer by himself, and we didn’t know why or how to help him.”
“I see.”
“No, Levi, you don’t,” Mason said, snapping his head down to give me a hard look.
“You weren’t here to see it. You didn’t watch the months of him carrying around pain and not knowing what to do with it because the one person who was best at helping him with that was gone.
You were gone, and none of us even knew why you left, or why your leaving meant Dom couldn’t still be friends with you.
All we could do was stand around helplessly and pray that he didn’t end up hurting himself or someone else.
And he did, I know Marcus told you, but he was downplaying how bad it really was.
Dom could have gone to prison, not just jail, but straight up prison.
All because he was too stubborn to talk to us and because you decided. ..I don’t know, to up and leave.”
“It wasn’t...an easy decision, I can promise you that.”
“You know what? I believe that, because you were always a serious person, even back then. It always seemed like you were willing to take on the weight of the world, even when it was driving you bonkers. But really? I don’t care how hard the choice was, alright?
Because I had to watch my brother suffer, and there was nothing I could do about it. ”
“Right,” I said, because he was right. I had hurt Dom badly, and while I had known deep down that I was taking that risk back then, it wasn’t like I had devoted an excess of time and energy thinking about it.
Why would I? To do that would have opened the door even further, and I’d left Cresson Point with the intention of never looking back.
So I retreated into myself, nursed the loss and pain in my own heart, far from the prying eyes of others.
I wasn’t as angry as Dom had been, but God, if we hadn’t both been idiots who had turned our backs on the people who cared about us.
“So look, I don’t know if you’re planning on disappearing again, or if you’re sticking around Cresson Point for a while.
But don’t you dare do that to him again.
Especially not now. Not when you’ve taken the step to be with him.
And I get it, back then, you were the one with the feelings, and you wanted him.
But now...I don’t know who you are anymore, Levi.
We’re all pretending that’s not the case, but since it’s just you and me right now, I’m not going to pretend.
We don’t know who you are, or what you’re like, or how you actually feel about Dom. ”
“I won’t pretend it’s not complicated—”
“I don’t care. What you saw in there? It’s an invitation to come back to the family and be part of it again, just like you were all those years ago.
What I’m saying right now is, I don’t know if you’re going to take that offer or go off and leave Dom holding the bag again.
Don’t fucking do that to him again, Levi.
If you’re just going to dip, then do it now, march in there right now and tell him this isn’t working and go back to your fucking life, you hear me?
If you shatter my brother’s heart again, your guilt and shame aren’t going to hurt nearly as much as what I’ll do to you. ”
I remained silent, digesting what he was saying, both surprised and accepting in equal measure.
I had never heard Mason talk like that to anyone, but then again, I hadn’t been witness to the animosity he and Jace had once shared either.
I had also never seen Mason as the protective older brother because it was a role he’d never played as far as I knew.
“And by the way, I wasn’t completely honest with you before,” Mason said, coming down the steps to stand in front of me, now towering over me. “I knew you’d grown.”
“I...okay?” I said slowly, not sure where this was going, but every instinct in me told me to pay attention.
“I saw you.”
“When?”
“Oh, I don’t know, it would have been about...five years ago?”
I stiffened. “I see.”
“No, no, I was the one who saw. I saw you with a group of guys at this nice restaurant. If you had been laughing like the rest of them, I might not have recognized you, but you were so serious that I did. And then I realized the guy across the table from you had the same look on his face, and the resemblance was so weird I realized that this was the asshole dad Dom had mentioned you having a few times.”
Ah hell.
“Except the thing is, I’d seen your dad before, and it took me a bit, but all I had to do was a little bit of digging to realize your dad was the leader of the goddamn Marelli Family.
And that meant you were his son, and there you were, having dinner with him and a few guys who were also pretty easy to find out were people that worked for him. ”
I said nothing, staring back at him, keeping my expression blank.
“And see, I didn’t want to believe what I was seeing, mostly because I didn’t want to even think about what that implied.
Especially when I did a little digging on you and realized you had a record.
Mostly charges that were felonies and brought down to misdemeanors through the fuckery in a courtroom that only a high-priced lawyer can make happen, but there it was.
All the evidence I needed to know what you had been doing. ”
I kept my silence even as my stomach twisted and knotted.
“And there was the bitch of it all,” he said. “I had the answer to a mystery I’d given up on ever solving. Now I knew why you left, because you were joining Dad in the family business, or I should say The Family business. And it made me laugh.”
“Why?” I blurted out without thinking.
“Because I realized that I probably knew why you didn’t just dip, but why you had left Dom behind and hadn’t kept in contact.
Because even though you ran off to join your piece of shit dad to do whatever fucked up shit you’ve been doing all this time, you were trying to keep him safe,” he said, smirking down at me.
“You were making the world’s stupidest decision, and yet you were still trying to keep him safe.
It would be kinda sweet if it weren’t so fucking stupid. ”
I looked away. “Congratulations, you’ve managed to lay out all my failings and poor choices.”
“I’m good at that sort of thing.”
“Clearly. But the real question is....what are you going to do about it?”
“See, that’s where I’m struggling, because I don’t know what to do if I’m honest. I mean, I don’t really like sticking my nose into other people’s business, especially my family’s. They’re pretty good at handling their own problems. But uh...I’m gonna guess he knows?”
“He knows,” I said softly, not sure if that somehow made it better in his eyes or worse, but there really wasn’t an option to lie.
“Yeah, I figured,” Mason said with a sigh. “I don’t know if I was hoping he didn’t or did...if he didn’t, that meant you were still trying to hide shit from him, keep him away.”
“Which meant it would be easier for you to continue this little speech about how I need to leave your brother alone.”
“Actually, I was going to suggest that you just dip out while the getting is good,” he snorted. “But he knows, huh? Fuck, is that where his ‘bar fight’ wound came from?”
“Mason, get to the point?”
“That’s a yes,” he said with a heavy sigh. “Look, the others don’t know because I haven’t told them. Ward, though, he looked like he was getting close to figuring out who you are.”
“I had the same thought.”
“And he’ll tell Arlo if he ever puts the pieces together.”
“I would assume as much.”
“But Arlo probably won’t tell.”
“But you will?”
“That depends on you,” Mason said, his smirk disappearing, his expression growing more serious than I’d ever seen it.
“See, I don’t really care much about where you’ve been or what you’ve done.
People deserve the chance to start over.
But I care about where you’re going, because it’s going to drag Dom along.
He’s too stubborn and crazy about you ever to see what kind of stupid shit he’s getting himself into.
Doesn’t matter that he’s already been hurt, and it wouldn’t matter if he were lying in the gutter dying because of you.
..he still wouldn’t see it, and he wouldn’t admit it even if he did. ”
Leave it to a brother to get right to the heart of the problem.
He was putting into words the very thing I had struggled to articulate the night Dom had been hurt because of me.
It wasn’t that I didn’t think Dom was somehow failing to understand that it was dangerous, but he had never been what one would call a long-term thinker.
He could see the immediate danger, but he couldn’t see the danger it posed to the rest of his life, to his very way of life.
But Mason, despite his reputation as a frivolous playboy, had homed in on the problem.
“So here’s the thing,” Mason said, snubbing out this cigar.
“You need to figure out what you’re going to do.
If you’re going to stay, then you need to find a way out of the shit you’re in.
If you’re not going to figure that out, you need to leave.
.. quickly. The sooner the better for the sake of Dom’s heart, got it? ”
I braced. “Or?”
“Or I tell everyone who and what you are,” Mason said simply, but it was that simplicity that made me believe him in an instant. “Nothing personal.”
“Oh,” I said with a snort, standing up and flicking the cigarette away.
“This is about as personal as it gets, but I understand. You see a threat to your family, and you’re taking steps to make sure it doesn’t become.
.. well, an even bigger threat, I suppose.
I would be a blind, ignorant fool if I didn’t understand what you were doing, and I’d be heartless and selfish if I tried to be upset about your promise.
We have to protect what’s ours, after all. ”
“That we do,” he said, and his mouth turned down at the corners. “I get no pleasure from this.”
“I don’t expect you do,” I said with a shrug. “But if there’s anyone who understands what it’s like to do something because it must be done, irrespective of whether one wants to or how they feel about it, then it’s me.”
“I think our motivations for making that kind of choice are very different.”
“Perhaps in most things...but not when it comes to Dom.”
“God,” Mason said with a sigh so heavy I was surprised it didn’t have actual weight. “You do love him, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“Then make your choice, and make it fast, because you don’t have a lot of time,” Mason said, walking up the stairs. “And for the record...I hope you choose this family, instead of The Family, for whatever that’s worth to you.”
He slipped through the door, letting it close gently on the rock the worker had left, but the sound was still incredibly loud to my ears. I was left to stand there, feeling the weight of his words, and sighed. “It means a lot, Mason, it means more than you could ever understand.”
I stared up at the sky he had been peering up at for so long, and I wondered what I was going to do.
It was no longer a simple case of leaving Dom because it was easier on me, and more importantly, safer for him.
Our lives were twined together now, and nothing I did was going to change that, not easily anyway.
I had given him up once, and it had been the hardest thing in the world to do at the time.
And that had been before Dom had entirely found his way into my heart, before he had come into my life and shown me the things I’d been missing for years, showing me parts of myself I had forgotten and now never wanted to let go of again.
Once had been hard enough, but to do it again?
I think I would rather burn this city to the ground than lose him again.