11. Reeve
ELEVEN
reeve
Here we go again.
Except, this time, Wallace doesn’t have his dynamic duo, Juice Box and Hot Shit, to come to his rescue. I’m sure they’re around here somewhere, but I have my boys with me this time and I’m looking to beat his ass for the only thing I can seem to focus on.
Bay Astor standing on the other side of that neck grab.
And there’s no way in hell that I’m going to stand idly by and allow him to touch her like that. Especially when, like I’ve said a million times, she’s going to marry me one day and my future wife isn’t going to be touched in any fucking capacity that’s not me.
I’d also like to be alive for that. Because, with the way that Wallace is looking at me, I can confidently say that we share the similar goal of wanting to knock each other’s lights out.
I feel Torin and Cairo at my sides, flanking the next move Levi might attempt to make on me. He doesn’t hesitate with my newly acquired help, lunging forward and cocking back on his elbow to get my ass again.
Torin barely makes it out of the way as do I, and Cairo forces Levi back with a shove—the calmest motherfucker in the world— when Levi manages to stomp down on Cairo’s shin with his heel and follows up with a right hook.
Torin catches Levi’s ribs, getting two good shots before Levi’s massive frame twists in his direction and slaps both sides of Pretty Boy’s head with closed fists over his ears.
I hear Torin extoll a sharp exhale through his teeth, his ears, his weak mark and, as of late, I know that Levi is aware. It only pisses me off, charging and ramming into his gut, causing us to both almost lose our footing, but we manage to keep our asses off the concrete.
I answer his bullshit strike with a kidney shot, hearing Bay yell out something about stopping, but it’s time Levi Wallace understands that even though I may not have a Titan seat anymore, because Newport dipped from the Titans, but I’ll stand by my brothers.
And if he ever touches Bay like that ever again, I’ll have him swallowing a bullet while I stroke my dick and tell him how hard the thought of having Bay all to myself makes me.
“Let me go!” It’s her voice that wrenches my concentration from Levi, finding Cairo with his arm wrapped around her middle to keep her away and out of this brawl while keeping her feet off the ground.
I see him lean over her shoulder to say something in her ear, but that’s where the air shifts.
Where the monster finally rips through Levi’s soul because he heard her, too.
And that’s when I see it blanket over his face.
He’s seeing red.
Shit.
“Cairo—” He drops Bay on her feet when I call his name and glances up. Then my boy reads the room for himself as Levi marches like a fucking warrior in my best friend’s direction.
It’s like a bull and Cairo’s the sheet of red.
Using the position Bay’s already in, she plants her sexy ass right between the two men and doesn’t move her stance.
Sometimes I wish she wasn’t so brave.
And, as much as I love that she doesn’t scare easily when it comes to massive men, I don’t want her hurt either.
“ Enough ,” she thunders out, receiving Levi’s immediate focal point and hard glower.
Actually, it stops all of us.
Things are shifting, it’s undeniable. Torin isn’t so hard to annihilate her from the Earth. He might keep his facade on—well, try —but it slips away just as soon as she opens her mouth.
That night in the library, he can refuse to admit it, but it altered what is this conflict that lies between our two homes. This bullshit war isn’t serving us anymore. It’s just that no one wants to be the first one to admit that.
“Enough?” Levi repeats through his clenched jaw. “You don’t want me to hurt your boys, bitch? I gave you everything, and this is how you repay me?!”
Guilt fills my chest because I knew this could come to a head eventually.
I want her and she was allegedly tied with him.
However, it still never felt like they were together. I feel as though Bay would’ve broken up with him if she wasn’t feeling it. That she wouldn’t string him along unless he threatened her in some way.
But, it could be like the guys said, maybe she was scared he’d cast her out of South Shore where her family resides. I know they mean the world to her and it wouldn’t be something that would make an easy decision.
She shakes my head in tandem against his accusations. “I’m not?—”
“There’s plenty of pussy in South Shore,” Levi derides, gliding down the length of her as if she’s nothing but basic then motions to Cairo. “I don’t need your used cunt if you’re fucking this trash. Good luck. You’ll just end up at the end of my gun when this shit’s all over.”
“The fuck did you say?” I carp out before I think better and rationally, stepping closer to them because he manhandles her again, I’m gonna fuck his ass up, even if it takes me all night to do it. “Did you just threaten her?”
“Yeah,” he replies, steering his moss greens to me and clearly, he’s unafraid of any three of us. I think the power’s going to his head because he never used to be this much of a fucking tool. “I did. This isn’t your fight, even your business. It’s mine. She’s mine.”
And my fucking brain still doesn’t care.
“Levi, please?—”
His neck snaps back to her, disregarding the way her voice breaks at what he’s saying. “Shut the fuck up. I told you several times to stay the hell away from them and look where we’re at. Why the fuck do I keep seeing these three pieces of shit every time I turn the hell around?”
“It’s not…” She can’t even lie about it because it is like that. Torin has fucked her, and I’ve put my hands on her because I couldn’t resist.
I’m a homewrecker. Wouldn’t be the first time.
In spite of that fact, I care about this one. I’ve already caused embarrassment and allowed harm to come to Bay when that ice cream truck got flipped over.
I didn’t give that command, but I should’ve known the pricks I was running with were stupid as shit.
“Go fuck yourself,” Levi sneers, his expression twisting in pure loathing. “We’re done.”
He dismisses her with his back, striding toward the crowd and disappearing within it. I exhale my first real breath since he started poppin’ off at the mouth but when I look back to Bay, she’s already fleeting away.
“Reeve, don’t ,” Cairo warns, but I’m already moving. The damage that’s done, I can’t fix, and it’s only going to be worse if I don’t try to do something. To make her feel better, to apologize and tell her she’s underserving of everything he just said back there.
“McQueen,” I call out, expecting her to keep walking and not turn around, but that’s exactly what she does.
Her eyes are red-rimmed already, watching me approach with a wary look, and I slow my steps to not make her shut down on me altogether.
She might not want to, but she feels it. There’s no denying the fact that we’re attracted to each other. That I’m not scared of moving for something I want.
That she’s the center of all that right now.
Because I haven’t touched a girl or dude since meeting her which needs to go down in the book of Guinness or some shit because that’s a first. I’m always fucking. I’m consistently restless for a good fuck.
But not since I saw those lips and imagined them all over me. Those fucking legs and that ass…I want her.
And I’m going to get her.
“Don’t you dare spend more than a night crying over that motherfucker,” I coax with ire to my tone then quickly tweak it to something softer. “He’s not worth it, and you’re worth it all.”
Her brows clench and so does that cute little nose of hers. “What is up with you and me? Is it because we haven’t fucked yet? That you can’t brag about messing around with Levi’s girl?—”
“You think that’s what this is about?” I clip out, my irritation back and knowing that I’m going against what I just said. “I don’t need to fuck Wallace’s girl to make me feel better. And I sure as hell don’t need you tellin’ me that as an excuse every time we run into this lovely topic of conversation.”
“Then get over it. I don’t want to be bothered with you. Ever since I got involved with you guys, it’s done nothing but…”
Make it worse.
And it’s only made mine better.
I think about her more than I should.
Shit, I’ve already concocted some bullshit future plans to where she’s wearing my name and a ring that says she’s different than anyone I’ve ever paid attention to before. I’m clearly obsessing, don’t care how it looks, and this beautiful vixen is all I wish for in this world.
“I know that I’m responsible for more than a third of this,” I divulge, the factuality of that truth pricking at my skin. “And I’m sorry for being the cause of what just happened. For the other night. I’m fucked up and I should’ve warned you more about that. However, the crazy and fucked-up thing is that I had you exactly where I’ve dreamt of having you and it was in the most deranged, vile way possible. But I can’t say my cock wasn’t hard for you. That, if there weren’t ten guys out there and you didn’t just roll through streets I told you not to cruise down, I would’ve fucked you long and hard for disobeying me.”
“For disobeying you?” She says that as if I’m the last person in the world who could ever give her an order. As if my opinion doesn’t mean shit.
And maybe it doesn’t.
However, I’m not a bitch, just a horny prick.
And I will hold my ground with what I know is true, regardless of how she feels about it.
“For rebelling against what I told you to do,” I upbraid. “It was for your safety. I knew The Void was roaming The Landings and I couldn’t protect you?—”
Her jaw slacks, opening those pretty, plush lips. “That wasn’t The Forsaken Crew?”
“Hell no. That never would’ve happened if I had my crew with me. The Void…I’m not going to get into that right now, baby. It’s complicated bullshit.” She answers me with a curt nod, and I expel some of the feet between us. “You gonna listen to me next time?”
“There is no other next time, because this is it for us.”
“It’s it when I say it is,” I argue. because it’s time someone breaks through this shit. That she sees me for me and not some crew I joined when I was fourteen. On contrary to belief, it took years for Torin and Cairo to convince me to roll with them. We’ve known each other since grade school, but being a gangbanger wasn’t at the top of my list of shit to do.
It was one of the best and worst things that could’ve happened to me.
Without it, the boys, and something else to focus on long-term, I never would’ve been able to get through what my mother put me through. What happened afterward.
“Admit it, McQueen,” I vouch slowly. “You never liked him in the first place.”
“Oh, I didn’t?” She hits me with an indifferent look that only cries out how much of anything I know about her and Wallace’s relationship.
“You would’ve never taken me to that treehouse,” I answer matter-of-factly. “You wouldn’t have tried to keep me out of trouble with the King of South Shore. You’d never let me touch you, make you come under my mouth and fingers.” My cock twitches in my jeans, recalling, imagining all the ways I could take her and hear her breathe my name. To want it as much as I’ve craved it. “I’m not so fully fazed with cluelessness by the fact that you kinda like me. And I’ve already got you agreeing to a wedding song with me, McQueen. You only need me on my knees next.”
Bay just stares back at me, and I’m starting to read that the thoughts in her head are that I’m a fucking nutjob with a few screws loose. That all might be true and dandy, I never once said I was normal. I have a dark past and some pretty shitty things happen to me, but I refuse to let them own me.
“I never wanted to hurt you,” I impart softly. “I’ll spend the rest of my life making that night up to you. It killed me to do that to you. But seeing Wallace touch you like that drove me crazy and I don’t regret hitting that motherfucker.”
“He’s going to try to kill you one day.”
My lips coil into a smirk because he almost did. However, I have a dark guardian angel on my side. “And here you are, thinking that you don’t like me.”
“I never said I didn’t like you,” she retorts evenly. “It’s that it won’t work. That it’s too much of a hassle. That, now, I have the King of South Shore wanting to kill me and?—”
“That’s not gonna happen, baby. I understand why he got my ass that night for what he saw and believed happened. But he’s not gonna disrespect you like that in front of me.”
“Don’t sweat it. I’m okay.”
She’s not.
But I’m not going to defend the dickhead when Wallace is the last thing or person I’m interested in.
“I’ll start listening to you when you begin hearing me. And that nasty bruise and black eye I landed you that night says different. I’m over here contradicting myself and shit.”
“It doesn’t hurt anymore.” She lifts her shoulders as if it’s nothing. As if, maybe, it’s happened before.
I ever find that out, I’ve officially gained a bone to pick with the King of He’s Going to Fucking Die.
“It hurts me,” I retort gently because I’ve kept replaying it over and over in my head for weeks now. “I will never lay another hand on you like that again. I promise.”
She lets out an unsteady exhale, and I’m sure it’s hard to accept the fact that her opposing side legit wants something nice for her. That we’re— I —am not in this for some bullshit bragging points and a few high fives.
“I need you to believe me,” I tell her. “If there was anything I’ve ever said to you, this is the time?—”
“I’m glad it was you,” she declares, anchoring those arresting blues back at me and setting the sudden ramping pace of my heartbeat. “I trusted that you’d keep me safe. I wouldn’t have wanted it to be anyone else. I wasn’t mad at you afterward, and I’m not now. I was a wreck when I found out Levi carted you off to the shipping yard, and I…”
I wait on bated breath for her to continue, but she doesn’t. “You, what?” She averts her gaze and tries to find something else to occupy her time. “McQueen…”
Her famous nickname has her returning to look back at me before she sighs. “I sent someone out to get you.”
My brows clench. “What?”
“I’m not telling you who it was,” she retorts, crossing her arms over her chest as to keep the secret safe. “But…I was being watched, and I couldn’t stand the thought of you being out there.” She lets go of a shaky sigh. “He told me you weren’t there…and I thought the worst.”
“He?” I repeat, earning a glare at my prodding of who it may be. I honestly don’t care. I’m just breaking through some of the tension. “I had my own he that night, baby. But the thought of you wanting to save me…yeah, you’re gonna marry me one day.”
Bay rolls her eyes, and my fingers itch to reach out and touch her, but I remain suspended in my spot. She’s had a hell of a night and the last thing she needs is for me to get handsy. “I’ll text you to make sure you got home safe.”
She bobs her head. “Yeah, okay.”
Then she turns and leaves me watching her stride to her car. Those hips swaying with each step, and the weight of my cock grows heavy in my pants.
I really am fucked up.