Chapter 26 Whip
WHIP
Ifound X, Violet, and Harold at a coffee shop and dropped the car keys onto the table between them. “I’ll meet you at the club tonight. Take the car. I need to walk.”
They both stared up at me, their smiles fading at my clipped words.
Violet grabbed my hand. “What happened? Where’s Levi?”
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her he was in the fucking closet, being a homophobic asshole, but he was still the man she was in love with. I didn’t want to ruin that for her by bad-mouthing him.
Even though he was being a prick and fucking deserved it.
“I don’t know. But I’ve got a few things to do. Just need a couple hours. I’ll see you later.”
I pressed my lips to the top of her head and breathed in the honeysuckle scent of her hair, using her familiar smell to calm the storm raging inside me Levi had stirred up.
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her I loved her.
When she looked up at me with those big eyes, rimmed with dark lashes, all I wanted to do was scoop her up in my arms and tell her that everything was going to be okay.
But it wasn’t. Nothing was right. Nyah was missing. Someone was hunting us. And Levi was breaking my fucking heart.
That last one was my fault. I was the idiot who’d gone and fallen for an emotionally unavailable straight man, who’d had a few minutes of fun in dark corners with another guy. I should have known falling for him would end in nothing but pain.
Violet and X called after me as I left, but I just couldn’t sit there with them while a storm raged inside me. I didn’t know what I needed, but I could feel an implosion coming and I didn’t want to be around her when it happened.
She didn’t deserve the mess of me and Levi detonating whatever relationship we might have been building.
It had been a long time since I’d been in this city, but it wasn’t my first rodeo. Memories plagued me.
My wife and I had brought our kids here on vacation.
More than once we’d walked these streets as a family of four.
She’d loved the ocean and everything in it, so we’d spent hours at the aquarium, staring at brightly colored fish and listening to her talk about documentaries she’d seen on saving the turtles and what we could do to help.
The kids had listened to her every word, and so had I, not because I cared so much about marine life, but because I’d loved the way she’d lit up when she was passionate about something.
I’d loved the little smile on her lips she’d gotten every time she’d realized I was watching her.
The memories played on in my head. But they felt different than how they had in the past.
I realized with a start that while I would always love the woman I’d married, I wasn’t in love with her anymore.
I couldn’t be.
Because I was so stupidly in love with Violet.
And, if I was being honest with myself, with Levi.
Julia was my past, and those memories of her, Tyler, and Kennedy, the two beautiful children we’d had together, would always be there.
But I’d spent years being angry. Years taking out that frustration with guns and knives and sex.
None of it had ever been enough.
Not until Violet and Levi had come along.
Suddenly, everything felt different. Better. Some of the anger had drifted away, and I didn’t want to spend all my time killing or fucking. It had never filled the void the way their arms did.
“Fuck you, Levi,” I muttered. “Fuck you for giving me something worth losing.”
I didn’t know where I was going, walking the streets, clutching my new clothes in a bag so tightly my fingers were losing sensation. I found myself outside a church, a little A-frame out in front advertising that Alcoholics Anonymous was meeting inside.
Without even really thinking about why, I walked along the narrow path and up the old stone steps of the church. I let myself in quietly and took a seat at the back. A few heads turned my way, but nobody said anything, the meeting in full swing and a man at the front speaking to the group.
It wasn’t the first meeting I’d been to. I’d never had a problem with alcohol, but after my family had been killed by a drunk driver, I’d started going, hoping this kind of therapy could work for the hate and despair I’d been holding on to so hard.
Hoping it could keep me from taking out my frustrations with a gun or a knife.
My first cold-blooded kill had been a man who I’d met at that group. One who’d claimed to be clean and sober, a ninety-day chip firmly in his fingers at every meeting. But who I’d followed back to a bar every night, where he got so drunk he could barely stand, then got in his car and drove home.
I’d only been able to watch it three times before, one night, he hadn’t made it to the bar. Or to his car, ever again.
But I sat at the back of the meeting now and realized that wasn’t a life I wanted to go back to. Being alone. Stalking victims at night, trying to fill the hole of my pain with someone else’s.
I left before the meeting ended so I didn’t have to talk to anyone.
There was nothing here for me anymore.
Not when everything I wanted was out there.
Igot to the club owned by Nyah’s brother, Cedric, less than thirty minutes after it opened, but even so, there was a short line out front.
I had a text on my phone from Violet, telling me they would be a little late because they were picking up Dax, but he’d only just gotten back from getting his new tattoo and hadn’t had time to change.
I’d just written back a simple, “Okay.” I’d wanted to check out the place before they got here anyway, so I wasn’t expecting them for another thirty minutes. I probably had more like forty-five now.
The line inched along slowly, but I made it to the front and was eventually let in.
I rolled my eyes in the dim space that had barely any people inside.
Clearly the line was a tactic for making the place seem popular.
But I was glad to see I didn’t stand out like a sore thumb in the outfit I’d haphazardly bought that afternoon.
I definitely hadn’t packed to be going to a club, but I’d also been so distracted by my argument with Levi that I hadn’t really paid attention to what I’d been shoving at the clerk in my rush to get out of there and away from Levi.
At least the shirt fit.
And nobody could see my nipples through it.
I found a free stool at the bar and sank down on it.
The bartender came right over and grinned at me. “How you doing?”
I nodded. “Good. Whiskey neat.”
The man raised an eyebrow. “Strong choice. I would have picked you more as a vodka and lemonade sorta guy.”
I chuckled at that. “Oh yeah? Why’s that?”
He shrugged. “Guys who look like you generally force themselves to drink whiskey and bourbon when they’re at straight bars, then they come in here and realize it’s perfectly acceptable for them to order something pink or fruity.
” He eyed me. “You sure you don’t want a cocktail…
” He winked at me. “The cock comes free after my shift if you’re interested? ”
I laughed and shook my head. “Thanks, but honestly, I really do like whiskey.”
The rejection didn’t bother him any. It slid off him easily, and a moment later I had a whiskey neat in front of me. The bartender waited until I took a sip.
I tried not to grimace. It was cheap and nasty, and clearly not their specialty.
He sniggered. “You sure you don’t want a cosmopolitan or something? They’re my specialty.”
I pushed the whiskey back at him. “I think you just convinced me to try one.”
He pumped the air like that was a victory and set to work, pouring various liquids into a shaker filled with ice. I crowd watched while he worked, eyeing people filing in.
I was on my third cosmo when Levi walked in with Violet, Dax, and X.
X immediately pulled Violet onto the dance floor, twirling her around, not giving a flying fuck they were the only people on it.
They started something though, because a moment later, the dance floor filled up, mostly with men, all moving to the fast-paced beat.
I caught Levi’s eye across the room, but I wasn’t in the mood to try to work him out tonight.
He was painfully stiff and uncomfortable and out of place.
Like he wanted to run out the door at any moment and the only reason he wasn’t was because Violet was here.
His gaze flickered away from mine, and he focused on her.
“How very fucking straight of you, Levi,” I muttered into the fruity-smelling pink drink that Kade, the bartender, had been plying me with all evening.
“What was that, Daddy?” he asked with a wink.
He’d been calling me that since my second top-up, but it was with a playful tone and I’d heard him calling the older guy at the other end of the bar the same thing, so I knew it was nothing personal and barely even flirty. We’d already passed that point and established I wasn’t interested.
Would have been a whole lot easier if I was. But apparently the only cock I was interested in was Levi’s.
And the cocktails I was miserably downing like they were candy. They were surprisingly good and way too easy to drink.
Kade’s gaze slid past mine, and he leaned his elbows on the countertop. “You’re being checked out, you know?”
“Stupidly attractive prison vibe with a tat on his cheekbone?”
“That’s the one.”
“Eh.”
Kade sniggered. “If you aren’t interested, I am.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Do you ever go home alone after a shift?”
“Not if I can help it. And the dark and dangerous vibe does it for me.”
“That man is never going home with you.”
Kade pouted, but he must have seen something in my expression because his eyes widened, and he leaned in even closer. “Spill the tea. There’s history between the two of you, isn’t there?”
I shrugged. “Not if you ask him.”
He poked his bottom lip out. “Oh, he rejected you? That why you’re here tonight, drowning your sorrows?”
I shook my head and figured now was as good a time as any to shoot my shot. “I’m actually looking for the owner, Cedric Matish?”