Chapter 28 Levi
LEVI
The club bass pounded through my skull. We’d spent some time asking around after Nyah and her brother and had met with nothing but tight-lipped scowls and denials.
If the bouncers here knew anything, they certainly weren’t talking, at least not to us.
I’d watched Dax’s and Violet’s desperation grow with every shutdown, until X had dragged her out on the dance floor and spun her around and around until she’d started smiling again.
They’d eventually convinced Dax to join them too, and I was glad for it because sitting at a table with him, watching him drown his sorrows, watching the pain he was in at not knowing where Nyah was, had been killing me.
I hated seeing him like this.
Could only imagine what I would be feeling if it was Violet missing.
I shoved the thought away just as quickly as it came because it hurt too much. Losing her would just be swapping one prison for another. Losing her would mean my heart and soul and everything I was would be locked up, the key thrown away.
She was it for me.
I’d known it long before I’d ever laid eyes on her.
But she’d brought Whip into my life, and now I was so fucking confused I felt like I was back in that ocean, the waves smacking me in the face, invisible forces trying to drag me under.
I wanted Whip. I’d done things with him I’d never considered doing with another man, and yet they’d come easily with him.
I stood in the middle of the club, watching men kiss other men, watching them dance and gyrate on each other.
Watching them find dark corners to do more than anyone should be doing in public but unable to stop themselves because they wanted each other so bad.
It was exactly how I felt watching Whip walk away with a bartender twenty years younger than him.
My stomach twisted in knots as they’d moved past the bouncer, their fingers entwined around each other’s.
I wanted to rip the bartender’s hand off and throw it into the cocktail blender. I wanted to tear his eyes out with the spoon he used to scoop maraschino cherries into his drinks.
All because Whip had looked at him.
I stared at that hallway without blinking, the seconds ticking by in my head like a bomb, ready to explode.
I could imagine what they were doing back there, in some private back room of the club.
Their lips joining, opening, tongues stroking together in hot, dirty kisses. His hands running beneath Whip’s shirt, fingers finding the fly on his jeans.
Opening it. Pulling out his cock.
The bartender dropping to his knees to take him in his mouth. Whip pulling him to his feet, spinning him around and fucking him hard and fast against the wall.
I clenched the table so hard my knuckles went white.
“Sit your ass in this fucking seat, Levi. Do not fucking move,” I reminded myself through gritted teeth, knowing well that nobody would hear me because I could barely hear myself.
I repeated it over and over, reminding myself I could not leave this seat.
I could not storm down there and kick down that fucking door and beat the shit out of that bartender for touching him.
But the minute the door opened, I was on my feet. Storming through the club. Pushing past the bouncer who glanced at me but made no attempts to stop me.
The bartender blinked at me in surprise and held his hands up. “Nothing—”
I didn’t give a shit what he had to say. I barreled past him and straight into Whip, pushing him farther down the hallway.
The bouncer said something to the bartender, but I didn’t hear it. My attention was too taken up with Whip. I slammed him up against the wall, not even giving a fuck when his head hit the drywall too hard.
His eyes turned from wide with surprise to narrowed with anger. He shoved me off him. “What the fuck, Levi? That hurt.” He rubbed the back of his head.
I didn’t give a shit. I moved right back in, crowding him against the wall, taking up space so he couldn’t get away from me again, not that he was trying to. “Did you fuck him?”
Whip rolled his eyes. “So what if I did? We aren’t together, are we? You made that pretty clear.”
I pushed him against the wall again. “Did. You. Fuck. Him?”
“No, asshole. I didn’t fuck him. He introduced me to Nyah’s—”
I didn’t care. I slammed my mouth onto his, kissing him hard and fast and with anger that was fueled by jealousy and confusion but also by something so much more.
“I fucking love you.” I breathed across his lips.
The words shocked me just as much as they shocked him.
“What?” he asked.
“Don’t make me repeat it.” Heat bloomed across the back of my neck, but I ignored it. I knew that embarrassment was made up of a lifetime of homophobic remarks from men in my life who I’d loved and respected. But they had been so fucking wrong about this and what it felt like.
The way I felt about him was all-consuming. It chewed up every part of me and then spat me back out then asked for more.
A tiny smile flickered at Whip’s lips. “Nah, I want to hear you say it again.”
I rolled my eyes. “I fucking love you, okay? I don’t want you chatting up random strangers in clubs. I don’t want you holding their hands. I don’t want you sneaking off to back rooms to fuck them.”
“I don’t want that either. But I’m not going to be some secret that you’re ashamed of either. I’ve spent years hiding who I am. I bury every urge. I work after dark. I’ve never been anyone’s first choice.”
I mumbled over his lips. “I won’t give up Violet—”
“I won’t either.”
I sucked in a breath and knew it had to be me who made this right. I had been the hold-out in this relationship the entire time. But I never wanted to feel the way I’d just felt watching him walk away with another man. It made me sick to my stomach. “It’s you and me and her.”
Out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of X, his arms in the air doing the YMCA.
He was slightly out of time, his hair mussed up with sweat, a grin almost too wide for his face plastered all over it.
But Violet laughed up at him like he’d hung the fucking moon.
“You, me, her, and X,” I conceded, realizing she loved him. I was never going to take anything away from a woman who had already lost so much.
Whip fit his fingers to the back of my neck and dragged my head down the inch or two to meet his lips. With his forehead against mine, he mumbled, “You, me, her, and X. No one else.”
I nodded. “Family.”
Something flickered in his eyes, and I knew he was thinking about the one he’d lost. About the years of being alone. My fingers found the back of his neck too, pressing him close.
“No more running. No more hiding.” I wanted to kiss him so fucking bad it was like a tidal wave inside me, drawing him in. But I fought it, grabbing his hand and pulling him out into the middle of the club. Onto the dance floor.
“No hiding,” I whispered, then kissed him hard, not giving a fuck if the entire club saw. I plastered my body to his, not an inch of space between us, and deepened the kiss, tongues meeting. I needed him. Wanted him. For more than just sex.
Fang had been my best friend once, but things had changed. He had a family.
Now I did too.
Arms encircled me, but they weren’t Whip’s. Violet and X joined our embrace. Whip and I both instinctively opened our arms to Violet.
X was too busy doing his best impression of a jumping bean for us to really hug him properly. “Aw, Mommy and Daddy kissed and made up!” He grinned. “Are you two going to go have dirty hot sex on the kitchen counter now?”
I would have been lying if I’d said I didn’t want to. My dick was hard just from kissing. Or maybe it was the jealousy.
Fuck, maybe it was the realization I was just as in love with him as I was with Violet.
“I spoke to Nyah’s brother,” Whip told X and Violet.
Violet looked up at him hopefully, but it just as quickly faded at his expression. “He doesn’t know where she is either, does he?”
He shook his head.
“Her dad—”
Whip shut down that scrap of hope before she could get carried away on it. “He was pretty adamant that he would know if their parents had her. And I believe him. I don’t think she’s here, sweetheart.”
Violet’s face crumpled. “Then…”
She didn’t need to finish that sentence for us to know what came next.
We all knew.
The psychopath we’d been dodging for weeks had claimed another victim.