Chapter 20
Tessa
Four fucking days, and the sexual desperation for him was already killing me.
This was all too good to be true. It had to be.
Here I was lusting after a man I’d only just met a few weeks ago, praying that he felt the same way and that I wasn’t fucking crazy.
I had to be insane; I was surely losing my damn mind.
But no one looked at a woman with that degree of longing after fucking her if they didn’t feel it on a more profound and intimate level, right? Right?…
You know what, fuck what Brandi had said.
I was ready to tear this goddamn wig off and scream from the top of my lungs. I needed to ignore the nagging voice of unsolicited reason and flaunt my confidence, just as I always did on that red carpet.
Levi wanted me and made that abundantly clear, even if he didn’t say it outright. He didn’t need to. The look in his eyes alone told me everything I needed and wanted to hear. He was my long-awaited award, and I was ready to claim him as mine.
After being dropped at the front entrance of Pulse, I sprinted straight to his office. I didn’t bother changing for my shift beforehand, not wanting to waste a second longer than the days I’d already spent anticipating this moment.
The second my fingers touched the handle, I knew there would be no going back. This was it—my one chance to lay it all out in the open. I was going to be as forward as I was the night of his show, tell him everything, open and honest…
I was still in shock at what I’d just walked in on—witnessed… Levi’s hand on Brandi’s ass… the way her body was pressed up against his... the look on his face as if he’d just been caught in a fucking lie…
My face was flushed with embarrassment, and I felt sick to my stomach with self-doubt.
Maybe I was wrong after all. Perhaps I had my signals mixed up, jumping the gun and blowing everything out of proportion because I thought I’d found someone who had actually wanted and felt something for me.
At least I didn’t confess anything that I couldn’t take back, never mind my fucking feelings that were just stomped on along with my useless heart.
Sucking up what was left of my pride, I hauled ass to the locker room to change for what would possibly be my last shift, hoping that I could avoid Levi for the rest of the evening and forget anything had ever happened between us. That I let him fuck me on an emotional level.
I’m going to need to find a new job… or just go the fuck home…
“Ev—”
My breath fractured in my lungs at the sound of his voice, shutting my eyes as I struggled to collect myself, remembering that I was an actress and no man had to see me cry if I didn’t want them to.
I wanted to fight with him, argue over my fragile feelings, and vent my fucking frustrations out loud.
But when I finally sucked up the nerve to face him, pointing out the obvious issue that sparkled in the fluorescent lighting, Levi took a step back.
Straightening himself, he turned into a hard shell, built to deflect any form of unwanted emotion. A coat of armor I knew all too well.
‘Brandi is a parasite…’
‘Levi wouldn’t touch her…’
‘Wouldn’t fuck around unless it meant something…’
His words cut me like a knife, right before he turned on his heel and left me to stand there like he was the one wronged, and not me—that I had driven a knife through his chest and not the other way around.
Did he just refer to himself in the third person?
“Levi!” Fuck… I dropped the wad of clothes I had been holding before chasing after him without even giving it a second thought—forgetting that I was pissed off at him.
“Levi, wait—” But by the time I’d made it around the corner right outside of the lounge room, he was already gone, the hall empty, and now I felt completely fucking confused at what just happened.
I had to have been making shit up in my mind because the Levi I had allowed to fuck me didn’t come off as the psychotic and crazy type—but this… what do I fucking do with this?
What the fuck just happened?