20. Levi
TWENTY
Levi
It’s a very bad day. Several actually, but they run together into one long stretch of time.
Ethan doesn’t speak to me beyond necessary, emotionless words.
On a certain level, I know that whatever is wrong extends beyond me, but I can’t see any of it, and all I can feel is my own place in Ethan’s silence.
He doesn’t even fuck me.
I start sleeping in the other room. I wonder if I should leave.
Patrick comes over at one point. I’m in my room, lying in bed, so I don’t hear the words, but I can hear Ethan and Patrick arguing. I hate it because that’s more than I can get from Ethan. With me, he’s wooden.
Then Patrick comes into my room. It’s the first time I’ve seen him without a suit. He looks very different in jeans and a black T-shirt. He looks younger. He looks upset too. He stands over my bed.
He says, “I think you should come with me.”
I don’t respond.
“Ethan can’t take care of you right now. You can stay with me.”
I roll over to face the wall.
“Goddamn it,” Patrick mutters.
He leaves.
Then Ruby comes over.
This time, I’m in the kitchen because I’m so hungry that I feel like I’m going to be sick. When the doorbell rings, I don’t know what to do, but Ethan doesn’t appear, so I go to open it, thinking it will be Patrick again.
Ruby’s lip curls contemptuously at the sight of me.
“Disgusting,” she mutters and pushes open the door, smashing it into my bare feet.
I hop back as she storms into the penthouse, calling Ethan’s name.
We all converge in the kitchen. He’s shirtless, wearing only gray sweats. I worry that he’ll be angry with me for letting her in, but he ignores me to snap at her, “What do you want?”
Her posture in her black skirt and billowy white top is demure, but her voice is sharp when she demands, “Did you see?”
“See what?”
She snags her phone from her purse, pulling something up. She holds it out. I’m closer to her than Ethan is, so I see it first. It’s a picture of Ethan. And me.
It’s him kissing me the other day after we left the church.
Ethan takes Ruby’s phone. He stares at the image. His eyes are bloodshot. There are dark smudges under them like he hasn’t slept. Stubble shadows his jaw. He hands the phone back to her.
Her mouth pinches, maybe at his lack of reaction. “I’ll have to make a statement, Ethan.”
“Fine.”
“If you could’ve just kept this behind closed doors where it belongs. It was bad enough that you attacked John in that bathroom. There were pictures of that too, Ethan, of him disheveled. But at least that happened behind a closed door, so he could say that he slipped and fell.”
“Just get out.”
“You have made it exponentially harder for me to control this narrative. Do you understand that?”
“I don’t care anymore.”
“We could lose everything! And all because of you! Always because of you and the corruption you brought into this family. Get rid of your filthy little whore!”
Ethan shouts, “Get the fuck out of my house!”
As he storms toward Ruby, she scrambles back with a startled cry. She wheels around and hustles out through the entryway, heels clipping frantically. The door thumps shut.
Ethan is staring in the direction she left. His hands are fisted and his chest is heaving.
“I’m sorry,” I mumble.
He doesn’t reply. He turns and walks away.
I make it two more days before I have one of my episodes.
I’m in the kitchen again. It’s the middle of the night, but I can’t sleep.
I’m pouring cereal into a bowl, but when it’s full I just keep pouring.
I watch the flakes overflow onto the counter.
Some fall to the floor, pinging my bare feet.
I set the box down and pick up the bowl.
On a certain level, I know what’s coming, but I’ve shrunk inside myself and am not really in control anymore.
I walk into the middle of the kitchen and drop the bowl.
It hits the tile with a crack. The white ceramic shatters and cereal explodes out across the floor.
I bend and pick up one of the shards. It’s pretty.
I like how it broke. I put it in the pocket of my sweats. Then I walk through the mess.
I open a cupboard and start pulling out the glasses, dropping them on the floor. My heart starts racing. I’m starting to feel things. Finally, something is happening.
I toss glass after glass onto the floor.
“What the hell are you doing?” Ethan barks from somewhere, but I just keep pulling out the glasses.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he growls, and I hear him moving my way.
I don’t think much of it until his arm hooks around my torso, hauling me off the ground. Something snaps inside me. I scream. I flail in his grip, but he’s so much bigger and stronger than I am that he just carries me out of the kitchen.
I manage to get turned in his arms, and I bite him on the neck.
He shouts, grabbing my hair to pull my face away.
He wrestles me onto the couch, holding me down with one hand in the middle of my back while he spanks me with the other.
I buck and jerk at the sharp stings, shrieking in a wild mix of emotions. Fury. Relief. Desperate, aching need.
My cock stiffens as he continues.
Finally. Finally, he’s going to fuck me.
I brace against the couch, expecting him to yank down my sweats, but he doesn’t. He shoves away from me.
I push up from the couch in fury as he staggers back. I scream at him, wordless and animalistic, like I’m possessed. I flip the coffee table.
It’s disorienting and strange to be this angry. It feels so good and so bad at the same time.
Ethan comes back to me. He shoves me down onto the couch again.
This time, we’re face to face, and I grab his shirt.
When he tries to pull back, I’m pulled up off the couch.
I scramble for him as his shirt rips. I’m not sure if I do it on purpose, but my hands grab at Ethan’s cock—and he absolutely loses it.
He shoves me away into the couch so hard and with such a vicious scream that I half fall, half scramble over the back of it.
I don’t really process his shouted words, but I hear don’t and never and hate.
It finally breaks through my haze. I curl up on my side on the floor, sobbing.
I hear him stalking around for a long time. He throws things, like I did. But he never touches me.
And, eventually, he storms out of the room and down the hallway. A door slams.
I stay curled up on my side for a long, long time as reality sets in.
It’s over, like I knew it would be.
He doesn’t want me here, and it’s been obvious for days.
I’ve ruined his life.
With the picture.
With my existence.
I drag myself up off the floor. I get to my feet. I walk through the penthouse to the door.
I’m myself again, so I open it quietly. I close it quietly too.
And quietly, I vanish.