31. Ethan
THIRTY-ONE
Ethan
Right as Patrick gets the lock picked open on John Clifford’s sliding glass door, a gunshot booms inside. My heart jumps so hard that I jolt into motion, slamming past Patrick as he yanks open the door, half knocking him over. I dart through a dark sitting room.
As I charge out into a hallway, my heart is in my throat and fear is running electric through my body. There’s a nightmare quality to the half-remembered space. Because the gun in my hand is useless, and my hurry is useless. Because the silence means that I’m too late.
And yet, I keep running toward that lighted doorway ahead. I bolt into that room—and stop dead at the sight of Levi standing behind the desk, standing behind the slumped body of John Clifford, whose slack face is resting on the desk in a pool of blood.
Levi’s expression as he looks up at me is somehow both wild and peaceful. An image flares into my mind: wings fanning out from Levi’s back, his eyes full of the quiet, righteous fury of an avenging angel.
Patrick crowds around me, pushing into the room, then he too stops dead and mutters, “Fuck.”
I walk slowly toward Levi.
He says, “It was right.”
“I know,” I tell him, moving his way. “Come here. Please.”
Levi steps out from behind the desk. He moves toward me with a strange grace that makes my brain glitch with that winged image again.
As we meet in the middle of the room, Levi drops to his knees in front of me. His hands rest on his thighs. He tilts his head back and looks up. His expression is open and soft.
I reach out with a shaky hand and pet his hair. I know what he’s done for me, and it’s so big, it fills me up so full, that for this one blissful moment, there’s no room inside me for anything else.
Even the memories at the edges of my mind, things that happened in this room when Paul brought me here for counseling because I kept getting sick at church—they can’t reach me.
Only Levi is real.
His presence.
His love.
Another reality layers itself, however, when Patrick walks past us and goes to look at the body. But that reality is surreal, playing at the edges like my memories, less important than Levi kneeling in front of me as I stroke his hair.
I only half hear Patrick asking, “You shot him?”
Levi replies, his voice light and steady, “I guided his hand.”
“Whose finger was on the trigger?”
“His.”
Patrick asks, “With your hand on his?”
I’m still petting Levi’s hair as he answers, “Yes.”
“Okay. That’s good. I can deal with this. You two need to get out of here. Ethan, come on. Get moving.”
I blink, and Patrick solidifies. Reality solidifies.
We have a dead body.
We have a problem.
“What do you mean you can deal with this?” I ask. “What are you going to do?”
Patrick’s eyes are hard and cold. I’ve seen them like that before, once or twice. I don’t know the details of Patrick’s history any more than he knows mine, but I do know it’s not pretty. I know he’s been involved in a lot of shit that he doesn’t talk about.
There’s no angelic presence to Patrick, just a dark, solid, human one. And yet, he’s also protecting me. Me and Levi.
He says, “Just get out. I won’t be long. Let me deal with this. Please, Ethan—go.”
I nod. I reach down my hand for Levi. He takes it, and I help him to his feet. I engage the safety on my gun and slide it into the back of my jeans. I didn’t need it. I had Levi.
I glance at him. He nods, and we walk out together, back down the hallway and through the sitting room, then out through the sliding glass door.
I help Levi over the wall, and we walk out into the alley. His hand is in mine. It’s quiet and dark as we walk to my car. I open the door for him.
When he gets in, I lean down and kiss him. It starts sweet, but then his mouth opens, and I plunge into it. I kiss him hard and deep. Hunger wakes up inside me. It wakes in him too. He grabs at me, but that’s fine. He can grab at me. I want him to.
I grip his hard cock through his jeans. He whines and arches.
I open the glove box, tossing the gun inside and grabbing the lube, then I pull Levi back out of the seat. He’s loose and compliant as I tug him toward the front of the car. I open his pants and tug them down, then I bend him over the hood.
I hold him down with my elbow while I squeeze lube into my hand. When I press the lube into his hole, he moans. He’s tightened back up since I fucked him this morning, but he opens easily for me and I soon unzip my pants, lube my hard, aching cock, and start pushing inside him.
Levi whines and moans and pushes back against me. I lean over him, forcing my way into his body until I’m flush against him. Then I grab his hair and I grab his hips and I fuck him.
It’s rough and dirty and primal because my angel is a wild, dark, dirty thing. I fuck him with raw, harsh thrusts until he seizes on me and starts bucking in my grip as he comes all over the side of the car.
I want to keep fucking him, I want to come inside him, but we need to go. So I pull out of him. I fix his pants. I get him back in the car.
I tuck my hard cock away and zip my jeans as I walk around the car to the driver’s door. I get in and start the engine.
As I drive across the city to the penthouse, Levi is curled up in the passenger seat, watching me. I reach for his hand. I squeeze it once for yes then pull it into my lap. He understands. He touches me through my jeans.
Strange sensations move through my body as I drive with Levi touching my cock. They’re not all good sensations, but I need him to keep going even when I start getting upset. I need him to keep his hand on me. He does. He understands.
I get us to the building and into the parking garage.
I have to pull away from him to get out.
He gets out too. He’s dazed and aroused again.
I pick him up like I did that night at the park.
I carry him to the elevator. On the ride up, he murmurs and nuzzles at my throat.
Heat rolls through my body. I hug him to me.
When we reach the top floor, I carry Levi to our door. I punch in my code and get the door open, then I kick it shut behind us. I carry him through the dark apartment to the playroom.
I don’t turn on the lights. There’s no need. City light and moonlight are spilling in through the windows. I carry Levi past the chairs and benches and cages. I carry him to the corner and let him down.
I open his pants again and pull them down his thighs.
Then he turns, not once questioning my choice, and kneels on the prayer bench.
I unzip my pants. I grab a bottle of lube and slick my cock again.
Then I lean over him once more. I set my cockhead to his hole and push inside.
I fuck him, here on the prayer bench, rewriting penitence with pleasure.
Levi moans and grips the edge of the bench, bracing for every hard thrust. When I reach around him and grab his cock, he cries out, jerking against me.
His cock pulses in my hand and he spills all over me.
It’s so fucking beautiful that I bury myself inside him and come so hard that I’m grunting and straining through every deep, rolling wave of it.
As it passes, I start kissing the back of his neck. “I love you,” I breathe into him. “God, I love you.”
Levi reaches up, grabbing at my hair, holding me tight against him.
When I can think, I ease out of him. I pull him off the bench. As he turns in my arms, my legs give out, and I let myself fall to the floor with Levi on top of me.
I drift. I float in the bliss. I feel Levi breathe against me as he whispers, “I love you too.”
* * *
I must doze because I wake, suddenly alert, sure that I heard something. My head lifts from the floor.
Levi murmurs against me, “I think it’s Patrick.”
“Oh shit. Right.”
Levi and I get up, fixing our clothes. I grab a couple of towels from the stack so we can sort of clean up. But I know Patrick won’t mind that we’re a mess.
I take Levi’s hand and lead him out. There’s a light on in the kitchen, and we emerge to find Patrick sweeping up the mess of broken glass and ceramic that we left in the kitchen however long ago.
Patrick glances up. He says, “Everything should be okay. He had no cameras. I’m guessing because he didn’t want his own shit on them.”
I nod.
Patrick says, “I wiped you from his files as best I could.”
I blink. I didn’t know Patrick knew how to do things like that.
He keeps sweeping. He’s pensive. Upset. There are a lot of potential reasons for that, but the one he gives me isn’t the one I expect.
He says, “I didn’t know, Ethan. I didn’t know he was one of them. I wish I would’ve known. I wish you would’ve talked to me.”
My throat tightens. My hand tightens too, squeezing Levi’s. I didn’t know that Patrick knew. On a certain level, maybe I did, suspected at least. But I’ve never been able to face it with him. Only with Levi.
But Patrick deserves better. God, he does. I tell him, trying to put everything into it, “I’m sorry.”
Patrick replies, “I’m not upset with you. And I get it, Ethan, I do. Why you’ve never talked to me. But I still wish you would have.”
I take a deep breath and let it out. I walk into the kitchen with Levi, and we help him finish cleaning.
He’s distant, apart from us. He’s helping, not intruding, and he’s always been that way. He’s always understood that that’s what I need from him.
But it’s not right.
While he’s washing his hands, I go to stand beside him. I tell him, “I’m sorry that I haven’t been as good a friend to you as you’ve been to me.”
Patrick shakes his head. “You have been. You’ve helped me when I needed you. You’ve helped me more than you know.”
“I love you, Patrick. I hope you know that.”
His lips tug. “I love you too, kid. But you don’t need me anymore.” His eyes go to Levi, who’s carefully holding himself away from our conversation.
At Patrick’s attention, Levi looks over. He says, wincing, “I’m sorry I tricked you.”
Patrick huffs. “It was kind of shitty. You scared the hell out of me. But I kind of love that you did it.”
Levi smiles. He walks over to Patrick and throws his arms around him. Patrick is startled, and he looks at me to make sure I’m okay with this, which I very much am. Seeing that, Patrick puts his arms around Levi and breathes out about ten years of tension.
But doing it takes some of his strength, and his eyes get sad, and he pulls away.
He says, “I have to go. I have to step back, Ethan. You can still call me, either of you, anytime, but I have to step back.”
My heart skips. “That doesn’t mean you get to vanish. I need to be able to check on you.”
“I’m fine, Ethan, really.”
“I fucking mean it, Patrick.”
“Jesus. Fine. My shit’s all at your place anyway.”
“It’s your place. And you don’t have to drive for me, but this is not an ending. We’re not doing that shit again. You’re part of my life, Patrick, forever, and you’re just going to have to deal with that.”
Patrick huffs a laugh. He shakes his head. He smiles a little.
“Goodnight, Ethan,” he says, then he ruffles Levi’s hair, and he walks out.
When the door clicks shut, I grumble, “I don’t trust him. He’ll try to vanish.”
Levi says, “He just needs space to think. He’s happy for us. Let him figure out what he needs. He has no idea, and I think it’s been a long time since he’s even thought about it, if he ever has.”
I sigh, frustrated, trying to let it go. I look at Levi more fully. The openness of him. The calm. “How come you’re so smart?”
“This one’s obvious.”
“Not really. Not to me.”
Levi comes to me like he knows I need it. He wraps his arms around me. I sigh again, relaxing this time, able to let it go. He’s right, of course.
I pet his hair. “Are you okay? That was a lot, what happened tonight.”
I feel him smile against my neck. “I’m okay. Are you?”
“Yeah, baby.” I keep petting his hair. “I just don’t know how to wrap my head around you doing what you did. For me.”
He shrugs like it’s simple and says, “I love you.”