Levi
Twenty-Five
My ears strain until I hear the soft click of her bedroom door, and I let out the breath I was holding.
I run a hand through my hair as I relax further into the gray sectional couch, fixing my eyes on the TV and trying my damndest to concentrate on the stupid movie playing out on the screen and not on the beauty that scampered up my stairs like a startled animal.
Had I come on too strong?
I should have kept my distance, should have waited for her permission to approach.
But something primal awoke in me, something completely animalistic that stirred in my chest at seeing her standing in my kitchen, washing our dishes, like it was the most natural thing in the world.
I let out a frustrated breath before immediately berating myself for the thought.
She is not yours.
But could she be?
There’s something about the ease in which she’s carried herself since the moment we stepped through the front door. I expected her to be shy, scared even, to be in a strange place with a man she barely knows, but she just… fits.
Like she was always meant to be here with me and was merely returning home.
My mind flits to the sight of her in those sweats.
The way her long hair hung down her back, still wet from her shower and dampening the back of her baggy shirt.
Fuck, the sound of the shower turning on nearly sent me to my knees right here in front of the stove as I pictured her naked body stepping under the spray and letting it wash away the remnants of today.
My cock thickens in my pants at the reminder of it, my mind all too pleased to go there. Again.
Ignoring my aching cock, I allow my mind to drift back to the look in her eyes when she realized someone had been in her motel room. But the memory of that haunted look isn’t what catches my attention this time.
It’s the fact that the room had looked—for the most part—normal, except for the open safe, rid of its contents.
At a quick glance, nothing else seemed amiss.
No belongings strewn across the floor, no overturned or broken furniture.
As if whoever had done it knew what they were looking for and didn’t care to search anything else.
If it had been a random person, wouldn’t they have searched through all her things and taken anything else they deemed valuable?
Then there’s the fact that the safe wasn’t broken into. The lock wasn’t broken. The door wasn’t pried open with any sort of tool that I could tell. It’s almost as if the person who did this knew the combination to the lock.
The realization has me sitting up straight.
How could they have known the combination to the lock, unless they know her?
Those safes are generic, the combination meant to be set by the individual using them.
What are the chances a random person off the street happened to guess the correct combination?
That and the fact that the crime rate in North Creek is as close to zero as it can get.
We’re all neighbors here; we look out for each other.
What if he followed her here?
My blood runs cold at the thought, and I tamp down the protective anger that surges forth, my vision already on the edge of blackout.
Flashes of broken glass and drops of blood on the living room carpet, punctuated only by my labored breathing and the sound of my mother’s shrieks of terror, fill my mind.
The memory threatens to plunge me right back into the dark place.
Hell, I’m teetering on the edge of it now, a battle waging itself in my mind as I struggle to breathe.
My vision pulses, eyes going fuzzy, and my ears start to ring as the memory comes flooding back.
“Don’t lie to me, woman! I saw the way he looked at you. You liked it!”
Another explosion of glass, and a pained whimper from the other room, as I hold my hand over Eva’s mouth to keep her quiet from where we hide in the closet. The sharp reverberation of a smack and another choked sob.
“I’ll give you something to cry about, whore.” My father’s voice drips with cruelty and malice. Then, the tearing of clothes before the agonizing scream of pain, muffled by a groan of sick pleasure as my father takes what isn’t his to take.
My little sister’s tears land on the hand that covers her mouth, and her body rattles against my own.
I try to cover her ears, but I can only cover one as the other is held over her mouth.
If I let go, she’ll cry out to Mom, and I can’t let that happen.
Instead, I press her closer to my chest, praying that it’s over soon.
He never lasts long when he’s drunk like this.
I don’t have enough hands.
There’s no one to cover my ears.
The memory fades, leaving me empty and aching on the living room carpet, slumped against the couch. I don’t know how I got down here, but I often find myself like this when one of these episodes hits me. I practice the breathing exercises that my therapist taught me all those years ago.
In for a count of three.
Hold for three.
Out for a count of three.
I repeat the process, allowing myself as many of these slow, deep breaths I need, while pushing back against the memory and willing it to crawl back to the pits of hell where it came from.
I don’t know how long I stay like that, my eyes watching but not seeing the moving images on the screen in front of me.
It’s been a while since the memories hit me this bad, something I can only assume is triggered by Oakley’s own scare tonight.
Overwhelming exhaustion consumes me, leaving my limbs weak.
I lick my dry lips and try to swallow, my mouth and throat feeling like I took a bite of sandpaper and swallowed it down.
I’m just as broken as that girl upstairs.
Maybe more so. How the hell am I supposed to protect her from something I know about so intimately, when the very thought of her being in danger sends me into a tailspin like this?
If I’m lost to the dark place, how can I expect to shield her when and if the time comes?
Who the fuck am I to think I can protect her?
I push myself up slowly and head into the kitchen.
Grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge, I remove the cap and down the entire thing in one go, desperate to bring some moisture back to my dry mouth.
Tossing the empty bottle in the bin beneath the sink, I take a look around.
The kitchen looks no different than it did this morning when I left, save for the dishes in the drying rack.
Two dishes. A stark reminder that I’m not alone in this house tonight.
There’s a woman sleeping soundly upstairs, unaware of the memories that plague me in the dark. A woman who made the dark place go quiet, if only for a little while.
I’m no stranger to trauma and the lasting effects it can have on a person. I’ve had my fair share of it in my lifetime, but I made myself a promise a long time ago that I would no longer let it dictate my life. I take another deep breath.
This episode doesn’t define who I am, nor does it negate the obvious progress I’ve worked hard and fought for over the years. My past is part of what makes me who I am, but even more so, that promise I made to myself all those years ago is a solemn reminder that I decide my own path.
I’m not responsible for my father’s actions, but I am responsible for mine.
It’s not a notion I came up with on my own, or even one I came to accept overnight.
It took years of therapy to rewire my brain to accept that I am not the bad guy.
But still, fear has a way of slithering into our psyche and making us believe the lie that we are destined to become what we hate most in the world simply because that’s all we were taught.
It’s easy to accept that idea, easy to accept that it’s not our fault, and that we’re a product of our environment and life experiences, but as far as I’m concerned, that idea is a lie from the devil himself.
I refuse to believe that all that will become of me in this life is the thing I fear the most.
I am not my father.
I take another deep breath and lean my arms against the counter, letting the island hold me up when my strength to stay standing slips.
My limbs shake from the aftermath of the adrenaline, and I greedily gulp down another breath.
A loud vibration against the counter startles me, my heart jumping into my throat at the intrusion when I already feel so raw.
When I search for the source of it, I notice a cell phone sitting on the counter.
Oakley must have left it down here after her shower.
The screen is lit with a text notification, and I fight the urge to grab it and look at who might be texting her this late at night.
It’s well past midnight. We got back a few hours ago, and I have no idea how long I had been lying on the living room floor.
Another vibration and the screen lights up with another text.
Tentatively, I reach out and pick up the phone, holding it out like it’s a bomb that’s about to go off at any moment.
I shouldn’t do this. I shouldn’t look. It’s an invasion of privacy that I have no business betraying. The phone vibrates in my hand again, and—damn it—I can’t resist giving in. She doesn’t have a lock on her phone, and the words that greet me leave a hollow feeling of unease in my stomach.
Unknown
Sorry I missed you earlier.
Don’t worry, I didn’t take much. Just what’s owed to me. Though after this stunt you’ve pulled, you and I both know you owe me a hell of a lot more than that.
I told you, baby, you can’t hide from me.
My stomach drops straight through the soles of my feet to pool in a puddle on the floor beneath me. I grip the phone tighter in my fist, fighting the urge to shatter it before another text comes through.
Unknown
I’ll be seeing you.
White-hot rage blinds me, and I have to take another deep breath to steady myself.
Placing the phone back on the counter, I stare at it like it’s a venomous snake, each vibration a hiss echoing through the mountains surrounding me.
Thankfully, it falls silent, but that doesn’t put me at ease.
Those texts confirm the very thing I was afraid of.
He found her.
I don’t know how an angel like her happened to stumble along my path, but I plan to keep her safe by whatever means necessary.
I want to delete the texts so she doesn’t see them, but I know that doing so would be a disservice to her.
Keeping her safe starts with not shielding her from the truth, despite my very strong, personal feelings to the contrary.
She needs to know. Leaving those texts there goes against every single instinct currently screaming at me to erase them from existence, but if I’m going to protect her, then that starts with her knowing she needs to be careful, and exactly what this new string of threats suggests.
Resolving to speak with her in the morning about it, I make my way around the house, ensuring that all the doors and windows are locked, double-checking my work, and then checking it one more time for good measure.
I doubt he knows she’s here, but I’m not taking any chances.
It’s naive of me to believe, if he knows she’s here and wants to get to her, that a few locks will keep him out.
Everything within me urges me to take her and leave North Creek—to run from the problem.
I have no interest in finding myself in the same position as last time, all those years ago.
But I already know that running is not the answer.
Part of the vow I made to myself was that I would never again cower in the face of danger.
Memories of the night I made that vow creep into my mind, but instead of shutting them down like I normally would, I embrace them with open arms, allowing all the rage and desperation of that night to suffocate me.
I breathe it in, feel it soak into the very marrow of my bones as it floods my veins and sharpens my focus to a point.
In a way, the rage calms me. I can control it like this, can allow it limited access to my mind and body while keeping my attention on the task at hand.
It’s a balancing act, like I’m a hundred feet above the ground, balancing on a tightrope where one wrong move might send me tumbling over the edge and back into the dark place for good.
This memory, this precipice, anchors me to a narrow point in time in which I took back control. I don’t want to go back to that place, but for her, I will.
I don’t know what lies ahead—what demons lurk in the shadows of my life and hers, watching and waiting to rear their ugly heads.
I can only hope that the asshole is smarter than he sounds and doesn’t try anything stupid.
If he does, I’ve got a nine millimeter bullet with his fucking name on it.