Page 76 of Levee

“No. He does seem pretty against anything with vegetables in it,” she said as she waved at our veggie lasagne. “It’s more about the gesture. Does he know you’re here?”

“He… doesn’t,” I admitted hesitantly, worried about how I might offend her with that.

“Do you not want him to know we’re involved?” she asked, not sounding the least bit offended.

“I’m cool with everyone else knowing,” I told her. “Uncle Will just… has a way of making me regret telling him anything about my personal life.”

“I get that. Also, it’s maybe one thing if he heard me getting busy with someone over here. Might be a complete other for him to know it’s the two of us.”

“Fuck, didn’t even consider that,” I said, wincing.

“I know, right? We’re adults and everything. But it’s still weird. I kind of get why my brother insisted on separate rooms when he would bring a girl home for the holidays.”

“Yeah. We can tell him if you’re not comfortable concealing the truth.”

“No,” she said, almost a little too eagerly. “No, it’s totally fine,” she said more calmly.

But before I could even think to ask her more about it, to probe around the issue, she was changing the conversation to her excitement over her new projects, about how much fun she’d had at the clubhouse.

After dinner, she’d dropped off the food I was sure I would scrape in the trash the next time I visited him. And then we both made our way to the bedroom, seemingly both exhausted.

We didn’t even have sex, just fell into a mass of tangled limbs and exhausted minds and slept for several long hours.

I was the one to wake up first, my arm dead asleep from her sleeping soundly on it.

Carefully, I slid it out, then flopped the limp down on my leg as I sat off the side of the bed, waiting for the pins and needles to let up.

It was then that I noticed that her top nightstand drawer was open a few inches.

And inside was her whiteboard.

It hadn’t been stolen?

She’d ripped it down?

Why?

Feeling like a creep for snooping, I started to pull the drawer open, catching the bottom word only.

Bitch.

I was trying to quietly open the drawer more to see what else the asshole scrawled on it, but it was just then I heard a eerily familiar screeching sound of tires.

Then the expectedpop pop pop.

“What…” Jade said, jolting awake, staring blearily at me as I suddenly turned, grabbing her, and yanking her onto the floor, sliding my body over hers. “What’s going on?” she asked, sounding breathless.

“Drive-by,” I told her, hearing more pops, then ones that had to be returned fire. Like the whole fucking building wasn’t full of innocent people who could catch a stray bullet.

Idiots.

“We’re okay down here,” I assured her. “Just needed to get away from the windows. The brick is pretty good against most bullets,” I added, realizing how this very situation had been a frequent event of my childhood. And how now, as a fucking arms-dealing biker, I got shot at or around significantly less.

Underneath me, her heartbeat was slamming in her chest, her breath coming out in frantic huffs.

“You’re alright,” I assured her as the sounds of gunfire stopped, followed by the peeling away of tires.

We stayed there like that for a long moment, though, until I heard the police sirens making their way closer and closer.

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