Page 80 of Levee

When I was finally breathing more slowly, evenly, I glanced back over at William.

He watched me for a long second, a muscle twitching in his jaw.

“I think it’s time to call my nephew.”

“Levee?” I asked, brows drawing together. “No.”

“Yes,” William shot back.

“No, he doesn’t need to be involved in this.”

“Hate to admit this shit but he’s the only one who can deal with this.”

“What?” I asked, confused.

“Call him.”

“I wouldn’t even know what to say,” I said, my heart aching at the idea of admitting just how much I’d been keeping from him.

William exhaled hard and his wheelchair made a mechanical buzzing sound as he moved forward toward the coffee table.

He reached for my phone and typed in a number I was shocked he knew by heart.

“You need to get here now,” he said, cutting off whatever Levee might have been saying. I could hear the murmur of Levee’s voice, making William look at me. “Alive. Just barely,” he added, then ended the call.

Then, without another word, he turned around and went back to his station just inside the door.

We sat there in tense, awkward silence, neither of us knowing what to say to try to ease the mood.

The mood I imagined would only feel even more strained when a very out-of-the-loop Levee arrived.

As the moments stretched on, I seemed to come back more into myself. Which made me more aware of the sensations going on in my body.

Namely, the suddenly sore throat. Like that first day of the flu when each swallow felt like you were choking down glass.

Was that what happened when someone got choked?

My nose was throbbing.

And the whole area around my mouth felt tender from the hand clamped there.

Small complaints in the big scheme of things.

But I could think of little else as my little clock that featured a different wild bird at each hour loudly clicked away the minutes.

Until, finally, there was a frantic knocking at the door.

“Jade!” Levee called through the door as his uncle moved away from it, then reached to open it.

Levee rushed inside.

“Seems like you two got a lot of shit to tell each other.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Levee

The second I heard my uncle’s voice on Jade’s phone, I knew shit had hit the fan.

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