Page 10 of Levee

She’d even been gorgeous as she’d been scolding me about not taking good enough care of my uncle.

Hotter still when I’d looked up from jotting down my number for her and found her eyes at half-mast, an unmistakable sign of desire.

If we hadn’t been in my uncle’s dingy-ass apartment, I would have pushed her back against the wall to taste that mouth of hers.

As it was, my sorry ass was kind of hoping to run into her in the hall again this week since she hadn’t used my number to invite me over.

And, yeah, some part of me had been hoping for that. Even checking my phone for that. As pathetic as that was. Especially considering how the club was always swarmed with lots of pretty girls.

“How’s your uncle doing?” York, one of the new prospects, asked.

York was tall and on the burly side. He looked like the kind of guy who belonged in flannel with an ax on his shoulder, not in a club down in Florida. But here he was, regardless. A little older than the rest of us. And quieter. But he was always down to spend some time with the club girls too. I wasn’t sure I ever saw him without a girl on his lap playing with his beard and likely making comments about all the interesting places they could get some beard burn if they took things up to a room.

He’d left his life in New York state hiding bodies for the mob to come down this way to take care of his ailing grandfather. So while he didn’t have to deal with the abuse that I did from my grandfather, and now my uncle, he understood the importance of putting in the work. And how mentally and emotionally draining it could be.

“He’s getting weaker,” I admitted. “Falling more. But he won’t hear about going out to, or having someone come in to, do physical therapy.

“Sorry to hear that,” York said, wrapping his hand around his cup of coffee. “All you can do is all you can do,” he added, shrugging. “Don’t beat yourself up about that.”

That was true.

I did have an order out for a custom electric wheelchair, though. He was going to bitch and moan about it when it showed up. But it wasn’t like he could drag the thing back out of his apartment anyway, so I figured I could just bring it in and leave it there. Eventually, his stubborn ass would start using it. And I would bite my ‘I told you so’s’ when I saw him buzzing around in the thing that would damn sure make his life easier as he lost more and more mobility.

“You can take my car if you want, man,” Kylo offered.

Kylo was the newest member of the club. He’d been the neighbor of Alaric’s new girl. A former party drug dealer who nearly died for that job before deciding it wasn’t the future he wanted. But people like that, they didn’t just go straight. And learning about the club made him see he had a way to stay in a less-than-legal profession, but have a bit less risk thanks to the protection of an entire club around him.

Kylo stood, stretching out his ridiculous six-four frame. Like Coast, he was heavily tattooed. But he was darker haired with dark eyes. Though just like Coast, he had that ‘bad news’ sign practically inked on his forehead.

He grabbed his keys out of the bowl and tossed them at me.

“You know the neighborhood I’m taking this to, right?” I asked.

“If they haven’t stripped Eddie or Che’s cars, they won’t fuck with mine,” he said, shrugging it off.

“You could get yourself a car, you know,” Coast said.

I could.

I made a nice income working for the club. And thanks to living at the clubhouse and having Eddie cook pretty much all of my meals, I had almost no expenses.

It was likely the added responsibility that had me pausing. What can I say? I liked life… easy. Shit was hard enough growing up. I just wanted to kind of coast through life as much as possible, soaking up all the good shit, and avoiding the bad as much as I could.

If I ended up needing to start doing shit like transport my uncle to visits or something, though, I’d have to invest. But not in anything as cool as the other club brothers’ cars. It would need to be practical enough to store a wheelchair in. And there was nothing fun about that.

“I wouldn’t be driving anything as nice as their cars, though,” I said, shrugging it off. “Besides, I liked to fuck with their savedradio stations,” I said, making Kylo shake his head as he headed toward the stairs.

I ended up helping Eddie with the salad to waste the time. Then I loaded up a small plastic container of the enchiladas and an even smaller one of the salad I knew he likely wasn’t going to eat, climbed in Kylo’s white Corvette, and made my way to my uncle’s building.

Was I practically buzzing with anticipation as I juggled the bags, tins of food, and a cardboard sleeve of my uncle’s diet soda? Yeah, yeah, I was.

And it was pretty ridiculous how disappointed I felt when I didn’t see Jade in the hallway.

On her whiteboard was a little drawing that was clearly done by two separate people, judging by the different styles. Jade’s contribution was a pretty, delicate bouquet of flowers. The second person’s addition was a fucking coffin that the flowers were sitting on. Morbid, sure, but Jade scribbled a little note regardless.

A little more shading & it’ll look more realistic.

Maybe I’d catch her on my way out, I decided, then made my way in to deal with my uncle.

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