Page 74 of Breaking the Habit

Levi probably felt the same way, which might account for why he hadn’t brought it up. But Riley knew better than to assume. The conversation needed to happen.

She watched through the viewfinder as Titi approached Levi and sent him a coy grin. Riley’s heart started racing. Levi twisted around, looking either very pleased or sort of confused. Riley couldn’t tell which. Her finger twitched, wanting to take the picture but her heart making her pause. She didn’t want to immortalize budding attraction. Catch Levi looking like a starstruck fool or something.

She lowered the camera. Titi leaned closer to Levi, whispered something into his ear that made him laugh, and then she left. Levi’s gaze followed her as she walked away, and another fan stepped up to replace her.

Riley swallowed. Levi commanded the attention of half the gym, even though two new fighters had begun battling it out in the cage.

So this was jealousy. Pure ice and prickle and foreboding. She’d forgotten, after so long, what it felt like. How undeserved and irrational it was.

Riley lurked a while longer, catching a few more great shots of Levi and his fans. She couldn’t help but notice Titi cycle around to Travis, talk him up for a few minutes, and then finally leave the gym.

Good.Riley didn’t like feeling this way. And the easiest way not to was if Titi was gone. Problem solved. It was the easy way out—she knew that. But the way Titi looked at Levi kicked up a dust storm. Reminded her of the murky underbelly of what she and Levi were doing. Undefined. Without a title. Adrift in the crazy passion storm. She was unmoored and totally vulnerable to drowning.

If she was honest with herself, she’d already started sinking.

Because what she felt for Levi went way beyond the occasional fuck buddy she’d convinced herself this would be. Oh no. This was boyfriend territory. This was talking about the future territory. This was every bit as far as she’d told herself she shouldn’t go.

And she couldn’t convince herself to stop.

Riley knew Levi had more to do at the gym—his training day was far from over—but her job here was done. Levi extracted himself from the fans and caught her in the hallway as she headed toward the door.

“Ri. Wait up.” Shirtless and still glistening, he jogged toward her. It was when he was glistening that she was the most vulnerable. “Where you going now?”

“I was gonna head to the studio,” she said.

“Come to my place after,” he said, knocking her hip.

He didn’t need to convince her. She’d do damn near anything he asked of her. “Sure.”

“Bring the Stamos keychain,” he said with a serious look.

A laugh burst out of her. “Okay…I will.”

He winked at her and headed back for the gym, leaving her in a dazed and happy mood. It clung to her as she got into her car and entered the midday LA traffic. It followed her into her studio, where she got to work editing pictures.

But it wasn’t long before doubts elbowed their way in again. This time, holding knives and lobbing threats.

You don’t know Levi half as well as you think you do. What’s to say he won’t treat you the same as Braden once he makes it big? How do you know he’s not going to leave you in the dust too?

Braden had dropped enough red flags during their relationship that Riley could have knitted a scarf out of them. Maybe Levi was the same. She pivoted toward the internet. She wanted to wade into all-too-familiar waters: Google searching a name.

Levi’s name, specifically. But never hers. Not after the scandal. She didn’t want to knowingly subject herself to that; not this far out, after putting this much distance between her and that period of her life. It would just ruin her day.

“Levi Swain.” She mumbled it as she typed it out. Clicked Search.

And then she read.

Easily the first page of results was all about him. Searching his name didn’t even ping a more famous Levi, the way it had been for Riley before the cheating scandal. Nope, all these entries were recent news. The most recent being that day, from a very popular online celebrity rag mag, TMI.

And it was a veritable goldmine of information about Levi, with all the speculation and unverified commentary a person could want. And it wasn’t like Levi appeared once and that was it—oh no, he was all over this site. His name was a frequently used tag, which showed over twenty separate articles about him over the past three months.

Which, as Riley scrolled for the next hour, was more than Kim Kardashian had yielded over the same period.

Oh Lord. This is worse than you thought.

It was the only thing she could hear as she fell into the Levi hole on TMI Celebrity News. Each article pointed to at least three other articles. Each match yielded coverage, but more than that, each skirmish with the police had its own coverage too.

And it turned out that Levi’d had more run-ins with the law than she’d imagined. One particularly informative article pulled Levi’s background report from Chicago. His past was peppered with incidents. Drunk and disorderly. Resisting arrest. Public urination. Public indecency.

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