Page 309 of Rage

"Maybe I can talk to my dad, see if there's anything he can do." Maybe now that he won the senate race, he could help Leah's family. Surely after all this time he knows they're good people and wouldn't want their family to be separated. All it would take is a letter from him to the immigration offices, I'm sure of it.

Levi lets out a small scoff, prompting me to turn my attention to look at him. "What?" I ask softly. I don't think I said anything funny.

With a small shake of his head, he takes a seat at the table. I pull out the chair directly across from him and sit, trying not to stare too obviously at his face. He's just so beautiful. I know I shouldn't think that way, but he is. So much so that I completely lose control of myself whenever he's too close. I keep letting him?—

"You're thinking about it," he says softly, eyes glittering.

A shiver runs through me. It’s uncanny how he always seems to know what I’m thinking. If I hadn't seen the evidence of his goodness myself, I'd worry that he's an agent of the Devil, sent to trick me into wickedness. Sometimes I still worry, but the warm feeling I get in my chest when I see him can't be a trick. And this wickedness inside me has always been there. It's something I've never been able to rid myself of, no matter how much I pray. When I begged God for a light when I was feeling trapped in the darkness of my own thoughts,heshowed up.

I'll never absolve myself of the sins I've committed since meeting Levi. And today, in our house of God, of all places…

"It was wrong."

"Was it?"

"We were in church. Pastor Reynard was leading prayer less than twenty feet away!" I hiss, angrier at myself than I am at him.

Not only is it wrong, but we could have been caught. Anyone could have walked around the corner and seen us like that. With Levi on his knees and me… in his mouth.

"You were praying plenty," Levi purrs. I choke on my own spit, reaching for my glass of lemonade and gulping it down as the seats fill up around us.

Levi's eyes lock with mine, a smirk pulling his lips up on one side.

The kids from the youth group close in around us, talking excitedly about today's performance. I try to clear my nerves so I can engage with them, but I'm too flustered to make any sense.

Jesus.

A shiver races down my spine. The starched fabric of my pants becomes uncomfortably tight.

Tearing my eyes away from Levi's mouth is painful, but I manage to pull myself together enough to look away before my situation gets much, much worse.

"I want these pretty lips around my cock…"

Levi Asher has touched me, more than once, and in more than one way. He's done things to my body that I'm ashamed to admit has me considering that I've been wrong about what it means to commune with God. His hands and mouth have made me forget who I am and the values I grew up with. For goodness’ sake, I forgot I was in church this morning when he dropped to his knees and looked up at me with those clear blue eyes.

He's touched me, but I've yet to reciprocate. I've been afraid to. More than that, I've been ashamed of how much I want to. Even now, as much as it scares me to admit to even myself,my mouth fills with saliva at the thought of putting him in my mouth. Kissing him felt like the most salacious act only weeks ago, when Levi showed up seemingly out of nowhere. I was immediately intrigued by him. I couldn't tear my eyes away from how absolutely beautiful he is.

Levi clears his throat and smiles, like he knows the direction my thoughts have fallen. I swallow deeply, clenching my hands where I've rested them in my lap.

"Dessert?" Levi asks, and I nod.

He excuses himself from the table, wishing the youth group luck with their performance this afternoon. They fawn over him, begging him to come with us, but he smiles and makes excuses about visiting his sister.

I've never met his sister. I think she might live outside of town, but not too far, because Levi visits her often. He’s staying with his mom while he takes a break from school, before starting a graduate program in the fall.

After giving him a few minutes, I get up from the table, too. We have almost two hours before we have to get on the bus, but we need time to get far away from here.

I nearly collide with my father on the way out. "Where's the fire?"

Did he see Levi leave? Does he suspect that I'm following him?

Surely not. I'd be shipped off toDeliverance Summitin a heartbeat.Reparative therapy for wayward boys experiencing identity confusion and unnatural predilections. I flat out heard my father said they torture the patients, to break them and reprogram them. Something my father believes is warranted and necessary.

I idolized my father growing up, always believed he was a good man. He's an official in the church, and was a respected lawyer before serving on the local city council for over a decade.There is a lot we don’t see eye-to-eye on, though. He's very old-fashioned. But I still thought he was a good person.

That is until I started listening and noticing more.

Despite being the son of a politician, I never much paid attention to politics. I've dedicated my life to church, family, and sports, in that order. I graduated with my bachelor's degree in Christian Studies a few months ago, and I'm headed to Seminary this summer. There's never been much room in my head for all the squabbling and taking sides worse than sports rivalries. But the events of the past few years, from the George Floyd protests to the Capitol riot in Washington, DC, have opened my eyes to the world around me. I began to notice things, like how the people closest to me treated people who look, love, think, or worship differently than we do. I began to notice that the so-called “traditional values” I grew up with weren't the right path for everyone. I started to see the imbalance in our own home and started paying attention to what kind of world my father was advocating for.

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