Page 74 of X's and O's
Hayden seemed ready to explode. “Seriously, one of you better start fucking talking and explain to me why you just started a brawl in my goddamn restaurant.”
I jerked my head in Whip’s direction. “You know this prick?”
Hayden glared at me. “Yeah, I fucking know him. Want to explain why you’re throwing punches at him while I’m trying to serve lobster I spent half the damn day preparing, only to now have it all over the goddamn floor?”
“I’d like to know the same thing,” Violet said quietly from the doorway.
I heaved in a breath. But I had no explanations. At least no good ones.
Hayden focused his anger in my direction as he pulled out his phone. Nobody asked who he was calling, but it became obvious a second later.
“Gray? Yeah, I need you down at Sinners. Now. Got one of your guys here.” He glared at me. “And another who needs to join.”
Oh, not this fucking shit again.
I pushed to my feet. “I’m not interested in Grayson’s damn support group.”
Fang shoved me back down on my stool so hard it cracked. Pain radiated up through my tailbone, but I said nothing.
Fang’s anger was palpable. “You are so fucking triggered; you just walked into a restaurant and picked a fight with the nearest guy. You’re fucking lucky it was just Whip and that Hayden and I were here to break it up,otherwise you’d probably be dead right now. You even have any idea who he is?”
I didn’t, and I didn’t care.
But I knew Fang was right. If he hadn’t been here tonight, I would have just kept going. Throwing punches and taking them until one of us was dead.
And I hadn’t cared which of us it was.
I was triggered. Really fucking badly. And I knew from experience, this feeling didn’t just go away. It had taken me six years locked up in a prison for it to dull down to something I could control, and that had lasted all of a couple of weeks on the outside.
I couldn’t even look at Violet. I was so fucking ashamed.
“You need help, Levi,” she said softly, her voice breaking and tears in her eyes.
I was at rock bottom.
And all I could do was nod.
19
VIOLET
My lips still tingled from the way Whip had stared at them before Levi had interrupted us. I pressed my fingers against them, trying to stop the feeling, and Whip smiled at me from across the room, like he knew exactly what I was doing.
“You okay, sweetheart?”
I nodded quickly.
He didn’t make a move to come closer to me, and I was glad for it. I stood dead in the middle of the two men who’d just been throwing violent blows at each other in the middle of a crowded restaurant, not knowing whose team I was on.
Probably neither.
They were clearly both idiots.
And yet I couldn’t bring myself to walk away. Not when Levi was so obviously spiraling. It didn’t matter he’d hurt me. His rejection hadn’t made my feelings for him disappear. They’d been built over a year of back-and-forth letters. Of spilling our souls to each other, and it was impossible to just turn off.
And I felt awful about Whip. He hadn’t done anything wrong, and now he was sitting across the room with a split lip that was staining his white napkin red.
It didn’t make him any less attractive.
