Page 3 of Whips and Chains
A mechanical whirring came from the door. The distinct sound of the lock disengaging.
But I didn’t run for it. I didn’t even reach for the handle.
Instead, I slumped down on the floor with my best friend and held him until I went numb.
2
LEVI
“The omelet is out of the frying pan!”
That one ridiculous sentence repeated over and over in my head while I pushed my bike through the quiet, middle-of-the-night streets of Saint View.
I was going to kill X and his ridiculous code names if anything had happened to Violet.
I tried to quell the rising panic in my gut that told me something was wrong and reminded myself I was overreacting. So she’d created a distraction and slipped away with her bestie. She was probably just out at a club dancing, but the fact she wasn’t answering her phone was stressing me out.
Though that could also be explained by the fact she was barely speaking to me right now. She probably would have ignored my calls even if her phone was on. It was why I’d been sending her letters instead. Though for all I knew, she’d been burning those or dropping them directly into the paper shredder.
But none of that mattered. She’d managed to give X the slip and now she was out somewhere, unprotected, and with no idea of the danger she was potentially in.
I gunned the engine, pulling into her street in record time.
X’s ice cream van was still surrounded by a crowd of children and their parents. It seemed like half the neighborhood had shown up and it had turned into something of a street party, with music playing from a portable speaker and groups of people milling around the lawn while kids ran around crazy on a sugar high.
X stuck his head out the window. “Levi! Help me!”
I took in the chocolate sauce smudged on his face. “Not a chance.” I needed to get up to Violet’s apartment and see if there was any indication of where she might have gone. There weren’t many clubs in Saint View, but for all I knew, she and Toby had hopped an Uber into Providence or gotten on the late bus into the city.
She could be fucking anywhere by now.
“Why are you going inside? They went that way!” X pointed down the road as he handed another kid a sloppy-looking ice cream sundae.
“Unless you can sniff her out, then I’m going to go inside and see if I can work out where they might have gone.”
X waved his hand around his face. “I’m actually a little stuffed up in the head at the moment. Think I caught a bit of a cold when I was out here soaking wet the other night. It was so cold. You know, since I wasn’t really wearing clothes.”
I ignored him and was almost at the apartment doors when X shouted, “Oh, for the love of ducks and geese!”
I glanced over my shoulder just in time to see his apron fly out the server window, quickly followed by the rest of his lanky body. His feet hit the ground, and he glanced at the maybe twelve-year-old kid who’d caught his apron and said seriously, “The ice cream gods have chosen you. The plastic spoons are in the first drawer and we’re fresh out of soft serve.”
A groan of complaint came up from the rest of the people waiting on their sugar fix.
The kid just stared at him.
X made a shooing motion with his hands. “Go on then! Start serving, young padawan!”
The kid’s eyes were about as wide as dinner plates as X shoved him up into the van and then took off running after me.
He caught up, and I raised an eyebrow. “You know they’re going to clean you out, right?”
“I know. But I can’t stand there serving fucking ice cream another second while she’s out there somewhere alone.” He shook his head. “I’m an idiot. I should have gone after her straightaway. But I didn’t want to freak her out after…”
I stopped walking. “What the fuck happened between the two of you the other night? You came out of Violet’s apartment soaking wet, half-dressed, and so upset about something that you sent Whip in to fix it.”
X’s face clouded over, and he clutched the back of his neck, squeezing his eyes shut as if he were reliving the scene. “I choked her.”
I froze. “What?”
