Page 9 of The Marriage Deal
We were now standing between our cars when I noticed that his hand was still around my waist. He was still holding me like I were a precious egg and he were a giant who was afraid of crushing me. I wanted to stay in his light embrace for a moment longer, but I wasn't feeling a little better now. I twisted myself out of his hold and dug into my pocket for my keys.
"What are you doing?"
“Getting into my car.” My plan was, hopefully, to find a place to take me in without a credit card on file, and failing that, to sleep in the car.
"Not when you can hardly walk." He snatched my keys.
"Hey!"
"You're too drunk to drive. Get into my car and I'll take you home."
I shook my head.
"Not Wyatt's place. Got it. Where can I take you? Billie's?"
"No! Not hers either."
Levi's brow furrowed. "Is something wrong?"
"I told you we had a fight, and that's all there is. Now give me the keys." I swung for them, but he thrust them out of my reach, taking advantage of his height and making me jump for them. My efforts were futile, and since I was drunk, my jumps were unsteady. "Fuck you," I said when I realized he was toying with me.
He chuckled. "You can't drive yourself. Tell me where you want to go and I will take you there."
I thrust my hands into my pockets and leaned against my car. I couldn't exactly tell him I had no place to go. And as my drunkenness haze cleared, my harebrained scheme of staying at a hotel without a credit card on file seemed ridiculous. Sleeping in my car was my only option. Or cram at Jess's place, who I'm sure was now asleep. If Todd didn't like my coming in unannounced, he would hate being bothered in the middle of the night.
"You have no place to go, do you?" Levi folded his arms. "What happened between you two?"
"A fight. Like I told you."
His eyes narrowed. "It had something to do with Billie." He stated it more as a fact than a question.
"Do you know something that I don't?"
"I—I. It's probably nothing, but…" he shook his head. "Never mind."
"But what! That's my friend and boyfriend you're talking about. What do you know?"
He sighed. Turning his gaze away from mine, he said, "I saw them in the Hamptons together last summer."
"Last summer?" So, this thing had been going on for that long. What a fucking dumbass I was.
"I didn't think anything of it. When I spoke to them, they said they had just met, but they looked guilty. It could have been nothing."
"Well, it's not nothing because they were fucking each other like rabbits when I saw them."
Levi's face fell. His features softened. "Elvira." His voice was a choked whisper. "I'm sorry."
He took me in his arms for a hug. I was too weak to resist. His body was so warm and his coat jacket so inviting that tears fell. I sobbed like a child, and he brushed my back, comforting in a way I didn't know I needed. He let me cry until I felt like I had no more tears left. When I felt I could confidently gaze at him without tears in my eyes, I did, and he had the same sympathy still in his eyes.
"You're staying with me tonight."
4
Elvira
IN ALL MY TIME working with him as his TA, I had never been inside Levi's townhouse. It was what I expected it to be. The main door opened into his living room. It featured comfy, distressed leather sofas and a bare brick wall on one side. A charcoal bookshelf stretched from floor to ceiling on the other side. The ceiling was white with exposed trusses. Beyond the living room and kitchen area, there was a Victorian-style kitchen. Medieval artifacts accented the walls and tables. There was a set of black wooden stairs that went down and another set that went up to where I assumed the bedrooms were.
It better be bedrooms, plural. When I agreed to come with him, I wasn't thinking clearly. He was my boss, after all. Imagine the campus gossip if people were to learn I walked out of his home in the morning. And not only that, people might have seen us leaving the campus together.
