“I just don’t like him,” I grunted as I held the tile with weird symbols up and stared down at the table between us. With a sigh, I slapped it down and hoped I wasn’t about to get swept into the loser’s circle...again.
Levi laughed, and I felt my gut tighten at the sound. “You never like anyone I try to get along with.”
“Not true,” I said as he shuffled his tiles and plucked from the draw pile, discarding another. “I like people. I just don’t like your...I’m not calling him your dad.”
“He is my dad, though.”
“Yeah, because he knocked your mom up. Sorry to tell you this, but knocking someone up isn’t exactly hard.”
His eyes twinkled. “Maybe, but you’ve gotta be hard to do it.”
“I’m serious. He popped into your life like, two years ago. Doesn’t talk about what he does when he’s not around; he definitely doesn’t talk about a job. And your mom doesn’t like him either.”
“She doesn’t hate him.”
“I never said that. I said she doesn’t like him.”
“Not true.”
“You’re right, because I think she’s scared of him.”
Discomfort flashed over his face and was gone. “He’s not going to hurt her.”
“I’m not saying he’s going to hurt her...or you, I guess, but he’s trouble,” I said, thinking it wouldn’t be his dad that got his mom killed, but lowlife diner owners, which was weird, because Lana was still alive. I had seen her an hour ago, sleeping on the couch after another double shift at the diner on what should have been a day off.
“And if anyone knows trouble, it’s you,” Levi said with a smirk.
“Maybe,” I said with a sniff. “But doesn’t that mean you should listen to me?”
“The only person I listen to is my mom, and you know it,” he said as we continued playing in silence.
“Look,” I said desperately, reaching out and grabbing his wrist. “I’m serious. I don’t know if he’ll hurt you or your mom on purpose, but he’s definitely going to do it. He’s?—”
It was his eyes. You could make your smile reach your eyes, you could inject warmth into your voice with enough practice, but there was always something someone could pick up, and with his dad, it was the eyes. I’d seen eyes as dark as his before;that wasn’t what bothered me. The weird part was that they were constantly sucking all the light and color from everything around him. Like they were two miniature black holes that devoured everything because they could never be full, they could only eat, eat, and eat.
Of course, Augustine turned out to be the second-in-command of the goddamn Marelli Family, the biggest crime syndicate in the western United States. Within a few years, he was going to be the head, those hungry eyes gobbling up even more.
Wait, no...that wasn’t right. I didn’t know that...did I?
Levi looked at me, then his eyes went to my hand, which was wrapped around his wrist. I felt my face flush and jerked my hand away. I knew what he was thinking, and now he knew I was thinking about it too.
That kiss, that goddamn kiss.
Being fourteen meant it was difficult to get your hands on booze, but when your family ran a hotel with a bar, you could find ways. It was always kept under lock and key, but when your best friend knew how to pick locks, all you had to do was make sure you didn’t end up on camera. Levi had been smart enough to realize that grabbing liquor was a quick way to have the missing booze noticed, so we grabbed a few bottles of beer from the back.
Half a dozen beers later, and we were feeling it quite nicely. I didn’t know it then, but there would be far drunker nights in my future, but none as memorable. I didn’t remember how we got to that point, but the two of us were sprawled on my bed, our limbs overlapping. A heat I had never associated with any guy, let alone Levi, had taken over me, and the next thing I knew, I was on top of him, my hands wrapped around his wrists. After a moment of wavering, I’d kissed him.
“I mean it,” I told him hoarsely, wondering if I really felt a lingering warmth from his wrist on my hand or if that was just my imagination. We hadn’t spoken of that kiss, or of the way I had been hard enough to break bricks with my dick, and right now wasn’t the time. “He’s bad news.”
“Look,” he said after a minute, his smile disappearing. “If I’m ever in trouble, I’ve got you, right? So if he really turns out to be dangerous, a liar, or whatever, I’ll call you. Then you can swoop in and save little ol’ me.”
I didn’t know about little. If I ignored the fact that my brain still remembered how hard he had been under me, he wasn’t so little in the other departments. The past half a year, he’d shot up, and was no longer hovering below my chin but could almost look me in the eyes when. He was still pretty skinny, but his shirts were getting tight in the shoulders. Levi had been a pretty small kid compared to other boys, so I knew he was self-conscious about his size and secretly wished to get bigger.
“I ain’t saving you,” I grumbled. “If you aren’t smart enough to listen to me, then I’m not going to be dumb enough to come save you.”
“Liar,” he said with a smirk. “No matter what, even if you hate me, you’ll still come flying in because you’re a big teddy bear under all that attitude and you know it.”
“I’m not going to save you.”
