He looked up. “No, I guess you’re not.”
I froze. That wasn’t right. That wasn’t how it… “Levi?”
A drop of blood became a trickle down his finger, and then down another as he reached out to set down a tile, staining it with blood. “You won’t be able to save me. Mom’s going to die, and all I’m going to have left is my mob boss of a dad to take care of me. I’ll stick around for a bit, but it’s going to be too late by then, isn’t it?”
“Levi,” I repeated softly. His hands were now dripping with blood, and I recoiled as he tapped the side of his face thoughtfully while looking down at the table, turning his thoughtful expression into a gore-streaked horror show.
“I’ll get in too deep, and you’ll try to save me too late. Then I’m going to leave, and I’m going to be stuck with people like my dad, and you’ll never be able to stop me. You’ll keep an eye out constantly for my name in the news or the obits, looking for my name as a killer or the killed, but you won’t be able to save me. There will be blood on my hands, and you’ll never be able to save me or look at me the same way again,” he said, looking up, and I gasped as blood ran from his eyes like tears. “Never.”
It’s a dream!Some part of me screamed as the blood dripped from his cheeks onto the table, splattering the tiles.
“But you didn’t really try...did you?” he asked in a raspy voice that made me shudder. It sounded nothing like him, nothing like him at all. It was the voice of someone who had smoked three packs a day for thirty years, died from the worst sort of throat cancer, and crawled out of their grave a few months later to condemn me.
Oh God, I was going to smell him soon, wasn’t I? The rot that had to be inside him, eating away at his insides like a wild, feral animal that could never be sated as it twisted in his guts. His teeth were stained with the blood covering his face, and he was grinning. No, not grinning, leering...he was leering at me in a way he had never and would never have done before.
“And now I’m...” he began in that horrible croak and reached out to grab my wrist in the same way I’d done only a week—years?—ago. Nails bit into my skin, and I screamed as I felt the icy cold touch of his skin against mine as he leaned in close.
Like a lover looking for a kiss.
I was aware of being awake the moment I jerked back to reality, a scream locked in my chest, clawing its way out as I sucked in a breath. Terror at something I knew didn’t exist and had never happened wriggled and shifted under my skin, and my stomach rolled like it was stuck on the high seas during a storm. I forced myself to take a deep breath, taking it slow and steady as the horror of the dream rippled across the surface of my mind violently.
God, it had been years since I’d had a dream so...awful. I couldn’t even remember the last time I had dreamed about Levi, though fuck knows I’d thought about him plenty. He had haunted my dreams for a few years after he’d disappeared off to whatever part of the country he’d decided was better for him and his ambitions. Well, I suppose it was his dad’s ambitions, but Levi, as stubborn and prideful as ever, had refused to see that.
God, I hated how the brain worked sometimes. There was no reason to dream about Levi, none at all, and now?—
A thump made me flinch, and my eyes flashed open as two people, muttering to each other, came through the door. I forced myself to relax when I heard Arlo’s voice, and he sounded...happy. Strong emotions weren’t typically his thing, or at least he wasn’t one to show them. So that meant he’d had a good night, and I had no intention of marring that by making him worry about me over a stupid ass dream.
I opened my mouth, probably to say something smart assed about the noise they were making. I heard fumbling and a hard thump as someone was...oh...pushed into the wall, and...was that the sound of a zipper?
“I see your personal motto,” I heard someone say softly, “is speak softly and wield a big stick.”
Oh.
Fuck my life.
“Oh God!” I cried out, sitting straight up and glancing at the dark figures to make sure they could see me, yet not wanting to look at them directly. “I didnotneed to hear that!”
Arlo let out a gasp. “Dom? What thehellare you doing out here?”
“I fell asleep listening to a podcast,” I explained as I tossed the Afghan off with an indignant huff. “I didn’t realize you were going to come stumbling back in and get handsy with your date.”
“Good evening,” the other voice, clearly Arlo’s extremely handsy date, said politely. I didn’t know what the protocol was when you were caught groping your date by your date’s brother, but he seemed to be handling it well. A little too well, actually, and I thought I could hear amusement in his voice, which was way too much like Mason, “random person I do not know.”
“That would be my brother, Dom,” Arlo explained, and I could hear clothes rustling. I hoped it meant they were getting themselves decent because I didnotneed to see that ‘big stick’ that was mentioned.
“Ah, well, my apologies for scarring you,” came the ever-polite apology. Again, it was hard to tell whether he was genuinely sorry or just really good at sounding polite. Considering Arlo and I had discussed who his date was before he’d left, I was betting it was probably the latter. It still made me shake my head that Arlo hadn’t realized he was going on a date with the Governor’s son, but I would bet good money that Ward was well-trained in manners despite his playboy reputation. “I didn’t know you were there.”
I gave a heavy sigh, wondering what it was I’d done in a previous life to deserve bearing half-witness to Arlo, freakingArlo, getting groped. “God, between Mason and Jace groping each other in the worst hiding places, Milo and Eli constantly making out and hugging each other, I was getting more than enough scarring for a lifetime. Never in my life would I have thought that you, of all people, would participate in it, even by accident.”
“He’s being slightly dramatic,” Arlo said, making me cringe when I heard the telltale sound of a zipper being pulled up.
“At least you didn’t accuse me of being jealous,” I grumbled as I tossed the Afghan onto the couch, not bothering to fold it because it was obvious I needed to get out of there as soon as possible. “I’m going to bed.”
“We’ll behave,” Arlo promised softly, but I could hear that rare, devious smile in his voice as he said it.
“Don’t, please don’t. If anyone needs to get laid, it’s you,” I explained in a rush as I stood up and headed for the hallway as fast as my legs could take me in the dark. “I’m putting my headphones on. The only way you’re going to scar me further is if you shake the whole house or bust down the door to do...whatever you’re planning on doing, in front of me.”
I was gone before anything else could be said because... yeah, no, I was happy for him, I really was, but I did not need to witness anything else tonight.
