Yesterday, he’d been stuck in his head the rest of the evening. It wasn’t an unhappy distance, at least it didn’t feel that way, but he was distant, thinking hard. He’d made a few calls and sent texts, which I had chosen to ignore. Mostly because I wasn’t sure I could deal with what he did for a living, but also because I knew it was part of him and I wanted... well, him.
The thought would have been so foreign and weird back when we were teenagers. Even back then, I’d known it was him I wanted, I’d known it from the moment I’d drunkenly kissed him and then spent several sober days thinking about it. Except that when you take a teenager who’s already bad at dealing with and handling his emotions and give him something that he wasn’t ready to deal with...well, it gets messy. Add that I’ve always been stubborn and pretty good at avoiding shit I don’t want to deal with, and yeah, I had really screwed the pooch on that one.
But I wasn’t a sixteen-seventeen-year-old boy worried about what it might mean to be in a relationship with another guy. I wasn’t that kid who was afraid of his sexuality; what the fuck did it matter? Even if it wasn’t a time when people were starting to understand shit like that doesn’t really matter. Why did I care? Let other people think it was fucked up or wrong or that we weren’t getting into heaven or what the fuck else they might think. Levi had loved me, and I had loved him, and it sucked that I didn’t realize back then that that was what mattered most.
Not that I thought I loved Levi, not in the way that counted, not right now. I still had love for the kid I knew, and that carried into my adult years, but that wasn’t the same as loving someone for who they were in the present. I was still learning about the man, even while seeing glimpses of the kid I had known better than the back of my own hand. There were still things to experience, things to understand about him, before I could say I truly loved him.
But...I thought we were getting there.
“Speaking of,” I grumbled as I rolled out of bed. “Time to get to wherever he is.”
I scooped my jeans off the floor where I’d left them before crawling into the bed. Nothing else sexual had happened last night, and not just because Levi had given every sign that he didn’t want to be messed with like that, I had been drained. But I was not going to sleep in jeans, of all things, and sleeping in my underwear would have been weird, considering the underwear in question.
Leaving the room, I heard a conversation elsewhere in the house, probably the side room off the kitchen that I’d glanced at but never gone into. My bladder was more important than my curiosity, though, and I dipped into the bathroom before I embarrassed myself. When that was done, I approached the room where I could hear the conversation through the open door, a room lined with windows except where it shared a wall with the house.
“Tell him to keep his worries to himself,” I heard Levi say in an annoyed voice I’d heard more than once before. It happened when someone wasn’t getting something he was trying to say, or they weren’t listening.
“I mean,” another male voice said nervously, “that’s a pretty big shipment you’re basically sending through what everyone knows is Los Muertos territory.”
“It’s not their territory yet.”
“It’s close enough, and every day they grow larger and?—”
“I appreciate you taking a more active role in keeping track of things for me. And if that sounds disingenuous, then I apologize...because I mean it. However, several factors are at play that neither you nor Julio is aware of, and the two of you would be better served by taking the orders I give and running with them. Don’t make the mistake of thinking I’m blind just because I do not share the same concerns as you,” Levi said, and I could see him in the reflection of one of the windows, his brow down in a heavy frown.
“Hey, I’m sorry, I’m not trying to?—”
“And stop apologizing for every misstep you make, orthinkyou’re making,” he said, and I watched his eyes roll. “Questioning me isn’t a crime. I’m reminding you that I’m aware of many factors at play here, and that risks must be taken. Consider this one of the risks I must take.”
“Right,” the other voice said, and I didn’t have to look to know he was young. It wasn’t really nervousness; it was the way he spoke so quickly and seemed to jump around, like he was being pulled on a leash. Still, it struck me as weird that he had whiplashed from sounding confident when questioning Levi to meek and timid when he had been corrected. Hell, Levi had been gentle as hell considering what someone else in his position might be like.
“How’s the arm?” Levi asked, his tone shifting. “Have you been taking care of it?”
“I mean, it hurts like hell,” the kid said with a nervous laugh. “But, uh, thanks, you know.”
“For?”
“For taking me in?”
“Why did you make that a question?” Levi asked, and I snorted at the exasperation in his voice and then grinned whenhis eyes shifted, looking at me in the window, apparently either able to see me in the reflection or knowing I could see him.
“Oh shit, is someone here?” the nervous voice asked.
“I mean, my truck’s sitting right out front,” I said as I stepped in, having given my presence away.
“I just thought it was…oh my god, you’re huge!” I realized that, yeah, he was a kid. He couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen, and gaped at me, taking a step so there was at least three feet between us.
“I’m getting ‘terrified’ vibes from you instead of ‘turned on’, so I’m a little insulted,” I said, raising a brow and laughing when he went pale. “Calm down, kid, I’m not going to hurt you, Christ.”
“I was just not expecting...” he cleared his throat. “Sorry.”
Levi stared at him, and to anyone else, it would probably look like he was getting ready to lose his temper, but I could see the shadow of a smirk on his face. Even when we were younger, he had enjoyed watching people’s reactions when they saw me, and apparently, fifteen years hadn’t changed that. “Yes. He’s quite large.”
“Well,” I began, and stopped when he shot me a look that told me I needed to shut my mouth, and there was no wiggle room for me to be a smartass. I wasn’t sure whether it was him doing it because he was used to people listening to him, or whether he really hoped I would take him seriously. Deciding that it was probably not a good idea to be too bad with someone from The Family in the same room as us, I kept my mouth shut and shrugged. “I’m quite big. What can I say? Genetics is a thing.”
“Be sure Elias also knows about the changes for the shipment coming his way,” Levi told the kid, who was still watching me warily. “Will?”
Will jumped. “Right, the...wait, what changes?”
