Chapter 11
Levi
The way her voice drops when she says bad, to horrible, tells me everything I need to know. It takes everything I have to remain calm, to not show how much this is affecting me. More than anything I want to go to wherever the fuck Cody is, and show him what it’s like to have a man stand up to him. I don’t say anything because I don’t want to spook her, and I don’t want to be compared to him, so I let her take the lead.
“One of the things about me that you probably don’t know is I have a temper. I’m quick to anger, but if I can yell and just get mad, I get over it fairly quickly. It’s worse when I can’t, so I like to do that. Cody never wanted me to, he took it as a personal offense if I got mad. He always wanted me to remain calm and level-headed.”
A laugh works its way out of my mouth. “Sorry...”
“Yeah, you know me. Calm and level-headed really isn’t my thing. I get shit done, I don’t sit around and wait for others to do things, and when I’m mad, you know. So he’s told me to calm down, and I’m on the ground cleaning up the chocolate that is now ruined. Did he ask if he could help? Nope. Didn’t even ask me if I was okay. By this time I’m just pissed, and I need to get through it. Instead of offering me a few minutes by myself to deal with whatever it was that pissed me off, he kept on. Just kept telling me that I needed to calm down, that things weren’t really as bad as I was making them out to be.”
I’ve seen men like this. They make women feel as if they’re hysterical because they dare to have feelings, because they have to get emotions out. I’ve seen it more often in domestic disputes than I care to acknowledge. For some reason there are some men who believe that women aren’t allowed to have emotional needs. “How bad were they? What did you do?”
She swallows so hard I can see her throat move. “I yelled, because I just needed to get through it. Those feelings weren’t going anywhere, and they were making my stomach hurt, my hands shake. I had to get them out, but he didn’t want to hear it. I kept telling him that I’m allowed to get mad, I’m allowed to feel things, and he argued that I was just taking it too hard. So I screamed, because he just wasn’t listening to me. He never fucking listened to me. I told him to fuck off, that if he couldn’t allow me to be mad, feel overwhelmed, do what I needed to do in order to live my life, then he could leave.”
This definitely won’t end well. Men like Cody don’t like to be told to leave. “I’m sure he took that well.”
“Yeah,” she laughs, but there’s no humor. “I argued with him that it was my money that was paying for everything. He was under review at the firm. Had been in trouble, because he’d been doing some shady shit. I remembered that all the hours I was working, and the money I was bringing in were the things keeping us afloat. That he wasn’t doing anything to help us build our dreams. If anything, he was squashing those. We were never going to make our dreams come true if he didn’t start taking things seriously. I told him that, turned my back on him, and that’s when I heard the first crash.”
“Crash?” I ask, already pissed at whatever it is she’s going to say.
“Yeah, he’d thrown the glass he was drinking out of toward me. Just so happened, his aim was as shitty as his personality. When I realized what he’d done, I turned around and yelled at him again. Told him that if he was going to throw shit at me, then he damn well better hit me.”
Somehow that doesn’t surprise me. She’s always been not only opinionated, but she has never been scared to stand up for herself. “What happened after that?”
She hugs herself with her arms across her stomach as she says the next words. “He grabbed another, and threw it at me again, but this time he didn’t miss. The next thing I knew, I was waking up on the floor with glass around me, and blood pouring from my head. He was sitting on the couch staring at me. My husband hadn’t offered to help me up off the floor. He was sitting there, waiting for me to get up. Would you have done that? Let your wife lay in glass and bleeding from the head?”
I’m so fucking pissed as I listen to what she’s been through. “I wouldn’t let someone off the street I don’t know be in that situation, much less someone I care about and proclaim to love. Cody’s a fucking asshole, and not a man at all. He’s lucky you stayed with him as long as you did.” I reach out, caressing her jaw again. “Is that what made you leave?”
“Believe it or not, no. I didn’t decide to leave and file for divorce until eight months after that. He was drunk, and I was in my feelings again. He told me to calm down, I reminded him that I didn’t want him to tell me to calm down. I wanted him to take the complaints I had about our relationship and life together seriously. He laughed, and I knew then that he didn’t give a shit about me. A week later, I found out he’d been fired, and he hadn’t told me that either.”
My eyebrows furrow together. “If he was hiding those kind of secrets, what other kinds of things was he hiding?”
“I don’t know, I’ve wondered that myself. But at the same time, I haven’t been able to investigate. Haven’t necessarily had it in me to care as much as I probably should. All I wanted,” she sighs heavily. “All I wanted to do was get him out of my house. But I couldn’t even do that. He’s fought me every step of the way, Levi. I’ve had zero peace since I filed for divorce.”
This breaks my heart. If anyone deserves to have some peace, it’s her. Especially after what has been done to her by Cody. It sickens me, because the day Molly told me that Magnolia and him were going to get married, I’d wanted to tell her not to do it. That I might not be the man for her, but I could be her friend. I could show her what she deserved. There’s always been something about Cody that gave me a bad omen, and I think many in her life would say the same thing if questioned. Now that I know how awful it’s been for her the past at least year, I’m fucking pissed at myself. If I’d had more confidence, maybe she wouldn’t be in this situation now, and we’d be here as a couple, instead of me offering to let her stay here.
“Let me give you some peace,” I whisper.
“I love some,” she whispers back.
Any other time I wouldn’t react to the way her eyes are shining at me. I’d do my best to respect her, everything she’s been through, and whatever she still might be going through. Tonight though, I feel closer to her than I have in years. So I lean in, but stop before my lips touch hers. “Is this okay?” I want to make sure that she’s on board with me, that I’m not doing anything she might be uncomfortable with.
“Yes, it’s more than okay. We did it when I had been drinking. I’m stone cold sober this time. Hopefully I’ll remember every bit of it.”
“You don’t remember what happened at the bar?” I tease her.
“Not all of it, but I wish I did.”
Reaching over, I pull her over top of me, situating her so that she’s straddling my waist. With one hand, I grip the side of her jaw, with the other, I palm her ass, pulling her so that she’s resting against me. The heat between her legs cups the hardness between mine. She wraps her arms around my neck, before leaning in. Our lips are centimeters apart, but she doesn’t close the distance until she grins.
“I’ve always wondered what you taste like,” she whispers.
And with that we meet in the middle. It’s like the night sky explodes with fireworks or the sun rises out of nowhere. That’s the way it feels when our lips meet. The arms that are around my neck unwrap, and she digs her fingers into my hair, hooking them so that we’re pressed together. Our tongues battle one another, and as she rocks her hips against mine, I groan deeply. This is everything I’ve ever wanted. This time she’s going to remember it, hell this time I don’t have to worry about being on duty.
This is our time, and while we do have responsibilities, neither of us have to deal with them for hours.
Our hands move over each other as we test out the feel of our bodies, and our tongues map each other’s mouths. She melts into me, and I’m lost in the passion flowing between us. We’ve always been attracted to one another. That’s no secret. We’ve kept it hidden, apparently better than well. Tilting her head to the side, I take control of the kiss, and move her how I want her. When I pull back, I give her a grin. “Well now we both know how each other taste, right? It’s obvious you eat some of the chocolate you dip your treats in.”
