Page 151 of Levi

Tonight he needs to know he isn’t the only one who can be undone.

I stay in the bed and gather all of him in. The sweat, the shaking, the after-quiet. After cleaning us up, I hold on to him. I pull the sheet over us both and keep him against my chest, my hand moving slow on his back.

“This is what the after feels like,” I say again into his hair. “The after always belongs to me.”

Chapter 59: Levi

I keep the phone off until noon.

Dante dropped me back an hour ago and gave me a quick kiss in the garage where the cameras aren’t. Then I’m left on my own to deal with Freddie. I’ve never let my phone sit dark this long. Turning it on feels like swallowing glass on purpose.

I do it at the kitchen island. If it’s going to gut me, I’d rather be standing.

The screen lights up and won’t stop. Notifications stack faster than it can count them. Missed calls in a column.

The internet has already sorted last night into a believable story. Lee Streeter cut his set short. Storm halted the Bash. A clip of me going somewhere else at the mic, four million views.

The lightning hold saved my skin. The crowd was already running for their trucks when I lost my shit. The cover story is weather. Not, what’s wrong with Lee Streeter?

Twelve hours ago, I was asleep on Dante’s arm, known clean through and kept anyway.

Now I’m holding a screen that’s stacked against me. That’s what one night on the outside does. You can’t un-taste it.

I should write a song about a dog that escapes out of the yard one time and spends the rest of his life digging holes underneath the fence. My fans would think it was about a coonhound and they’d cry for that dog. They’d never know the dog was me.

The door comes before I’ve answered a single message. Freddie’s dressed for business. A slim folder under one arm, which I notice and pretend I don’t.

“There’s my guy.” Warm voice. The warmth is the tell. Freddie’s never warmer than when he’s working an angle on me. “You gave us a night, Levi. You want to tell me where a headliner disappears to when the crowd watches him fall down?”

“I needed privacy.”

“Right. Privacy.” He sets the folder on the island, unhurried, and leaves it shut. “Here’s where we are. The weather did us a kindness. Half the field was already in the parking lot, so we’re calling it heat and exhaustion, a brutal schedule, an act of God. You’ll cut a thirty-second thank-you Tuesday, promise a makeup date, look healthy. It plays.” The warm thins by one degree. “What does not play is the headliner going disappearing for a night where no one can reach him. Do you understand what that did to the people whose livelihood is you? I had a label president calling me at six this morning, Levi. I told him you were sleeping it off under a doctor’s care. I lied for you before coffee.”

“You’ve lied for me before lunch plenty of times.”

A muscle ticks at his jaw. He lets it go. The folder’s the point, and we both know it now.

“I’m not here about the show. The show’s handled.” He slides the folder a few inches toward me. “I’m here because while you were unreachable, I did what I’m paid to do. I looked deeper into Mr. Reyes.”

My heart starts racing and I try not to show it.

“I’ll be straight with you, the way I always am.” He flips it open with one finger.

There’s a stack of photographs. Dante in a tux at a fancy gala, a glass of champagne in his hand, smiling, a man’s arm across his back. Dante on a yacht, leaning on a railing with another man, smiling again, sunglasses on, in a country far away from here. Italy maybe, or France. How the fuck would I know?

Dante is smiling in every photo. He’s happy, relaxed, enjoying life. Here is yet another version of Dante I’ve never seen. The jealousy grabs my throat and won’t let go.

“When a stranger gets this close to you this fast, there are usually two reasons, and I assume both until I can rule them out. He’s interested in the money. Or he wants to stand near the fame.”

He turns a page. More men. Wealthy men. Businessmen. Faces I recognize from magazines.

“Look at the company he keeps in Miami. Men who own the planes the rest of us rent. Tech money. Old Miami money. A restaurateur with a house in five countries. And Reyes isn’t the guest on someone’s arm at these parties, Levi. He’s on the list under his own name. He sold half of them their penthouses. Not as expensive as this house but close enough. Owns a high-rise condo himself, forty floors up. That’s his level, his taste, the circles he’s run in for many years. The relationships never last long and he’s the one who ends them. Interestingly enough, no one says a bad word about him. Apparently, he’s a class act in the circles he keeps.”

He closes the folder, gentle, and folds his hands on top of it. “Mr. Reyes doesn’t need a dollar of yours. He’s got his own and plenty of it. And he’s not a fame chaser. So, he’s not interested in your spotlight either.”

He stops there. That’s the move. He stops, and he lets the silence do the part he’s too smart to say out loud.

If it’s not the money, and it’s not the fame, what is a man like Dante doing with you?