Page 85 of Levi

“Freddie, stop it!”

Levi’s voice, off the couch, up and cracking. The name goes through me.

Freddie.

This is fucking Freddie. The name on the screen at ten o’clock. I stood on a terrace and texted him “good,” twice, from Levi’s phone.

Now here is his face. Red and sputtering under my arm. I helped him. I ran his leash for an afternoon and called it a favor to Levi.

“Get off him.” Levi’s between us now, both hands up. He’s not looking at Freddie. He’s looking at me, with a face I’ve never seen on him. Close to terror, and it’s pointed at me. “Dante. Let go. You need to leave.”

I don’t move. My arm’s still across the suit.

“Dante. Leave.” Harder this time. Cold. He has never once been cold with me. “Now. This isn’t — you don’t have any part in this. Go.”

It hits the two halves of me where they’re still deadlocked, and it tips the scale. Not toward the swing. Toward the door. Without meaning to, he reaches into the worst version of me and pulls me back from it.

I don’t feel saved. I feel sided against.

And he’s standing here white-faced telling me to get out. Choosing Freddie over me. Telling me to get out of my own listing again.

I let go of Freddie. He straightens his jacket with shaking hands and says words I don’t hear over the blood in my ears.

I look at Levi one more time. The bare jaw, the stranger’s haircut, the terror aimed the wrong way. I turn and I go without a word. Out the door. Down the white drive, into the car, and my hands are shaking on the wheel.

I sit there, breathing hard. I have never in my adult life done what I just did. It half-scared me how little of me was left to stop it.

My phone’s going off in the cup holder. Has been for a while, I realize. Buzzing and buzzing. Benji’s name, then a number, then Benji again. I don’t touch it. Whatever it is, it’s not bigger than this.

I back out hard and point toward the Roadhouse. I need a beer and my best friend who’ll tell me I’m not crazy.

If I keep sitting in this driveway, I’ll go back in there and finish what I can’t afford to finish.

Chapter 31: Levi

The door slams behind him.

Every part of me wants to go after Dante. Not one part moves. The last thing he heard from me was ‘you don’t have any part in this.’

I can’t go after him to take it back. Freddie is standing six feet away, straightening his jacket. I turn around and put the face on.

The only way to keep Freddie off Dante was to make Dante nothing, and gone fast. So Dante drove off certain I picked Freddie over him.

That’s the price. I paid it willingly to protect him.

I’ll never get to tell him.

I know what it did to Dante to throw him out like that. You bleed for somebody, they spit on you, and that’s the face you make.

I keep seeing him with Freddie on that wall. The cords standing out in his forearm, all that pressed linen hiding a man who could put somebody through drywall easy if he ever decided to.

“Who the hell was that?” Freddie snarls at me.

His voice is up in a register I’ve heard maybe twice. He never raises it. Right now he’s rattled, and Freddie doesn’t rattle. Freddie owns people with a signature. He’s never had a forearm across his chest.

I’ve got about one second to pick a word. The right word is everything.

“Property management guy,” I say. Like I’m explaining a nuisance. “Came by a couple of times to make sure I’m not throwing house parties.” I shrug. “Probably heard yelling, tried to play a hero.”