Page 25 of Hard Heart

I’d wasted enough time, energy, and brainpower on Levi Thomas Sykes. I had a bar exam to study for, a future to plan, and an ex to avoid. With Heidi hot on my heels, I marched past the two leather-clad goons and slalomed through the row of motorcycles, my head held high.

I’d wished for next year to be better.

It could hardly be any worse.

CHAPTER 10

LEVI

“Duke did what?”

“You shouldn’t be in this place, man.”

Levi took a calming breath and put down his paintbrush. “We both know I’m stuck here. There’s no evidence that can clear me. No witnesses except the assholes who are all covering for each other.”

And now Diesel’s father had told some random woman about Lake Sterling. If she raised a ruckus and got the art program shuttered, then what was he supposed to do? Go back to buying shitty pencils from the commissary? Damage control was needed.

“Science always changes, you told me. Maybe a new lawyer can do something with that.”

True, science evolved constantly, and once upon a time, Levi had been at the cutting edge of those developments. Art was where his heart lay, but his head said that the planet was turning to shit, and he’d wanted to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. But that was all in the past.

“Whoever she was, she was no lawyer.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do. If she were a lawyer, she’d have shown up when the warden gave her the runaround, flashed her bar card, and refused to leave until she saw me.”

“She said she wrote to you.”

That was possible. The staff had a habit of withholding any mail they thought might impinge on Levi’s drawing time, although the only folks who wrote were true-crime authors, journalists, environmental crusaders, and lonely women with a danger fetish. He’d been flat out in the run-up to Christmas, and his hand ached from drawing hour after hour. They’d promised him a break over New Year’s. Sales always slowed down during January as folks tightened their belts, and Levi’s students could take up the slack.

“I’ll ask Marnie to check for mail. If it didn’t get filed in the trash, it’s probably sitting in a tray somewhere. Did Duke take Ruby’s flowers at Christmas?”

“He said he did. Roses, mistletoe, and that other thing.”

“Poinsettia.”

“Yeah, that.”

Christmas had been Ruby’s favourite holiday. Jerry and Alexa preferred Halloween, but Ruby had gone overboard with decorations in December. The wreath she made for the door, the snowflakes she used to cut out of paper, the glitter that got everywhere. The tree had to be spectacular, and Levi smiled to himself as he recalled her darting excitedly through the rows at the tree farm, in search of the perfect specimen. He’d nearly given himself a hernia wrestling the damn thing into the house each year with the others helping, but it had been worth it to see her happy. Their first kiss had been under the mistletoe, the December before she died. The months that followed had been the best of his life. Ruby wasn’t a girl who liked commitment, but when they were together, nobody existed but the two of them.

He’d wanted more, and toward the end, he thought she did too. They’d talked about a future together. About moving away for a fresh start after they both finished their studies. Buying a little cabin on a lake where nobody could find them.

Where she wouldn’t bump into any of her “clients.”

Levi wasn’t a fool. He knew Ruby slept with men for money, but it had still made him irrationally angry when his defence team portrayed her as a slut at his trial. Which was why he’d never told them her secret—they’d have had a field day destroying her reputation, and thanks to Alexa and her damn cameras, Levi knew she hadn’t been killed by a trick. She was strictly an outcall girl, anyway.

He’d hated her sideline but respected her enough to give her space rather than an ultimatum, the same way she’d done with him. It was Ruby who’d helped him to see his relationship with his parents in a new light. To understand that what he’d once thought was love was actually abuse. They’d been two messed-up kids, trying to guide each other through the dark.

Had she finally found the light?

Levi dreamed about her sometimes, the phoenix rising from the ashes, soaring free, high above the world she’d struggled to find her place in. He was Sisyphus in her shadow, the paintbrush his boulder, doomed to eternal punishment.

He picked up his filbert and continued immortalising another fucking cat.

CHAPTER 11

SERAFINA