Levi's Blue: A Sexy Southern Romance (22 page)

CHAPTER 21

EVIE

I WAKE to darkness and silence. Nothing out of the ordinary in my life, yet something feels…off.

I slap the clock on my bedside table, and it tells me only thirty-one minutes after midnight.  I must’ve just dozed off after Levi left.

Levi.

I frown.

Something in my gut tells me that we were on the brink of something amazing, something incredible.  But somewhere along the way, some time in the last twelve hours, things changed. Something went awry. I have no idea what happened, but I know without question that things aren’t as they should be.

I shiver when I throw back the covers.  I’m completely nude. Levi’s shirt is gone.

I rub a hand over my bare chest, my palm hovering over my steadily beating heart. There’s an ache there, a sense of grief, as though the disappearance of Levi’s shirt symbolizes a greater loss. And I feel that loss. All the way down into my soul.

I pad across the bedroom and take my robe from the back of the door, pushing my arms into it and making my way to the kitchen.  Maybe getting something on my stomach will help relax me.

I put water on the stove and bring it to a boil for tea.  As I wait for it to heat, I nibble on a cookie and rifle through the mail basket. 

Cherelyn sorts our correspondence each day and then, if I’m not around, leaves me a voice message on the little recorder we keep in the basket, explaining what’s what. She worked out a nifty little system. She turns down the corners and explains what’s what on the recorder.  Like the one with one dog ear is X and the one with two dog ears is Y.  I don’t get that much mail, so we’ve never worked our way up to having four envelopes, therefore four dog-eared corners, but that could change any day.

Tonight, in the basket with the recorder, there’s a rectangular box that feels as though it’s wrapped in something slick, like maybe gift wrap, and a squarish envelope.  I press play on the recorder as I let my fingers work their way curiously over the items.

Cherelyn’s voice comes on, echoing through the quiet kitchen with its cheerful lilt.  “These came for you before I left.  A box and a card.  By special delivery.  Nice!”  I grin.  It’s obvious she thinks they’re from Levi. She might as well have been singing, “Evie and Levi sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G.” 

Although the envelope feels fat, like it might be one of those recordable cards, I can’t be sure, and if it’s not, I can’t read it and will have to wait for Cherelyn to return anyway, so I open the box first.  Carefully, I feel along the seams for pieces of tape, which I break with my short fingernail as I go.  When the paper releases, I peel it back and feel for the opening to the box.  It’s one of the type that the top is bigger than the bottom and it sort of slides down over it snugly.  I grip the smaller half and pull up, and they come apart easily. 

Inside is a hard…something. It’s smooth and cool, and I pull it out to turn it over in my palm, trying to identify the shape.  It’s curved slightly in the middle, fatter on both ends, sort of like an hourglass. Or maybe a pair of sunglasses. 

I detect hinges along one side and open it long ways. I grin when I feel a pair of glasses inside.  They
have to be
sunglasses. I mean, why would anyone send
me
actual glasses? I can’t see a damn thing!

Gently, mindful of the lenses, I take them out and spread the arms, feeling along them for some indication of what kind they are. I feel the interlocking Cs that identify them as Chanel.

I smile. 

Levi bought me Chanel sunglasses.

I put them on, even though it’s the dead of night and no one is around to see me in them. The fit is really good and wearing them makes me feel somehow closer to him.

I set the box aside and go for the card.  Now I know for sure that it has a voice message in it. 

I run my finger under the flap and take the card out, still smiling when I open it to trigger the message.  My lips straighten and thin the moment I hear the voice.

It’s not Levi at all.

But it’s no stranger either.

“Hello, Evian. I thought these would look magnificent on you. I hope you enjoy them.  Oh, and also, you might want to ask Levi where he was the night of your accident, when you lost your sight.  You might find his answer interesting.  He knows more about that than you think.”

Confused, I close the card and then open it again, listening to the message a second time. Then a third. Then a fourth, each time my heart sinking lower and lower until it feels that it has vacated my chest entirely and taken up residence in my stomach, where a sick feeling has started to live.

I sit holding the card, wondering what Julianne could mean.  Something inside me cracks. Hope?  Trust?  Love?  It becomes a cavernous crevasse, widening more and more with every second that passes.  I know without a doubt that whatever she means, it’s not good.

Part of me, the cowardly part that would rather hide away than face any more pain or humiliation, says I don’t want to know anything more.

But the rest of me, especially the parts that mustered enough courage to take a chance on Levi, says I do.

I have to.  I have to know. If he was somehow involved, I need to know that.

Rationally, I think to myself that he wasn’t.  Surely not. That would be too coincidental. 

Wouldn’t it?

I think back to that night. I heard a girl crying and an older man’s voice.  I didn’t hear a third person. There
was no
third person.

Accept maybe there was.

I saw a face. 

Or
thought
I saw. The doctors told me it was impossible, told me that I lost my sight almost immediately because of the severity of my head injury.  They think my “vision” was a product of the concussion and swelling of my brain.

But what if they were wrong?

What if the last face I saw was Levi’s?  What if the face that haunted me for the first few months when I couldn’t see a thing
was his
? 

What are the chances? What is the likelihood that he, of all people, is the same person who was there the night my world was shattered?  What are the odds that his face was the last thing I saw, and that now I’d be falling in love with him?

I don’t need a statistician to tell me the odds are astronomical.

Unless he already knew who I was.

Unless he sought me out.

My heart sputters to an uncomfortable stop for a breath, a single shaky breath, before it picks back up its beat again.

Oh Jesus!

Oh God, oh God, oh God!

I slide off the stool, but my legs are like butter, and they only slightly break my fall as I slither to the floor.

What if, what if, what if?

I force myself to my feet, holding to things for support as I head into the living room where Levi left my luggage parked.  My purse is there as well, and my phone with it.

I dig it out and speak at it.  “Siri, call Levi.”

I hear her respond that she’s calling Levi, followed by the musical
boop, boop, boop
of numbers being dialed.  It rings and rings, but there is no answer.

I call again, but hear only the husky tones of Levi’s words on his voice mail.

My heart is fluttering erratically in my chest, a panicked cadence that makes me feel short of breath.

This can’t be.

Surely this can’t be.

She’s lying. She’s mistaken. She’s insane.  She’s…monstrous.

I jump, gasping in shock when the teapot shrieks its readiness into the stillness.  In my emotional frenzy, I’d forgotten all about it. 

I make my way unsteadily to the kitchen, scrambling to remove it from the heat, my hands shaking as I do.

I jump a second time when I hear a loud knock at the door.  My pulse hammers in my veins.  Normally, I’d be leery of answering the door by myself, with Cherelyn gone, at this time of night. It’s after midnight, for God’s sake. 

But this time I’m not. 

The twisting of my stomach tells me that it’s Levi, and that he’s here because something is wrong.

Something like he was outed.

There’s no other explanation. I know it in that deep and hollow space inside me that housed the hope of everything Levi represented.

Last night it was full. 

Now it feels empty.

Tears are already filling my eyes when I press my forehead to the door.  “Wh-who is it?”

“It’s me,” comes the familiar voice. 

I clamp a hand over my mouth to stifle my sob.

It’s Levi. He’s here. And the sound of his voice, so different than it’s sounded every day before now, tells me that it’s true.  It’s laced with guilt,
years of guilt
that runs soul deep.

I snap open the locks and pull open the door, my chest heaving with all the emotion I’m trying to control.  It’s clawing at me, scratching and pulling, trying to drag me under. It’s all I can do to keep my head above the drowning force of it.

“Do you know?” he asks without preamble.

My mouth is as dry as desert sand, my tongue sticking to the roof. 

“Please tell me it’s not true.”

My lips want to beg him to tell me it’s not true, but a part of me knows he can’t. He won’t.

Because it is.

His pause is long.  Sad. Telling.

“Can I come in and explain?”

“No. You need to tell me. Right here. Right now. Tell me.”

I grip the doorknob, silently begging my legs to hold me up for this.

“I was going to tell you,” he begins, shifting uncomfortably. I can hear the friction of clothing on skin.

“Tell me what?”

I squeeze my eyes shut behind my glasses, and I pray.

Please, God, let it be something different.  Please let me be wrong about this.

The ache behind my sternum is unbearable. It feels like something has been torn away, ripped from me, leaving raw nerves, spewing vessels and ragged tissue.

“I told you about Rachel.”

“The college girlfriend.”

“Yes, she was my girlfriend in college. We dated for three years. She got pregnant just after I graduated. She still had one year left.  We were at a party one night. She was close to term and didn’t want to go, but I wanted one last night of fun before the baby came. I thought fun would be over then.  I’d been drinking…quite a bit when she told me she’d had a contraction.  She’d had them before, so we didn’t think much of it. By the time we realized she was in real distress, I couldn’t drive. None of us could.  Rather than waiting for a cab, I called my father. We weren’t far from his brownstone.  He came for us. What he failed to mention was that he’d been drinking, too. 

“We were on our way to the hospital when a girl stepped out from between two parked cars.  I saw her before Dad did.  I reached over to jerk the wheel, but it was too late. Our reflexes just weren’t fast enough.” 

In the hush of his pause, my ears throb with the thunder of my heartbeat. I barely hear his last words, but I already know what they will be. They’re branded onto my brain, seared into my heart, burned into my
world
with a permanence I will never be able to escape. 

“We hit her.”

And yet, they stagger me, like a physical blow.

I stumble backward, reaching behind me for the nearest chair to collapse into.  As he spoke the words, as he told his story, I could see where it was leading as clearly as I could see those headlights right before my life and everything in it went black.  Now, I feel the impact of them as though I’m being run down all over again.

“I didn’t want to leave you, but…Rachel…she…  She was bleeding so much, screaming in pain.  I thought she was gonna die.  She and the baby. I just…I panicked.”

“So you called 911 and you left me.”  The words fall from numb lips like dead leaves, littering the chair and the floor around me.  For the rest of my life, I will never be able to sit in this chair, in this spot, and not smell the stench of their decaying corpses. “It was you.”

I feel Levi squat in front of me, feel his body brush my bent knees, feel his hands hover tentatively over mine before he thinks better of touching me and moves them away.

“Evie, that’s why I’ve never been able to forgive my father.  What he did was bad enough, but what he did
after…
”

“You mean never coming forward? You mean hitting a girl on the street and never bothering to see if she was okay? If she lived or died? If she could pay her medical bills? If her life had been destroyed?”

Levi’s body moves slightly, a flinch, like I slapped him.  “Yes, that.  All that.  And…and what he did to Rachel.”

I don’t want to ask. I don’t want to know. 

But I
do
ask because I
have to
know.  “What did he do?”

“The baby…she died. Our little girl.  She was in distress too long. The cord got wrapped around her neck and she…she didn’t make it.  It was…  She…”