Levi's Blue: A Sexy Southern Romance (25 page)

CHAPTER 25

LEVI

EVEN AS I punch in the phone number for Evie’s best friend, Cherelyn (whose number I got from the art gallery), I realize how desperate I’m going to sound.  That doesn’t stop me from hitting the green button that makes the call, though.

She answers in her professional voice, probably since she doesn’t recognize the incoming number and assumes it’s business-related.

“Cherelyn, this is Levi Michaelson.  Don’t hang up,” I rush to say.

Silence greets me, but
silence
I can deal with. A dial tone is a different story.

“You don’t have to say anything. Just listen.  Then you can decide whether you’ll help me or not. Please.”

Again, there is only silence, so I keep going. 

“I screwed up. Thirteen years ago, I screwed up.  I was young and dumb and drunk, and I made a terrible decision.  What I
should’ve
done that night was let my father take Rachel to the hospital while I stayed with Evie, whether he wanted me to or not.  But I didn’t.  I’ll be the first to admit that there is absolutely no excuse for what I did.  The fact that I didn’t trust my own father to take care of Rachel, the fact that I was worried about my girlfriend and my baby, the fact that I’d been drinking all night and could hardly focus—none of those reasons are good enough to excuse what I did.
No reason
is.”

I pause, hoping she might say something, but she doesn’t, so I continue.

“It’s haunted me since that night. All these years, it’s followed me. For a long time, I couldn’t sleep, barely ate, but even that’s getting off too easy.  I should’ve paid a bigger price.  Even losing Evie isn’t enough punishment for what I did.”

“Agreed,” I hear on the other end of the line. Short, abrupt. Hostile. But at least she’s listening.

“I should’ve made it right a long time ago, but I was backed into a corner.  After Rachel killed herself, I wanted to go to the police. Tell them everything.  Find the girl we hit.  I didn’t give a shit about my father’s career, but he made a point of reminding me that if he went down, he was taking me with him. That I’d be an accessory to a hit-and-run, and my future would be over before it started.  That alone wasn’t enough to keep me quiet, but he’d kept tabs on Evie. He knew she’d survived. He told me she was fine, that she’d moved on, and that we’d only be doing her more harm by forcing her to relive that night. I’m ashamed to say that I was dumb enough, or maybe desperate enough to believe him.

“It wasn’t until last year that I found out she’d lost her sight. My mother was hospitalized with a fractured hip and she mentioned it when she was out of her head on painkillers.  Until then, she’d refused to discuss it. Ever.

“A few weeks later, I heard some buzz about a blind woman who paints. She was about the right age, graduated from Columbia. I thought there was a good chance it could be her.  I didn’t bother asking Dad about it. I knew he’d lie, so I went to check it out myself.

“I didn’t have a plan. I had no idea what I’d do if it
was
her. I just wanted to know, to see for myself that she was okay.”

More silence, which makes me wonder if this was such a good idea.  The only reason I keep talking is because if there’s a chance in hell of getting Evie back—which is what I’ve realized I want more than anything else in my life—of making her understand all this, I’ll need her best friend’s help to do it. 

“So, you got to see.  Now you can leave her the hell alone.”

“That’s the problem.  I can’t.”

“Of course, you can. You just disappear, like you did before. Simple as that.”

“It’s nowhere near that simple. And I didn’t disappear. I was trying to do the right thing. Trying to stay away from her.  But Jesus,
I can’t. 
I…I’m in love with her. I can’t just walk away. Not without a fight.”

“Then you need to try harder. 
Do
the right thing. 
Stay
away from her.  Don’t
be
in love with her.
Walk
away. It’s what you do best, right?”

Christ!
I sigh and rub my forehead.

I deserved that. I deserve all of this.  And more.

“You know, even if I’d had a plan, even if I’d known what the hell to do, I could
never
have planned for Evie herself.  I had no idea how amazing she’d be.  How beautiful. And witty.  How charming, how insanely talented. I could never have planned for how she’d get under my skin and tear my whole damn life apart. But she did. And I can’t go back to life
before
her.  I
want her
under my skin.  I’m
glad
that she tore my life apart. It was shit before she came. And it will be shit if I can’t get her back.  I just don’t know how to do that. But I
have to
try.  Are you listening to me?”

There’s a long, long pause and my guts twist with dread. She’s gonna tell me to stay the hell away, never call again. All the things she
should
say and has
every right
to say.

“You should’ve told her
the instant
you started caring about her.”

I exhale. 

“I know. I should’ve.  But it happened so fast. I mean, hell, nobody
plans
on falling in love. I mean,
Christ Almighty!
How the hell was I supposed to know this would happen?”

“Maybe you’re not in love. Maybe you’re just infatuated.”

“I’ve been infatuated before.  This is different. I…I feel like I can’t breathe. All the damn time. When I’m with her, everything is
right. 
But when I’m not,
nothing is.
The world, the sun, the
air. 
Can’t you understand that?”

I hear a hissing sound, like she’s frustrated and exhaling through her nose. “So you’re saying you kept this from her
because
you love her. That’s bass-ackwards if I’ve ever heard it.”

“I know.  She deserved answers, explanations. She deserved so much better than what she got, what
I gave her
, but I was afraid of losing her.”

“And you ended up losing her anyway.”

I squeeze my forehead, squeeze at the pain aching behind my eyes.  “Yeah, I lost her anyway. But I’m hoping you can help me with that.”

“Why on earth would I help you when you’re the one who destroyed her?”

“Look, I get it. I get what you’re feeling, and I get what
she’s
feeling.  I understand her anger.  I understand why she hates me.  I understand how betrayed she must feel.  I understand it, and I don’t blame her. Not one damn bit.  I was even going to walk away, leave her alone. Let her move on from the whole thing without a constant reminder of the accident in her life.  But I’ve tried, and
I can’t
.”

“Keep trying. Maybe it’ll get easier.”

“It’s been twelve days since I left her apartment. Twelve days and I can still smell her like it was yesterday. I smell her everywhere I go and I was in New York for over a week! When I went to her class, I don’t…I don’t know what I expected. Maybe I hoped that seeing her would make me realize how much better off she is without me and make it easier to do the right thing. Or maybe I hoped that she’d be able to
feel me
and she’d change her mind and put me out of my misery. But honestly, I don’t know. I don’t really know what I was expecting.  But I can tell you what happened.  It made it
worse. 
Seeing her, watching her, hearing her only made it worse. I
can’t
give up on her,
on us.
Do you hear me? I can’t let her go without a fight.”

“Look, I don’t know what to tell you, but—”

“I…I didn’t know what was happening until it was too late.  I blinked and she’d become everything to me.  All I want is to be with her, to make her happy.  I need her to know what the trees in Central Park look like at midnight because I can’t sleep without her. I need her to know that fall doesn’t smell like fall in New York because nothing smells like it should without her.  I need her to know that I still hear all the sounds I’ve always heard, but the only one I
want to hear
is her voice. And her laugh, and her crazy stories about people she can’t see.
Nothing
is the same without her. She changed something in me, and I don’t want to go back to the way I was. I’m a better man
because of her,
and I have to make this right.”

“Levi, I don’t—”

“Just tell me this,” I interrupt her again to say.  “Does she hate me or is she as miserable without me as I am without her?”

“You can’t expect me to answer that.”

“No, but I hope you will anyway.”  When she says nothing, I add, “Tell me there’s a chance, even if it’s a small one.  Tell me I haven’t really lost her. Not really. Not forever.”

“I don’t know. She’s very hurt, but…”

“But?”

My heart slams up into a faster pace. 

A but.

That tells me all I need to know.

“Fine. She’s miserable. You’ve done an excellent job of destroying what she’s worked so hard to build.”

She doesn’t pull any punches, but I wouldn’t expect her to. She’s loved Evie longer than I have, but I already know what that instinct to protect her feels like.

“I can make this right. If she’ll just give me a chance, I can make this right. I can help pay for the surgery. I can help—”

“Oh no. She wouldn’t take a dime from you.  Besides, she has enough to get the surgery. She just has to make an appointment.”

“I can make her happy, Cherelyn.  I swear to God, if she’ll give me another chance, I can make her happy. I
will
make her happy.”

Evie’s best friend makes a growling noise and then says, “So help me God, if you hurt her, I will rip off your dick and make you eat it.”

I laugh for the first time since New Orleans.  “Okay, okay. Point taken, but there’ll be no need for violence.”

“I’ll make you wish you’d never met either one of us if you so much as give her a
splinter.
”

“No gifts carved from wood. Got it.” A jest.  For the first time in days, I feel like life isn’t a big, nasty, smelly shit show.

“I’m not laughing, pretty boy.  I mean every word I say.”

I clear my throat. “I know. Sorry. I hear you.” 

“Good. The best I can offer is to tell her what you’ve said and let her go from there.”

“That’s all I ask.”

There’s a pause before she speaks again.  “You could’ve called, you know.”

“I broke my phone the night…that last night and I couldn’t get
anybody
to give me her number again.  Not even the school.  That’s one of the many reasons I showed up at her class.  Thanks for not ratting me out by the way.”

“I didn’t have to. Some little girl did.”

I think for a second before I ask, “Was she a little blonde?  No hands?”

“That’s the one.”

I chuckle. “Alana. That little firecracker. I should’ve known she wouldn’t be able to keep a secret.  And, uh, what did Evie say when Alana told her?”

CHAPTER 26

EVIE

I SWIPE my hand across my throat in a cutting motion as I shake my head vigorously, signaling Cherelyn not to tell him how I reacted.  I don’t want him to know that my limbs didn’t want to work, that I could hardly keep myself from crying, and that I nearly hyperventilated when I got home and realized that he’d been
so close
again and I’d missed him.

Even though I should’ve been happy that I didn’t know, happy that I didn’t have to talk to him and that I couldn’t smell his skin or hear his voice, I wasn’t.  I just felt…robbed.  Robbed of the chance to be near him one more time.  And
know it.

Experience it.

Feel it. 

Cherelyn and I were sitting in the living room just now when her phone rang. She whispered and told me who it was. My brain was so scrambled, my heart so conflicted, I don’t know that I would’ve thought to ask her to put it on speakerphone.  She just did it. Because she knows me. And because of that, I’m getting to hear everything Levi has to say.  Every word. He just doesn’t know it.

“She didn’t say much.  What was she going to say to a little girl? ‘You bitch! Why didn’t you tell me sooner?’”

“Yeah, you’re right.  I guess I just… I don’t know.  But yeah, you’re right.”

I can’t help noting how disappointed he sounds.  I’m sure he wanted me to be upset, wanted me to realize how much I miss him.

That’s why I can’t let Cherelyn tell him that he succeeded.

“I guess I was hoping she’d realize she misses me as much as I miss her,” he says dejectedly.

“Maybe you need to show her what she’s missing then,” Cherelyn suggests, flinching when I slap her arm for helping him.

“Ha.” He laughs, a bitter sound.  “Got my work cut out for me then, don’t I?” When Cherelyn doesn’t respond, he sighs into the phone and continues. “Well, thanks for listening. And thanks for relaying this to Evie.  I…I appreciate it.”

“Not a problem.”

“I, uh, I guess I’ll see ya.”

“See ya.”

I hear the muted beep of the line going dead when Cherelyn ends the call.

I flop back onto the sofa and cover my face with a pillow while I scream into it.

After a few seconds, Cherelyn pulls it off to ask, “Feel better?”

“No,” I reply miserably.  “I don’t feel better
at all.
”  I take a moment to take stock of the state of my heart.  “I don’t feel
worse,
though.”

“As I suspected,” she says smugly, smacking me in the head with the pillow.  “You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”

I sit up and angle my body toward my best friend’s.  “Duh, genius.”

She laughs.  “That’s some messed up shit, Evie.”

“I know. It’s
so messed up.
  But…”

“But?”

“But did you hear him?”

“I heard him.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“What do you think?”

“Oh, Evie, I—”

“Don’t give me that I-don’t-want-to-get-involved crap.  Tell me what you think. I can’t even think straight anymore.”

“Why does it matter what I think?  Can you forgive him?”

I think about her question. Really think about it.  “I honestly don’t know.”

“Then what I think doesn’t matter.  This is something you have to come to terms with on your own, one way or the other.”  She puts her hand on my leg. “No one would blame you if you held a grudge
forever. 
This…what he did…it’s a big deal, Evie.”

“I know.”

Oh boy, do I know!  My heart feels like a mangled ball of ripped and torn flesh that’s bleeding out within the confines of my chest wall, filling the cavity with sticky, crimson agony.

What Levi did was bad enough, in and of itself, but to keep it from me…and then to leave me with the doubts that he did—that he might’ve been flirting with me and charming me and wooing me out of guilt rather than anything
real—
it’s unbearably cruel.

Part of me feels like it’s unforgivably cruel.  That’s how I’ve felt since he left. Beneath all the hurt and humiliation and disillusionment, I’ve felt bitter, like I could
never
forgive him.

But now…

After hearing that…

It makes me wonder if some day, some time down the road, I could. Like maybe I could take that step.  And mean it. 

Not that he’d wait for that.  He’d have to truly be in love with me to wait that long.  And I’m just not convinced that he is.

Rivers of sadness pour through me in seething rapids of sorrow. How many times will I have to lose him?  To
feel
the loss of him so acutely?

I drag myself off the couch.  “Thanks for letting me listen in,” I tell Cherelyn.  “I’m going to lie down. My head hurts.”

I trudge through the living room, toward my room.

“Evie?”

“Yeah?”

“Make the appointment.”

I sigh.

The surgery.

“I will.  I will.”

“Tomorrow. Call your doctor.”

“Tomorrow,” I confirm, closing my bedroom door behind me.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll feel more like living, like getting on with my life.  Because I sure as hell don’t feel like it today.

********

I startle awake at the sound of the doorbell.  I pull my pillow over my head and let my mind drift back to the sweet dream I was having.  Levi had me spread out on a white sheet and was painting my body with edible paint, using all the colors he’d described the day he’d come here to find me painting.  It was a wonderful dream and my skin is still alive with sensation, as if he was
actually
touching me.

The doorbell sounds again, and I roll over just enough to yell a muffled, “Cher, can you get that?”

I get no answer, and the doorbell rings a third time.  With a growl, I lurch out of bed and make my way through the quiet rooms of our apartment.  At the door, I put my mouth close to it and ask, “Who is it?”

We live in a gated community, so I don’t worry too much about who comes to the door. If visitors don’t have a code, they have to check in through the main office unless they buzz our door directly.

“Flowers by Desiree.”

My guts twist into a tight, writhing knot.  I don’t need any more information than that to know it’s Levi who sent me flowers.

My fingers tremble over the first lock as I debate whether to even open the door and let the flowers—and, therefore a little piece of Levi—into my life.

But in the end, I do.

I can’t resist. My
heart
can’t resist.  While yes it’s broken, it also still cries out for him, cries out for me to forgive him and move on.
With Levi.
Together. It’s the pragmatic side of me, the side that tells me he can’t be trusted, that keeps me from doing any such thing.

I swing open the door and hold out my hand for the clipboard. Obligingly, the delivery guy lays it over my palm. I wonder if he’s the same one. 

“Where shall I sign?”

A finger nudges mine and leads me to the right spot. I scribble my name, and hand the pen and clipboard back with a smile.

“There are quite a few. Would you like me to bring them in?”

“Quite a few?”

“Yes, ma’am. Thirteen dozen to be exact.”

“Thirteen dozen?”

“Yes, ma’am. Thirteen dozen flowers.”

“Thirteen dozen flowers,” I say dazedly.

I feel like a parrot, but I’m shocked. I can’t help it.

“Yes, ma’am.  The message says, ‘One for every day I’ve been without you.’”

As of today, it’s been thirteen days since Levi left my apartment. Thirteen long, miserable days.

It takes me a few seconds to recover.  “Uh, okay. Come on in. You can set them wherever you see a spot, just not on the floor, please.”

I back up, holding the door open, listening to the delivery boy’s footsteps come and go, come and go. I’m guessing he has some sort of cart out there. That or he made a lot of trips to my door before he rang the bell.

Slowly, the scent of roses and rubrums surrounds me.  The same combination that he sent me a lifetime ago. I close my eyes and inhale, dragging the aroma deep into my lungs and holding it there, as if I can hold a piece of the past, a piece of Levi, inside me.

In these few precious, aromatic seconds, something within me, something within the frozen hardness of my misery, wobbles. It loosens, like a bolt that’s worked its way free of the concrete holding it in place.

I exhale. 

Slowly, I feel air and light and
hope
leaking in around it.

Can I do this? Can I forgive him?  Can I let go of the hurt and the pain, the betrayal and the devastation, and find freedom again? Freedom from the scars of my past? 

When the delivery boy is gone, I walk through the room. I use my nose to direct me to each arrangement. One by one, I visit each vase, bending to smell the blossoms, tears streaming down my face.