Chapter Twenty

CHAPTER TWENTY

Jade

Levee stayed for two days before his brothers and president started to request his appearance back at the clubhouse.

I was almost needy enough to beg him to take me with him. To let me throw the fish in a temporary tank, put them in my backseat, and come live with him for the time being.

Not just because I loved being with him. Which I did. Of course. I was pretty sure we did nothing but have sex, nap, and eat the entire time he was at my place.

We’d had so much sex that my freaking thigh muscles were sore like I’d suddenly taken up an intensive gym routine.

So, yeah, I wanted to be with him.

But I was also scared to be without him. As much as I hated to admit that even just to myself.

That said, I couldn’t tell him that. Especially after using oral sex as a way to get him to drop the topic of my whiteboard. And then, to make matters worse, grabbing that whiteboard when he was asleep and shoving it at the bottom of my hamper, praying he’d just forget all about it.

Thanks to the sex stupor we’d both been in, he had.

But now that I’d let this long go this long, I felt like it was almost impossible to bring him in on the matter.

Or maybe I was just telling myself that because I was too chickenshit to open up about it.

I sighed as I wrung out the third crop top while leaning over my tub.

I was going to leave my apartment again. Just not, you know, yet. I wanted to give it a few days, make sure everything had blown over.

I carried my clean clothes out into the living room to hang dry as I went back to my neglected canvas, getting back to work for a few hours.

The sun was set as I dragged my weary bones over to the couch, dropping down, and deciding it was a better place to sleep than in my bed. Where the empty space next to me would taunt me with its cool absence.

I must have been dozing pretty soundly, my body having gotten used to Levee’s nearness and safety, making me less apt to wake up at every small noise.

So I was out cold enough not to hear the scratch of my lock, the slight creak the door made as it opened.

I didn’t even hear the footsteps as they drew nearer.

It wasn’t until a hand clamped over my mouth that I jolted awake.

I’d like to claim my instincts kicked in automatically, that I wasn’t completely slow and confused for a solid few seconds, sleep still clinging to my mind and body.

But as the hand pressed harder, holding me down against the couch cushions, awareness slammed into me.

Too late, of course, to scream, to alert neighbors. And because Levee had been there with me for a few nights, my trusty knife was in the knife drawer where it belonged, not beside me.

A panicked whimper escaped me, muffled against my attacker’s hand.

“Can’t leave it alone, huh?” he asked, making me blink at the darkness, trying to adjust to it, to get a good look at him.

If I could just really see one of them, I could draw up a sketch to bring to the police.

My hands shot out instinctively, reaching toward his face. Being met not with flesh, but the scratchy material of a ski mask.

“Didn’t want it to come to this,” he added as his free hand slid to my throat.

No.

No, this couldn’t be happening, damnit.

The pressure on my throat had my heart rate tripping into overdrive, beating harder in my neck, in my head.

I would love to say that some innate instinct to survive kicked in, that I suddenly developed some sort of superhuman strength, or that some karate moves from a TV show popped up into my head, allowing me to get this man off of me in mere seconds.

None of that would be true.

I flailed, slapping my hands into his face, balling up my fists and punching his arms.

None of it had any impact.

And my face was starting to feel fuzzy.

Time seemed to slow down.

But my mind raced. A million thoughts rushed around, crashed into each other.

Leaving me with just two separate, singular thoughts.

I was never going to see Levee again.

And I was going to die without even knowing who my killer was.

It wasn’t sudden bravery on my part that made any sort of difference. It was the impatience of my attacker that gave me the slightest chance to live.

Frustrated that I wasn’t, you know, dying quickly enough, his hand that was strictly covering my mouth lifted to, I assume, try to cover my nose as well to cut off all of my air.

But in doing so, there was just enough room for me to suck in a breath and scream bloody freaking murder.

“Shut the fuck up,” he snapped, pressing his hand more firmly against my face, making my still-sore nose scream in pain.

But that was nothing compared to the way panic and fear reached a fever pitch as I suddenly couldn’t draw in any air.

This was when some sort of real survival instinct kicked in, making me strike out, writhe, try to pull my legs up to kick out.

The struggle only seemed to make me run out of oxygen even faster, though.

That fuzziness from before became blackness closing in on my vision.

This was it.

This was the end.

But even as I felt like I was being pulled under, there was a loud sound in my apartment.

It wasn’t my attacker. It was further away.

My door, maybe? Smacking against the wall from being thrown open?

Was someone coming to my rescue?

But even as I thought I might have heard a voice, I realized they were too late.

I was gone.

—

Even at the brink of death, the body’s instinct to survive was strong.

I wasn’t conscious of starting to do it, but as I sucked in a violent breath, I folded upright on the couch.

My heartbeat, so close to giving up, started to slam so hard in my chest that it seemed like it was punching against my ribs.

My hand flew to my chest as I sucked in fast, frantic breaths. Both the need for oxygen and the panic had me hyperventilating.

I couldn’t say how long it was until I could think a single thought other than breathing and panic.

When I did, though, I shot off the couch, ready to fight, to run, to…

But the attacker was gone.

In his place?

William.

Sitting in his electric wheelchair, using it to bar the door.

“He’s gone,” he said, making me sink back down onto the couch, my legs shaking so hard I was worried I might fall.

“You’re… sure?” I gasped between deep breaths.

“Yep,” William confirmed, watching me with a faraway look. “Ran off like he had a fire up his ass. ‘Course, I would too,” he said, reaching to tap something down by his leg.

It was only then I realized what about an old gentleman in a wheelchair could scare a man into running away from his crime.

The shotgun he likely had raised in his hand as he came barging in.

The door slamming against the wall.

That was William, of all people, coming to my rescue.

I tried to think the best of most people. But I kind of expected that if William heard me being brutally murdered, he would grumble about the racket and turn up his TV program.

This was… pleasantly surprising. And, you know, life-saving.

“Thank you,” I said as tears flooded my eyes, realizing how close I was to never seeing my family again, never seeing my work in a gallery, making love with Levee again, having and raising the babies I so desperately wanted.

To that, he just grunted as I pressed my hands to my eyes, trying to press hard enough to keep the tears from streaming down my cheeks.

He said nothing else as I tried to breathe through the adrenaline surging through me, making it impossible to think straight.

When I was finally breathing more slowly, evenly, I glanced back over at William.

He watched me for a long second, a muscle twitching in his jaw.

“I think it’s time to call my nephew.”

“Levee?” I asked, brows drawing together. “No.”

“Yes,” William shot back.

“No, he doesn’t need to be involved in this.”

“Hate to admit this shit but he’s the only one who can deal with this.”

“What?” I asked, confused.

“Call him.”

“I wouldn’t even know what to say,” I said, my heart aching at the idea of admitting just how much I’d been keeping from him.

William exhaled hard and his wheelchair made a mechanical buzzing sound as he moved forward toward the coffee table.

He reached for my phone and typed in a number I was shocked he knew by heart.

“You need to get here now,” he said, cutting off whatever Levee might have been saying. I could hear the murmur of Levee’s voice, making William look at me. “Alive. Just barely,” he added, then ended the call.

Then, without another word, he turned around and went back to his station just inside the door.

We sat there in tense, awkward silence, neither of us knowing what to say to try to ease the mood.

The mood I imagined would only feel even more strained when a very out-of-the-loop Levee arrived.

As the moments stretched on, I seemed to come back more into myself. Which made me more aware of the sensations going on in my body.

Namely, the suddenly sore throat. Like that first day of the flu when each swallow felt like you were choking down glass.

Was that what happened when someone got choked?

My nose was throbbing.

And the whole area around my mouth felt tender from the hand clamped there.

Small complaints in the big scheme of things.

But I could think of little else as my little clock that featured a different wild bird at each hour loudly clicked away the minutes.

Until, finally, there was a frantic knocking at the door.

“Jade!” Levee called through the door as his uncle moved away from it, then reached to open it.

Levee rushed inside.

“Seems like you two got a lot of shit to tell each other.”