STORM: A Standalone Romance (103 page)

              I laughed in his face. “You really think I was in shock?”

              “Were you not?”

              “I saw something I wanted and I went for it,” I said. “You’re the one who keeps trying to find meaning that isn’t there.”

              “You mean you just wanted to have sex?”

              “Is that so hard to understand?” I cocked my head at him, goading him to contradict me. “A person wants what she wants.”

              Levi kept his face carefully blank. “And what does a person want right now?”

              “A going away party.” I kissed him, and he didn’t resist. I hadn’t wanted him to resist, but it surprised me all the same—Levi with all these hang-ups and sensibilities and meanings he thought he understood. Levi, whom I barely knew, pulling my pants apart for the second time that day. I couldn’t think of a single man I’d been with more than once. Each one was a means to an end, the quickest way I could come up with to get to the nothingness I craved—the momentary completion.

              “A bed,” Levi said hoarsely, pressing his arousal against me, showing me just how interested he was in a repeat performance.

              “Here is fine.” I fell backward onto the cushions splayed over the floor, kicking my pants off, relieved beyond words that I was going to get this—easy as pie—from someone I knew was capable of getting me off. A part of me I hadn’t accessed in a while actually felt good that I was going to be able to make Levi feel good. I felt almost magnanimous. He’d taken care of me earlier. I was about to make sure he was going to feel just as good as I was.

              Levi felt good inside of me. The way he buried himself in my body felt amazing, compelled me to feel the kind of happiness I usually only found in orgasm. Each stroke he made strummed something inside of me. The way he held my head, still mindful of how I’d bumped it against the door earlier, made something inside of me feel so good that it almost hurt.

              We moved together, breathed together, and there wasn’t desperation, guilt, or obsession. It didn’t matter that we were there on the floor of the house that I hated, pushing and pulling against each other, our movements softened by the pillows beneath it. Each thrust was something of beauty and pleasure. When we finally reached that peak and tumbled down, almost in tandem, there wasn’t darkness but light. It was something that was beyond my grasp of understanding.

              I’d craved that darkness, that nothing. It’s why I had initiated sex with him in the first place—because I knew he could take me there. I wasn’t prepared for this—this light. I didn't have a clue how or why it happened, but I wanted it again. It left me lighter, banished my pervasive self-loathing.

              It confused me, but lying there, my arm around a man who was just full of surprises, I was willing to see it through to the end.

              We took turns in the shower, got dressed leisurely, all in a comfortable silence that I was strangely at peace with. Normally, after climaxing, my brain played host to a tumult of anger and grief. I felt almost normal, almost at peace.

              “I know that you want to go to New York City,” Levi said, buttoning his shirt as I pulled my hair back, “but I understand that you might have a lot of loose ends to tie up around here. You’ll have to make arrangements for the house, I imagine, and give notice at the bar.”

              I smiled at him and bent down to retrieve the only thing I actually needed.

              “I’m ready when you are,” I said, shoving a shoebox into a plastic shopping bag.

              He blinked at me. “How can you be ready? You haven’t even packed.”

              “I’ve packed everything I intend on taking with me.”

              “You have a purse, the clothes you’re wearing, and a shoebox in a bag,” he said, incredulous. “Out of the contents of this entire house, that’s all you’re taking?”

              “It’s all I need.”

              Levi laughed. “Look, I promise the jet isn’t going anywhere. We’re not in any hurry here. This is a decently big house. Don’t you want to at least pack a suitcase?”

              I barely suppressed a shudder. All of my suitcases were upstairs, in the closet of my bedroom, and I simply didn’t go upstairs anymore.

              “I don’t need a suitcase,” I said. “If I need something, I’ll buy it once I get to New York City.”

              “You’re being ridiculous,” Levi said. “Now, we’re not leaving here until you’re properly packed. You’re used to living here. Things are different in the city—more expensive. You don’t want to rebuild your wardrobe from scratch. You’ll need more clothes. Your jacket is pitiful. It won’t keep you warm.”

              I sighed and opened the shoebox, tilting it so he could see inside. It was full of paper money, tips and paydays I’d squirreled away for an entire year, buying nothing except the bare essentials to keep me alive. I hadn’t counted it lately, but I knew there was a lot there. Enough to start fresh in the city.

              “You’re packing a bag,” Levi announced. Apparently the billionaire was unimpressed by the savings account. He walked briskly away, and I stared after him dumbly, not comprehending just what he was doing until I heard the creak of the staircase and gagged.

              “Don’t!” I tried to shout, but it came out in a weak rasp. The shoebox fell from my limp grasp and bills scattered across the floor. I forced my legs into action and dashed after him, pulling him backward from the stairs, making him struggle to keep his feet.

              “What the hell are you trying to do?” Levi demanded, whirling around to face me. “Trying to kill me, too?”

              “Stay off the stairs,” I hissed, surprising him with my vehemence.

              “Meagan, I’m just trying to make sure you’re prepared to leave all of this behind,” he said slowly. “You have to have things you care about beyond the money in your shoebox.”

              “Stay the fuck off the stairs.” I yanked at him again so that he was standing back on the first floor, with me.

              His mouth tried to form words, and he looked at me, then past me at the living room, understanding finally dawning on him.

              “You’ve been living just in the living room,” he said. “Not even sleeping on a bed.”

              “Your pity is the opposite of helping,” I snarled at him, relieved to have access to my rage. Rage was much more preferable than horror.

              “Is there something bad upstairs?” Levi asked gently. “Something we should tell someone about?”

              I laughed derisively at him. “If you think there’s a body decomposing up there, you’re an idiot.” No one needed to know what happened up there. I wouldn’t wish that knowledge on anyone.

              “I don’t understand why you won’t go upstairs,” he said. “Help me understand.”

              “It’s none of your concern why I won’t go up there,” I said, trying to be flippant and distract him from the fact that I was having the strongest urge to gag again. I wasn’t so sure that the whiskey I’d had earlier was going to stay put this time.

              “Why have you been sleeping on the floor? There have to be at least three bedrooms in this place. What’s wrong with them?”

              “If this is your idea of helping me, then my brother’s probably rolling around in whatever box they put him in.” I glared daggers at Levi, willing him to just shut up and let me leave with the shoebox. I’d already resolved to trip him no matter what the physical consequences were if he tried to go up the stairs again.

              “I do want to help you,” Levi insisted, “but I need to understand how to help you. Do you want me to go upstairs for you and pack a bag with whatever I might find?”

              “If you try to walk up those stairs again, I will lose my mind,” I warned him. “It’s as simple as that. Zero mystery.”

              “All you’re going to take is the shoebox with the money?” he asked.

              “Yes. That’s all I want, and all I need.”

              “I have to tell you,” Levi said, stepping away from the stairs, making me breathe a little easier. “I didn’t think helping you was going to be this complicated.”

              “I don’t think there’s anything complicated to it,” I said, turning away from him and bending down to pick up the money I’d dropped in my panic. “I want to go to New York City. All I want to take is this box. I’m sure there are people who crave that kind of simplicity.”

              I walked right by a gaping Levi and into the dusk, not as sure as I usually was that he’d follow me, and not so sure I wanted him to.

We drove to the airport in a much less comfortable silence than before. If only he hadn’t tried to go upstairs, or if he’d deferred to my reasoning—even if I was beyond reason—that he should just forget about it. We could’ve traveled in comfort, happy with each other, secure in the knowledge that this was the right decision. This was really what I wanted, wasn’t it? For the first time, I wasn’t so sure.

              Escape was what I’d wanted—that much I knew. I’d wanted desperately to get out of that house, out of that town. Matt had gone to New York City to try to find his place in this world, and I’d envied him for it. I didn’t like being left behind, and liked it even less when the true ugliness reared its head. But Matt was my big brother. His courage in leaving the small town behind for the big city inspired me to do the same.

              Now that my brother was dead, however, what did I have to aspire to?

              He’d asked me to stay put while he tried to establish himself, tried to build a safe place for me to be with him, and I had, but now I didn’t have Matt to think about. I could go wherever I wanted to go. It didn’t have to be New York City; I could try and find my fortune anywhere.

              But Matt still existed, in a way, in the form of Levi, who frowned into the night in front of us, illuminated by the headlights of his rental car. For a billionaire, I wasn’t sure why he was driving himself. I wasn’t sure why he was so much as tolerating my brand of crazy. I still couldn’t believe that I’d had sex with him inside of the hell house. It was like giving a huge middle finger to some of the shit that had happened there, which was incredibly empowering, but still scary. I didn’t want people in that house. I didn’t want people knowing how insane that place made me.

              Yet here Levi was. Even after everything, he was driving me to the airport, ready to fly with me on his jet to New York City.

              He didn’t even know me.

              “Levi…”

              “Yes?” He glanced at me briefly before redirecting his attention to the curves in the road ahead.

              “You’ve already helped me.”

              He raised his eyebrows but didn’t say anything—didn’t even glance at me to see where I was going with this.

              “You’ve already helped me,” I repeated like an idiot. “My brother asked you to help me, and you did. You don’t have to do anything else, once we land in New York City. I release you, I guess, from whatever obligation you have.”

              “You mean like I released you from the obligation you thought you had to give me an orgasm?” he retorted. I realized he was mocking me, and snorted at him.

              “Whether you realize it or not, you helped me by coming to that town and telling me what had happened,” I told him. I wanted him to know as much as the truth as I could tell him. Maybe it would help Levi fill in some of the blanks. He probably deserved that much. I could tell that he cared for my brother—cared enough about him, at least, that he’d seek me out as per my brother’s wishes.

              “I don’t think I helped you very much by letting you know your brother is dead,” Levi scoffed.

              “How else would I have found out?” I argued. “It was my brother who told me to stay put. If I didn’t know he was gone, who knows how long I would’ve stayed in that town…that job…that house.”

              “Your brother wanted you to stay there?”

              “Only until he saved up enough money to move me to the city,” I said. “That was the plan before he died.”

              “Which is why he asked me to help,” Levi said. “He wanted me to help get you to New York City, like he’d promised.”

              “That’s right,” I said. “That’s why I’m saying that your obligation to my brother ends once we land. You don’t even have to give me a ride from the airport.”

              “Don’t be silly,” Levi said. “I’m having a car meet us at the airport. It would be ludicrous if I didn’t take you to wherever you needed to go. And wasteful. Where do you want to go, once we land?”

              I froze. The plan had always been to get out of my hometown and get to New York City. I hadn’t ever thought very hard about the next part of what was going to happen. New York City had always seemed like the culmination of everything—not a beginning.

              “Meagan, do you even have anywhere to go in New York City?” Levi seemed more resigned than incredulous, which meant he was getting to know me better with each passing revelation.

“No, but I’m sure I’ll find my way,” I said, forcing cheer into my voice, even if the idea was daunting. “I have enough money for several nights at a hotel. And then the rest of everything will fall into place.”

              “I’m half a mind to turn this car right back around and drive you home,” he warned.

              “Then you wouldn’t be helping me,” I reminded him. “You’d be back to owing my brother one.”

              “You don’t understand,” Levi said, wheeling in to the airport entrance. I noticed that he bypassed all of the regular signage threatening prosecution and dismemberment and all forms of punishment that led all other motorists to the entrance of the terminal, following other routes, waved on by security personnel. “I don’t just owe your brother ‘one.’ I owe him my entire life, and that’s why I’m going to do everything in my power to get you exactly what you need to be successful.”

              “I’m going to be successful. You wait and see. I don’t know what I’m going to be doing, yet, but I’m going to be good at it. I have a strong work ethic.”

              “I witnessed you physically pushing paying customers out of the bar where you work and locking the door during business hours.” Levi stared at me meaningfully as he parked the car on the tarmac near a small but sleek plane that I figured had to be the jet he’d mentioned.

              “If you’ll remember, it was for a very good reason,” I said, raising my own eyebrows at him. “An extremely pleasurable reason.”

              “Yes, it was extremely pleasurable,” Levi agreed. “When we land in New York City, you’ll be joining me in the car I’ve ordered to meet us, you’ll let me take you out to dinner, and you’ll be staying with me in my townhouse until I decide that you’re ready to be out on your own.”

“Is everyone in the city so bossy?” I asked, wrinkling my nose as a valet opened my door for me.

              “New York City is very different from your…hamlet.” Levi shook his head at the valet who was trying to pluck my plastic bag from my grasp—ostensibly to put under the plane for safe keeping. We walked to the plane, and I saw that he was gallantly offering me his arm when I was a couple of yards away. I slipped my arm through his.

              “Hamlet is the nicest way I’ve ever heard my town described,” I remarked, enjoying the warmth of his body next to me in the cold night. It was going to be a harsh winter—everyone was saying so—but at least I wouldn’t stick around to find out. New York City seemed like paradise. I fully expected to step off the plane and into tropical summer or something.

              “The town was nice enough.” Levi helped me up the steps to the plane as if he were afraid I’d tumble down them.

              “The town was a dump.” Especially compared to the inside of this jet. There were several seats and a long couch covered in buttery soft camel-colored leather. It was the nicest room I’d ever seen, and it was inside a plane. I slipped my hand down it, wondered what it would feel like against my bare skin, and realized I wanted to find out.

              I wanted to find out specifically with Levi.

              That was a strange thing to realize—that as an attendant closed the door and Levi sat down next to me on the couch, I wanted to have sex with this man and this man only. It wasn’t that we were about to take off with him as my only option until we landed again. No, it was that lightness I’d experienced after we were together. The opposite of shame. The sense that things were going to get better and better. I wanted to be with him—needed to be with him—in order to see this new feeling through.

              I never thought anything was going to get better. I’d come to believe that I was stuck in some kind of awful limbo, forced to creep around that damn house, afraid of memories of the past.

              It was Levi who’d done what my brother couldn’t. He’d saved me—or at least gotten me out of there.

              The sudden pressure of takeoff made me gasp. I’d been lost in my thoughts, lost in my wonderment that this was actually happening. I fully expected to wake up suddenly and see that it was morning, light coming in through the windows of the house as I stretched on my cushion pallet and examined my soreness and stiffness from sleeping there.

              “This isn’t a dream, is it?” I asked, looking up at Levi.

              “I was just wondering the same thing.”

              I laughed at him. “You probably fly in this thing all the time.”

              “For business, sure. Not for something like this.”

              “I’m not just business?”

              “Absolutely not.”

              I looked out one of the windows, hoping to catch one last look at the town I’d grew up in, the town that had let me down and nearly destroyed me. I wanted to give it some parting shot, a double-handed middle finger salute, for example, but I didn’t recognize anything from below. There were no constellations of ground lights that meant anything to me, and maybe that was just as important to understand.

              That town and the house within it hadn’t been my home. I could make my home elsewhere.

              I was going to the place Levi called home, and I could stay there for as long as I wanted, as long as it took me to figure out just how I was going to make it in New York City.

              Did he have to know that I had no intention of leaving him anytime soon? That could be my little secret for the time being.

              I couldn’t leave someone who made me feel the way that Levi did, not until I figured out why and how to make it happen with anyone else who crossed my path. I craved that goodness, craved that light, and was quickly figuring out how to wean myself off the darkness that had been my sole friend for years of my life.

              “Do you have your mile-high club membership?” I asked, grinning as Levi flushed and directed a forceful nod at the attendant, who was busily serving us a pair of cocktails.

              “If you mean what I think you do, the answer’s no.”

              “No?” I was surprised. “You’re not one of those kinky, repressed billionaires who has sex with beautiful women at every possible opportunity?”

              “I work hard,” he said, sipping the drink. I was pleased to see that it was whiskey, and wondered when he’d alerted the attendant to his change of preferred liquors. I took a sip of the drink placed in front of me and smiled. They were both Manhattans—very appropriate. “And there’s only one beautiful woman I could think of right now whom I’d want to have sex with.”

              “Flattery will get you nowhere,” I said, clinking my glass with his. “You already know I’d be more than willing to have sex with you. You don’t have to lie to me.”

              “Lie about what?” Levi looked genuinely confused, which was cute.

              “About the way I look.”

              He shook his head and frowned at me. “You’re a beautiful woman, Meagan. That’s no lie.”

              “I’m average, at best,” I said. “What I lack in looks I make up for with forwardness.”

              It was his turn to laugh. “Believe me, you’re the full package on those two fronts. Haven’t you looked at yourself in a mirror?”

              I generally tried to avoid that, but that wasn’t something I thought would make for good conversation, so I just shrugged.

              “You have an amazing figure, if you don’t mind me saying so,” he said. “And your hair is a shade of auburn that most women would pay top dollar for a stylist to replicate.”

              “It’s just red hair,” I said, rolling my eyes at him.

              “It’s auburn,” he insisted, “and don’t get me started on those green eyes.”

              “Enough.” I sipped my drink, embarrassed. “I wasn’t fishing for compliments.”

              “I’m more than ready to dole them out, especially if you don’t actually think you’re beautiful.”

              It was hard to think of myself with that adjective, especially when I’d felt so ugly for so long. I’d been living in an ugly place, doing ugly things to get by as recently as yesterday. If Levi hadn’t come along, I would’ve been mired there for God knew how long, waiting for my brother to save me.

              “Well, I’m not a member of the mile-high club,” I said, falling back on my old faithful way out of any situation I didn’t feel a hundred percent about. “You think you could help make it happen for a peasant like me?”

              “Tell you what.” Levi waved the attendant away, who vanished into the cockpit with the pilot. “If you can admit that you’re beautiful, we can join the mile-high club together.”