Page 49 of Tower
Both Levi and I are grinning as we climb on his motorcycle to head back home.
I straddle the seat behind him, squeezing him with my arms and my thighs.
“You smilin’ back there?” he asks.
“Of course I am. You better be smiling too.”
He turns his head over one shoulder to show me. “I’m gonna be smilin’ the rest of my life. Never thought you could ever love me for real.”
I make a squeaking sound. “Hey! I never said I love you.”
“Didn’t you? I thought you did.”
“Asshole,” I mutter without any heat. I’m still grinning as much as he is.
He laughs uninhibitedly. “I love you, sweetheart.”
“Good.” I sniff. “I love you too.”
We aren’t very far from base, so it doesn’t take us long to get back. As we pull into the driveway, Carlotta waves excitedly. Dep must have assigned her to take the guard post Sick deserted. I wave back and, at her concerned question, call out that I’m okay.
When Levi drives us into the courtyard, more folks are gathered there than I’ve ever seen. No one but the guards is evidently doing their tasks right now. Everyone is waiting to see what happened to me and to be ready if Levi returned needing help.
Excited chatter bursts out when they see us driving up, and we’re surrounded before Levi can get the motorcycle into park.
Becca pounces as soon as I get my feet on the ground, swallowing me in a big hug. Then Jen hugs me too, and Dep bombards Levi with one question after another. Hawk is grinning from the lawn chair he dragged over in sight of the driveway so he could keep watch for us, and everyone wants to know what the hell Sick was thinking since they discovered he was missing and had already pieced together that he was responsible for my disappearance.
Levi keeps his arm around me as we try to respond to all the questions and exclamations of relief. When Becca says how relieved she is Levi got there in time, I wouldn’t dream of contradicting her.
He did get there in time—in time for exactly what I needed. We both did.
But Levi says in his familiar gruff drawl, “I didn’t do any of the rescuin’. Got there and she’d already saved herself. She musta done a handstand or somethin’ to clobber Sick with her feet the way she did.”
The group’s excitement over this pronouncement is loud and amused. I flush and stare at the ground. “I didn’t do a handstand. Just kicked him as best I could.”
Levi squeezes me with his arm. “It was a goddamn work of art. Nobody else better get on the wrong side-a her, or they’ll find out the hard way.”
I join in with everyone else’s laughter, but I can tell Levi means it. And that the others believe it.
I’m not sure I’ve ever been quite so proud of myself.
The planned run for the day gets postponed so they can fix and retrieve my dad’s pickup. By lunch, it’s back, parked in itsnormal spot with a mended tire and as many of the dents banged out as the guys could manage. The windshield is hopelessly broken, and there’s nothing to be done about that. So they just cleaned out the shattered glass.
It can be driven without a windshield until we find something to replace it.
I’m trying to keep up energy, but my body hurts like hell from so many pulled muscles, and I’ve got a headache from the bump on the skull that still hasn’t gone away. I’m relieved when Levi grabs both our lunches and tells everyone we’re going to eat in our room.
Levi collapses in his chair, and I collapse on the couch. We eat our sandwiches and drink our water and don’t move for a long time.
After a while, he hefts himself to his feet and stares down at me.
“What?” I ask, hoping he’s not going to want to have passionate sex at the moment because I’m definitely not up to it. “You’re not thinking about fucking right now, are you?”
He snorts. Then snorts again. Then laughs in choppy huffs as he lifts my head to make room for him to sit on the couch.
I’m about to rearrange, but he settles my head on his lap instead.
That’s just fine with me.
