I WAS AT the airport an hour after Levee had asked me to come see her. Before that moment, I hadn’t even known visiting her was an option or I probably would have taken up residence in Maine weeks ago. The trip was long, and I flew standby the whole way, but finally, at seven the next morning, after having slept in the Philly Airport, I was back in the same state as my Designer Shoes. I grabbed my rental car and headed directly to the address she had texted me the night before.
At nine o’clock on the dot, I marched through the doors and up to the receptionist desk.
“Hi. I’m Sam Rivers. I’m here to see—”
The thin blonde sitting behind the desk immediately cut me off. “For privacy, we don’t use guests’ names.”
“Oh, right,” I said awkwardly, trying to figure out how to explain to her why I was there without using Levee’s name. “Well, my name is Sam—”
“Rivers. Yes, I got that. Please allow me a minute to look you up.” She smiled, but it came off as more of a grimace.
Well, isn’t she a bitchy ray of sunshine.
I anxiously tapped the toe of my boot as I imagined Levee sitting somewhere nearby. She was probably chewing her manicured thumbnail into submission. I dropped my gaze to my shoes in an attempt to cover the shit-eating grin I was hopeless to hide.
A deep voice interrupted my thoughts. “Please come with us, sir.”
Two men in dark suits, who might as well have stepped out of the movie Men in Black, suddenly appeared at my side.
I nodded with a smile, my stomach bubbling with excitement as I followed them through a set of double doors.
She’s so close.
Only she wasn’t close at all.
They led me to a set of glass doors that opened to the back parking lot.
“Uhh…” I mumbled when Agent K shoved it wide.
“You’re not permitted on the premises, Mr. Rivers. If you return, the local authorities will be notified immediately. This is your first and only warning.”
“I’m sorry. There must be confusion.” I lowered my voice to a whisper as I said, “Levee Williams is expecting me.”
“There’s no guest here by that name. Please don’t make this difficult,” Agent J bit out.
My anticipation quickly swung to anger as disappointment settled like acid in my stomach. Stepping forward, I seethed, “She gave me the address. I’m not leaving without seeing her.”
“Get. Out.” He snapped a finger to the parking lot and leveled me with a menacing glare.
I didn’t budge. Fuck this asshole if he thinks he’s keeping me from her. “Find. Levee.”
“I won’t ask you to leave again,” Agent K declared as J slipped around behind me.
“Fuck you.” I pulled my phone from my pocket and dialed Levee’s number.
She answered on the first ring, and if my head hadn’t been about to explode, I would have given her shit about it.
“Are you here yet?” she asked.
“Yes, and no. Security is kicking me out.”
“What?” she shrieked so loud I had to pull the phone away from my ear.
“Goodbye, sir,” Agent J growled, shoving me toward the doors.
I stood my ground as rage boiled in my veins. I poked a hard finger into his brick wall of a chest. “Don’t fucking touch me again.”
“Sam, what the hell is going on? Let me talk to them.”
Gritting my teeth, I lifted the phone. “Levee wants to talk to you.”
They glanced at each other in unspoken agreement.
Neither took the phone.
One did take my arm though—and twisted it behind my back. The other held the door open while he shoved me out of it. My phone skidded across the concrete as I stumbled forward, barely staying on my feet as the door shut and locked behind me.
What. The. Fuck. Just. Happened?
The muscle in my jaw twitched as I fought to regain some sort of composure that didn’t have me shattering that fucking glass door and killing two men. Then I heard Levee’s voice coming from my phone on the ground.
“Sam!”
Snatching it up, I was only able to grit out, “I’m going to jail. It may be for a long fucking time.” I stomped toward the door and banged on the glass, but the MIB had already walked away.
“What? Sam, stop and tell me what’s going on!”
“I just got fucking thrown out for trying to come visit you!” I shouted. I closed my eyes and sucked in a deep breath, fully aware that this wasn’t her fault. “I’m sorry,” I quickly apologized.
“Just calm down, okay? Let me go talk to them, and I’ll call you back. Don’t. Leave.”
“Funny. That’s not what they said as they tossed me on the street,” I snapped then sighed. “Sorry. Again.”
“It’s okay. You want me to have them fired?” she asked in jest, and if I could have slowed the adrenaline pumping through my system, I probably would have smiled.
I raked a hand through my hair and huffed, “That would be fan-fucking-tastic.”
“Consider it done. Now, chill out and I’ll see you in a minute.”
Chill out.
Yeah, that wasn’t at all what I wanted to do, but with the promise of seeing her in a minute still ringing in my ears, I managed to pack it down.
I stomped around the side of the building to my rental car.
Then I waited.
And waited.
And fucking waited some more.
For over an hour, I sat in the car, staring at the entrance of the building. My phone wasn’t ringing, and Levee’s had started going straight to her voicemail. I was already tired from having traveled all night, and as the adrenaline drained from my body, I was suddenly exhausted.
Grabbing my phone, I shot out a quick text letting Levee know that I was going to grab some coffee but wouldn’t be far.
She didn’t respond.
“Who did this?” I screamed like the diva I prided myself in never becoming. But, then again, no one had ever meddled in my personal life before.
“Calm down, Miss Williams.” Doctor Post and someone, whose name I’d promptly forgotten but had been introduced as the center’s head administrator, were sitting in a small conference room, attempting to defuse me.
“I swear to God, you either show me those fucking papers or I will ruin you! You won’t be able to pay someone to come to this place when I’m done with you.”
“We are attempting to locate the physical copy of your sign-in papers. Our records are digital.”
“Try harder!” I yelled as they both scurried from the room.
I snatched the telephone off the hook. My cell phone had died shortly after hanging up with Sam, but I’d been using the phone in the conference room to repeatedly call Henry. I knew he was traveling to see me, but his flight should’ve landed already. The really unnerving part was when I got the same radio silence from Devon as well. Something was going on, and clearly, I was the only one in the dark.
“Hey, beautiful!” Henry purred when he fucking finally answered.
“Swear to me you didn’t know about this shit with Sam,” I gritted out through clenched teeth.
Henry gasped. “What did my lover-boy do?”
“Sam didn’t do anything. But someone put his name on my list of banned visitors. You filled out my paperwork, Henry. Please, please, please, tell me you didn’t do this.”
“Son of a bitch,” he whispered then sighed.
My pulse raced for whatever answer he was about to give me.
“I didn’t fill out your paperwork, Levee. I started chatting with the male orderly, so Devon filled out your papers.”
My heart splintered. I almost wished it had been Henry instead. We could’ve had a huge-ass fight where he explained why he had done it, and I would have put him in his place for interfering. We wouldn’t have spoken for a week, but we would have eventually gotten over it.
I couldn’t say the same for Devon. While I considered him part of my family, I couldn’t lose sight of the fact that he was also my employee who obviously didn’t know his role. I was supposed to be able to trust this man with my life, and he was taking advantage of that trust for some reason that was lost on me completely. Fine, he didn’t like Sam, but he wasn’t required to. His only job was to make sure I was safe. And the way my stomach knotted at this little revelation made me feel anything but.
“Shit,” I hissed into the phone.
“I’m sorry. Look, Carter and I will be there in about an hour. Devon’s on the flight behind us. We’ll all come together and figure this out. Just tell them to let Sam in. They can’t keep you from seeing him.”
I groaned. “Apparently, they can. They’re refusing to let me see him until they speak to a member of my family. I’m not calling my parents to ask permission to see my boyfriend, Henry.” Tears welled in my eyes.
It was too much.
All of it.
I was supposed to be relaxing and getting things under control. Instead, I felt like a prisoner inside not only these walls, but my entire fucking life as well.
And just like that, the familiar free fall engulfed me.
I closed my eyes and fought the ache in my lungs.
“Is Sam still there?” Henry asked.
“I think so,” I managed to squeak.
“Just tell him to wait. I’ll be there soon. We’ll get this fixed, okay?”
But I didn’t want to tell Sam to wait. I wanted to see him.
And go home with him.
And let him do exactly what he had unwittingly been doing since the day we met—healing me from the outside in.
Suddenly, my eyes popped open. Why couldn’t I have that?
Yes, my life had spiraled out of control. But the only person who was stopping me from taking charge of my own future was me.
Levee Michelle Williams was a fighter. I hadn’t gotten my success in the music industry by sitting around and letting people tell me how to run my life. I had done it by clawing my way to the top with nothing more than a guitar and head full of dreams.
Fuck this place. No one was going to tell me how to run my life—a life I suddenly realized I never wanted to leave. And that epiphany hadn’t come from the bottom of a prescription bottle or inside those walls. It had come in the shape of a gorgeous man who’d saved me with nothing more than a quick wit and a simple conversation. And he was sitting only yards away in a parking lot because his name was on a magical fucking list.
I dropped the phone from my ear and pushed the conference room door open, then the hallway door, and finally, the front door of the entire building. I didn’t stop until my high heels hit the asphalt of the parking lot.
Voices called my name behind me, but they were all muted by my newfound determination.
My feet kept moving in search of a pair of golden eyes that I soon realized were nowhere to be found. As I came up empty, nerves didn’t take over. I didn’t have a million thoughts of guilt and worry. I was no longer allowing the free fall to dictate my life.
I squared my shoulders and smiled proudly, feeling like myself for the first time in months.
“Levee!” Doctor Post called, but I quickly slipped behind a car, squatting low until the voices disappeared.
I wasn’t going back, not even to explain that I wasn’t going back. I wasn’t in the mood for an argument. I was in the mood to start living.
Without my phone, I couldn’t call Sam, but there was only one place I needed to go. So I started down the sidewalk and hailed a cab.
He’d know where to find me.