Page 116 of Burning for You
Levi
A week on, I’m still fighting myself. A part of me insists on getting back to her side, but another keeps telling me I would be a fool to do so. If she’s happy now with Mendez, I don’t think I can take the humiliation and the hurt from seeing it with my own eyes.
She’s better off with him, or so I keep telling myself. It’s the kind of truth that hurts.
What hurts more, though, is the fact that in the smallest corner of my heart, I’m still hoping it is my baby. Something is poking at that corner, a warning that tells me I’m going to regret giving up on Carolyn.
Trying to forget about the world, I’ve joined Jesse in coking a few times.
I don’t know how people get to like it. It does make you forget what you’ve just said or done, but it doesn’t numb you from the matters that maim you.
Regardless, I’m finally ready to start a new life here, in my home. It’s time to bring Montana back into my bones. While my brother runs the ranch, most of the time he lets me down easy by giving me domestic responsibilities. “I’ll let you be a pussy for one menstrual cycle,” the son of a bitch once quipped.
But this afternoon, I come home from grocery shopping to a deep-thinking Jesse. I’m not sure if it’s an effect of a new drug that I don’t know about, because I don’t smell alcohol or coke on him.
“Levi…” When he doesn’t call me Jeans, I know something is wrong. “I don’t know what to make of it, but your missus called.”
“She called you? You don’t even have a phone!”
“No, she called the midget’s house.”
“What?”
“I was pissed off, so I hung up. But she said someone was going to take you.”
“You’d better go back to rehab! If we’re gonna live together, you can’t drive me insane like this.”
“No. No. Listen. She should’ve been here by now, if she was on the way here like she said.”
Why on earth is she here in Montana? That deep corner of my heart suddenly starts spitting out signals…
She’s here for me.
While all this time my mind has been bulldozed by jealousy and helplessness, right now I have no doubt that I’ve got to be there for her. She needs me. I can feel it in my bones and in every layer of my skin. I have to get to her, whatever it takes.
I dump the grocery bags and snatch my handgun, while my brother still looks stupefied. “Jesse, get your gun. Come on!”
I frantically call Carolyn’s number, using my new phone, as Jesse takes our truck to the road. “Carolyn, please, call me back.”
We drive along the route which we think Carolyn might’ve taken, and soon enough, we find an abandoned car.
“God!” I cry as I check the inside. The key is still in the ignition, and she was here. I can smell her. When I see a photo in her bag, I fall to my knees, head in my hands.
Baby Holt, 7 weeks.
A distance away, Jesse studies the skid and foot marks on the road. “There were three of them,” he says.
I turn on the satellite navigation. “There’s an address here.”
Jesse looks at the location. “It’s only five miles from here. We were just there. She’s been taken to another place.”
“Bastard! It must’ve been Teller or Bright.”
“If I was a snake from California, or in this case, New York, wanting to sort out a problem, I would hire the Pit Vipers.”
Those militia men. Jesse used to be a part of them, but they had a disagreement and he left. Their relationship is pretty volatile.
“I can’t lose her, Jesse!”