Party Foul - Abby Knox Page 0,2

sweat. Levi had first-hand experience with that ruthless shadow of a man. The memories made his insides roil. Walls had no idea what he was talking about. If he did, he surely wouldn’t be running his gin-soaked mouth.

Thank fuck, Walls’ ranting and raving was muffled by the cab door slamming closed as it drove away.

Amped up with testosterone coursing through his veins from the scuffle, every muscle in Levi’s body remained taut and ready to pounce with a thousand pounds of force. Channeling that pent up energy, Levi hoisted himself up onto the delivery dock and took out his frustration on a pallet of vodka. He ripped open the plastic packaging with the switchblade from inside his leather jacket and picked up a bottle. Mavis won’t mind if I use the cheap stuff. He unscrewed the cap and poured the clear liquid over his hands. After taking a quick swig, he set down the bottle and rubbed his hands together, letting the alcohol remove all traces of that piece of trash from his skin. He just felt better using alcohol along with his hand-washing routine. His post-pandemic brain carried its imprints.

Spinning around to face the young woman, he had a mind to tell her to leave. Ordinarily he had no problem telling customers to hit the bricks. He did it about 15 times a night.

Her plump bottom lip hanging open in shock at what she’s just seen looked sweet as cherries, but that wasn’t what caught him off guard. Neither did her widened, beautiful eyes make him unable to keep up his gruff persona. Her pointed chin slightly trembling? That was a problem.

Oh shit. He’d scared her with that ugly mug of his. Not that he thought he was terrible looking, but he had a kind of crazy face when he was hopping mad. The take-down of Walls had been too short to work out the aggression. Levi worried the poor girl was looking back at him in fear that he might take out the rest of his energy on her. He would hate for her to think that, but he couldn’t hide his pissed-off face. And he definitely didn’t know what to do with someone who was crying.

Levi could handle kicking ass and taking names. The man was a champion de-escalator as bouncer at Crow Bar. He’d tossed out biker gang leaders twice his size and three times as smelly.

Blood and sweat? No problem. Tears? No clue how to deal. Man, woman or child, wet drops leaking from people’s eye holes was the Sudoku puzzle of human interaction.

“Hey, uh… Sorry you saw that. You shouldn’t be out here.”

She shook her head and dabbed the corner of her eye with the back of one delicate knuckle. He got a glimpse of a manicured fingernail, painted a soft brown color. Dark honey tendrils fell from the big bun on top of her head, into her face. “No, it’s not that. Fuck that guy, I wanted to watch you kick his ass for what he said to me. My stupid emotions got the better of me ‘cause nobody’s ever stuck up like that for me before,” she said.

He found that difficult to believe. She was somebody’s girl, for sure. Levi took one step toward her and paused when his eyes fell to her open leather handbag. Then his gaze fell to her feet: she wore tall boots that spoke of old money. He couldn’t say why he specifically thought of old money, but those boots made him think of people who rode horses, but not in a cowboy kind of way. People who did that horse stuff in that one super-boring event in the Olympics.

She was not from this neighborhood. Dockside girls didn’t dress like that. That was for sure. This one was from downtown, probably. Maybe Shoreline. Or the Historic District. Or Castle Hill. Definitely not the suburbs, and most definitely not Dockside.

“Oh,” he said. “What…what about you? Are you okay?”

Why was he stammering? This girl had him tongue-tied and he didn’t appreciate it.

“Fine, I’m fine,” she said, her trembling breath telling Levi she was anything but. She was a stunner, with her emotions right on the surface. Flushed, breathing rapidly, a continuing drip of tears from the corner of her eyes. Her plump lips remained parted as she looked up at him, her breath escaping in hot plumes of steam in the December air. Her perky little nose was beginning to turn pink against the cold.

If Levi got any closer,