Page 41 of Except Emerson (Detroit ABCs #7)

“W hat kind of antibiotics?” Hernán texted. “The same as before?”

“Yes, I washed out the wound but it was deep and the nurse practitioner recommended them again,” I answered.

After a protracted chase, Levi and I had caught Coral—and she hadn’t been happy about it, which she’d demonstrated with her teeth.

But even as I’d started my course of medicine, I hadn’t been thinking too much about the cat bite except as to how it had interrupted what was happening just before it occurred.

I couldn’t tell Hernán because he would have immediately texted Levi, and I couldn’t have them talking about that kiss.

I should have been the one talking about it, and… I wasn’t.

But right now, my friend wasn’t focused on romance. He was worried about bacterial infections and was currently mentioning that this was my fifth bite, wasn’t it?

“I thought we were making progress,” I told him. I heard the disappointment in my words as I spoke them into the phone. “She had just been cuddling me and purring.”

“I’m going to tell you something that you may not like, because you haven’t wanted to hear it before,” he returned, and I knew what was coming because yes, he had recommended this on several occasions since he’d given me the cat. “It may be time for Coral to live with someone else.”

“I think we’re forming bonds, or at least, we used to be. I’m not going to get rid of her.”

“I’m not talking about murder,” he wrote back. “Both of you might be happier if she was in a new home.”

“No.” I left it there and didn’t answer him again.

It was true that right now, the cat was in Levi’s home, hanging out and not biting.

Since her near-escape, she’d spent most of her time across the hall and we’d been closing our apartment doors so that there was no more wandering between our units.

I flipped my phone over so that I wouldn’t see what else Hernán was writing to me about Coral’s bad behavior and I returned to my previous task, which was going about as well as that conversation just had.

I squinted at the paper and tried to force the directions to make sense, but they absolutely didn’t.

There was no knock, but due to the ultra-thin walls in this building, I heard Levi open the front door.

I also heard him greet someone and another man’s voice responded.

Was August here? He hadn’t seemed like a morning person, since he’d never come to visit before noon.

It made sense because he’d most recently spent his time running a club that opened after midnight and closed when many people were arriving at the office.

Levi and I had already been up for hours today, beginning our day as he’d gone to practice and I’d taken a walk while he was on the river.

Maybe August was changing his schedule since the club was definitely closed now.

Levi had told me that the door was padlocked and they’d cleared out the interior.

His beautiful apartment in Detroit was also up for sale and he was living in the big house with the square pool, but he’d mentioned that he was thinking about getting rid of that, too.

“Why is he divesting all his assets?” I’d asked and so far, there hadn’t been a response other than “he’s says that he’s changing up his business” and “I don’t know, he won’t tell me.”

How did you say “busybody” in Spanish? When I heard the other apartment door open and voices in the hallway, I rushed over to open mine, too.

“Hey, Emerson,” Levi said. He stood next to what looked to be a human bear, a blonde guy as wide as the doorframe and menacing like a wild animal.

“Hello,” he told me, his voice raspy, and I felt my eyes widen. Who was this person?

It turned out that he was the husband of one of the Curran sisters, and also a friend of Liv’s husband Hunt. Levi introduced us before the bear left, and then I went across the hall to find out what was going on.

“He was here to talk about August,” Levi said as we sat on his couch, Coral on his lap.

“How do they know each other?” I asked.

“They don’t. Granger owns a restaurant now, but in a former life, he must have done something that was high-level and secret,” he answered.

“The guy can find out anything. He looked into August’s issues as a favor.

” He paused and shook his head slightly, as if he disapproved.

“I don’t like going behind my friend’s back, but what am I supposed to do? August won’t tell me anything himself.”

“Did that Granger guy get any information? What?” I leaned a little closer and Coral eyed me but didn’t object.

Levi lifted her onto the floor and told her to stay there, and then he put his arms around me to pull me closer.

I let my head rest on his shoulder and I held him, too.

“He wouldn’t give me specifics, like if August is going to be charged with something or even what he’s suspected of, but he did say that law enforcement is wrapping up a big investigation into organized crime in Detroit. ”

“Organized crime?” I was aware that the real stuff wasn’t anything like the movies I watched. “August is involved in that?”

“Maybe only peripherally, but Granger either doesn’t know or won’t say. He told me to mind my own business and keep myself the hell out of it. He’s on the side of the police.”

“As are you,” I pointed out. “And I am, too, because we’re all on the opposite side from organized crime. No wonder August wouldn’t tell you what was happening in his life.”

“This is bad,” he said. “This is much bigger than the other things he’s done, but he’s never had limits. He never knew when to stop. Shit,” he sighed.

“You can’t be involved with him at all, Levi. You do have to stay away. What if he was getting arrested and you happened to be there? First you’d go to jail, and then Ava would kill you. And I…”

I stopped, because I’d had the sudden realization that I would be in big trouble if Levi were gone.

“I won’t get arrested,” he told me and he sounded fairly confident about that, but who knew? And then he put his cheek against my hair and rested against me, like he also needed some support. “I’m going to go for a run to think about this,” he said, but he didn’t move.

“Maybe if he goes to jail, it would be a good thing,” I suggested. “You said that he was happy when his mom was there because he knew that she was safer, right? And maybe it would be the deterrent that would make him learn some limits.”

Levi didn’t respond affirmatively but he kept talking. “After you had the interview with him and told me what you thought about his business, I got worried,” he said. “I took the job with him so I could be closer—”

“That could have put you in a very bad position!” I pointed out. “Why did you do that?”

“Because he’s my friend and if you were right, then I wanted to know.

I also dropped in on his club one night and after that, I knew he was heading for trouble.

I could tell when I looked around at the clientele, because they were all either real gangsters or wanting to be.

I was waiting for a fight to break out or for someone to pull a gun.

August tried to get me to leave and he also tried to keep me away from the room behind the curtains in the back.

I watched until I saw a woman come out of there, shoving a poker chip down into her bra.

I asked one of the waitresses if I could get in on the game, but she looked at what I was wearing and said no. ”

“You dress very nicely,” I said angrily, and he laughed quietly and loosened his grip on me.

“I’m going to go for a run,” he repeated. “Will you be here when I get back?”

I hardly went anywhere and I also wasn’t done with my project, so I answered yes. Coral and I waited together while he changed and before he left, he scratched her head and then kissed me, just briefly. I stood at the front door and watched him jog down the block.

“Do you want to come over to my apartment?” I asked the cat, and she seemed to ignore me.

It was hard, after the progress we’d made, to witness this regression.

But as I went to close Levi’s door to keep her inside, she darted across the hallway.

Then she looked disdainfully at the piles of hardware and particleboard on the living room floor before turning her yellow eyes onto me.

“I’m trying to do something nice,” I explained. “I’m building this as a surprise.”

She seemed unimpressed, and what I’d produced so far was actually very underwhelming.

It was infuriating, as was this whole situation with August. What was happening with the guy that he was unwilling to tell Levi?

Why wouldn’t anyone give a straight answer anymore?

First there was Vivienne and her weird behavior, and then there was Levi’s dumb friend…

But it had started before that, hadn’t it?

When I was a kid, I’d existed in the confusing world of my mother’s truths/half-truths/lies.

And as I’d learned, my life was built on very shaky ground—I’d tried to shore it up, by fixing her finances and paying taxes, but there was no fixing the foundation. The foundation was her.

“And then I met Grant,” I told Coral. “He was shaky, too, but I worked hard on changing him.” In fact, I’d done such a good job that now he was absolutely fine without me.

He had been able to leave me in a crushed car that was leaking gas on the Lodge Freeway and continue with the rest of his life.

But I couldn’t seem to fix this mess of screws and round things—bolts—on the floor, and the words on the instruction sheets were impossible to get through. “You stay here,” I instructed Coral. I needed to sit on the porch for a moment.