Dallas Called My Ex Rich and Barren, So I Found Out He Was Neither novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Eleven Floors Lit

Reyna storms Kellum Tower to tell Levi to stop deciding what Dallas hears, finds the building half dark, sews a button onto his cuff, and ends up booking his tuxedo fitting.

The sign on McKinney Avenue promised forty-four floors.

The steel stopped at thirty-one, and the crane on top stood still against a flat gray sky.

I parked my Corolla in the visitor lot at nine on Monday and walked into Kellum Tower with my shoulders back.

The lobby was marble and quiet.

The reception desk had once held four women in navy suits.

Now it held a potted fern.

One security guard sat behind a podium with his chin on his chest.

I did not ask where everybody had gone.

I was not his wife anymore, and I had told myself so all the way down Interstate 35.

The elevator panel had buttons from one to forty-four.

Masking tape covered every button from thirteen to thirty-one.

I pressed twelve, because that was where Kellum Properties lived, and rode up alone.

The glass doors on twelve were propped open.

The hall beyond them was dark except for one lamp at the end.

I walked toward it.

Levi sat behind his father's big oak desk in his shirtsleeves.

A kolache in wax paper lay in front of him, and a steel thermos stood at his elbow.

He stood when he saw me.

The shirt was one I had pressed myself, and it was a size too large in the collar.

"You came," he said.

"I came to tell you to stop," I said.

"Stop what?"

"Deciding what Dallas gets to hear about me."

He came around the desk and leaned on the front of it with his arms folded.

"I never called anybody, Reyna."

I stared at him.

"I said it in front of every camera in that room," he said. "Eight stations took it down on their own."

"Because they're afraid of you," I said.

"Because they're afraid of my name," Levi said quietly. "It still does that."

"You told four hundred women you were the one who stopped coming to bed," I said.

"I did."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because you said it, and it's true."

My throat tightened.

"Why did you stop, Levi?"

"Rule one," he said.

I opened my mouth and shut it.

"That's not fair."

"You made the rule in a cooler with a mouthful of me."

I felt my face go hot.

"Fine," I said. "Not us. The rumor. You can end it with one sentence. Say you're fine, say you've got a houseful of babies coming, and it dies by Friday."

"I can't."

"You won't."

"If I deny it," he said slowly, "people go looking for what else is true."

"What else is true?"

He looked at his hands.

"That I'm tired, Reyna."

It was not the whole answer.

I could hear that it wasn't, but he sounded so tired that I stopped.

Then I saw his cuff.

The button on his left sleeve hung by one gray thread, swinging every time he breathed.

I opened my purse, took out the little tin that has lived in every purse I have owned, and threaded a needle without looking.

"Give me your arm," I said.

"It's fine."

"Your arm, Levi."

He held it out.

I stood between his knees, because that was where the angle was, and folded his cuff back.

The skin of his wrist was warm and the tendons moved under it.

I put the needle through the button and the fabric and felt his pulse beat against my knuckle.

It was fast.

I made four stitches, then four more, and I did not look up.

He shifted against the desk.

I noticed, and I told myself it was the edge of a very old desk.

"There's a lot of room in this shirt," I said, to the cuff.

"I've been busy."

"You don't eat," I said.

"I eat."

"A kolache is not dinner."

"It was breakfast," he said.

I knotted the thread and bent my head and bit it off an inch from his skin.

He made a sound in his throat that he tried to turn into a cough.

I straightened up.

We were close enough that I could see the chip in his tooth.

"The Heart Ball is Saturday week," he said. His voice had gone rough. "I'm on the stage with my mother. My black tux doesn't fit anymore."

"You have six."

"I have the one I wear."

I let go of his wrist.

"It needs taking in," he said. "I want you to do it. Nobody else touches it."

I should have said no.

I looked at his mouth.

"Thursday," I said. "Seven o'clock. Third floor at Tatum's, after we close."

"I'll be there."

"Wear what you have on," I said, turning for the door. "I want to see exactly how much you've lost."

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