Page 88 of Levi

I shake my head. “Never.”

“Just to be absolutely sure, I zoomed in on his jaw. It’s the same jaw.”

“I believe you, Benji. It’s him. I just came from the house. His beard’s gone.”

Benji’s mouth drops open. “They’ve already shaved his beard? Damn, that didn’t take long, did it? I’ve been sitting up here being furious on your behalf for an hour so you wouldn’t have to do the first hour of it by yourself. That’s the plan. That’s as far as I’ve gotten. I usually have three contingencies by now and I have nothing, because there’s no version of this I can spin where it didn’t happen to you.”

“I don’t know what to say. I’m completely shell-shocked.”

“I know,” Benji says, his hand on my shoulder, gentler now, because he knows the next part’s worse. “There’s a video. It’s going viral. It’s everywhere today. A girl put it up after she returned home from vacation here. That’s why it’s hitting now instead of a few days ago.” He clicks it.

I remember the night. I know it before the sound comes up, because I lived the other side of it. That same stretch of beach in the dark. Those dunes. That water.

A few nights back I stood at a terrace railing with my heart racing. He’d walked off down that beach and not come back, and I didn’t know where he was. The worst thought I’ve ever had ran on a loop.

He’s in the water. Gone.

I knew he was in trouble and I let him walk into the water.

And here’s where he was while I was losing my mind. Sitting on a log by a bonfire with a guitar. The fire’s roaring close by. A ring of college-age kids around him who don’t know him, and he’s playing. Then he starts singing.

My God, his voice.

His voice is not a small thing. It’s not the same as the under-the-breath singing he did during the ballgame’s seventh-inning stretch. This voice comes through the cheap speakers like it owns the room.

He handed this voice to everyone alive except me.

And it does to me exactly what it did across a couch during a seventh-inning stretch, only bigger. It gets in under the anger and pulls. I hate that he lied to me for two weeks, yet can still do that to me from a laptop speaker.

And the guitar, the melody he’s playing. I’ve heard it before.

Walking from the car into the house, a few bars off the water, there and gone. I thought bonfire down the beach, and didn’t think one thing more about it.

That was him too.

Twice now I’ve been close enough to the truth to touch it. The night of the bonfire. The night I heard him playing. Both times I walked right past it because I didn’t know there was a truth this big to find.

The video ends and Benji’s hand hovers at the trackpad.

“There’s a lot more,” he says. “Interviews, a magazine profile, multiple award shows. I have all of it queued in tabs. Then I sat here realizing I don’t know if walking you through it helps you or if I’m just handing you knives in order of size. You tell me what you need. I can show you more or I can turn it all off. I’m here for you.”

“Play it again.”

I watch the video a second time with my hands flat on the table. Then I drop down in the chair Benji set for me.

I appraise people for a living. Four seconds, and it’s the best skill I have. I studied Levi for days. His fear, empty pockets. I’d have bet everything on my read. And I almost lost everything because my read was dead wrong.

I had no idea who he was and I was falling for him. Every hour of it was real on my end, and all of it was spent on a man who doesn’t exist.

I don’t know him at all. I never did.

“Dante.” Benji’s crouched down by the chair. “Say something out loud. I don’t care what it is. You went somewhere behind your face about a minute ago, and I need you back where I can see you.”

The burn starting in my chest is not happening here in the loft. I need to shut it down right now. The fix is what it’s always been. Get up off it and go to work.

Every line item flips over at once and shows its back. The tracked phone, the Status texts, Freddie screaming about years of work. He’s not a jealous boyfriend. He’s a handler.

Levi’s request for a heads-up before I swing by, call before you come. He wasn’t worried about the house being messy. He was keeping me out of exactly the room I walked into.