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Coming home and realizing life hadn’t waited.

But looking at him, I couldn’t tell.

Levin was good at that.

Keeping whatever he was thinking right where it belonged.

In his own fucking head.

LEVIN

I had been at Sam and Xay’s house for damn near two hours before that nigga finally got his ass up, took a shower, came downstairs, ate some of the breakfast Sam made, then decided he was ready to leave.

Two hours.

I ain’t know how the fuck Samantha did it every day.

That house was loud as shit.

Kids everywhere.

Somebody was always calling somebody. Somebody needed juice. Somebody couldn’t find a sock. The little nigga Michael asked me about forty questions back-to-back, then got mad when I stopped answering him. Amari and Zion argued over the remote twice. Serenity cried, ate, went to sleep, woke back up and cried again.

Shit sounded like a daycare with no closing time.

By the time me and Xay finally got outside, I was ready for some silence.

Now I was behind the wheel of my black BMW M8 Competition, heading toward the city with Xay sitting in my passenger seat, face buried in his phone like he’d been waiting all morning to get to that motherfucker.

I looked at him for half a second before putting my eyes back on the road.

I ain’t ask who he was texting.

Because my mind was still on last night.

Avery and Xavier.

I knew what the fuck I saw.

I ain’t know exactly what happened upstairs, because I wasn’t up there. But I was thirty-six years old. I’d been around enough women in my life to know what two motherfuckers looked like after they just finished fuckin’.

Avery came downstairs first.

Hair fucked up.

Then Xay came down a little while after her, sweating and talking about he had just got out the shower.

Nigga.

Please.

Then Samantha came walking back in that house happy as hell, looking good, talking about her hair and their date like she ain’t know shit.

And judging by the way she acted this morning?

She didn’t.

I tapped my thumb against the steering wheel.