Isabella & Levi | ✓

twenty-one

"You sure?" Cora asked, stroking his shoulder. "You don't have to do this."

He shook his head because somewhere deep down in his pathetic little heart, he knew he did. So on the fifth ring, he pressed accept.

"Levi?" She gasped.

"Yeah," he answered as passively as he could.

"God Levi, I thought you'd never talk to me again," she breathed.

Clenching the phone and his jaw, he spat, "isn't that what you wanted?"

"Levi," the same tragic piteous tone was used again, and he had half the heart to just hang up. "Can we please not do this here?"

"There's nothing here, remember, Isabella?" He said sardonically.

She let out a heavy breath and Levi-ed him again. "Please," she begged.

Levi was tired of being stepped over. He was tired of being taken advantage of, especially by someone who was just using him.

"No," he answered.

"Please," she cried. "Levi, please. Is there something I could say to make you come?"

He laughed humorlessly. "Oh, I don't know, Isabella. Perhaps you could tell me you actually cared or perhaps you could call me crying and I'd come. Or maybe you wouldn't even have to say a word and I'd come just because I knew you were hurting. But wait, Levi," the sardonic tone carried on, "Isabella was just using you."

She was bawling, and her sobs echoed through the receiver. "Please, Levi, stop. Please."

"You don't have that right, Isabella. You can't expect me to listen to you when, oh how'd you gently put it, "'I was just using you,' I might've been humiliated, tossed around, and used for months, but it stops now."

Her cries seemed to quiet as his words grew louder and louder.

"Levi, I care about you," she said through sobs.

His hands shook, and so did his head. "No, Isabella. You can't keep doing this. I get so close to getting over you, to forgetting about you for good, but you keep sucking me in."

"Fuck," she groaned. "Levi, listen, please. Just one minute."

Deciding that the sooner he allowed her to address whatever she wanted to, the call would be over, he agreed to the single minute.

"Levi," she breathed, "I don't even know where to begin. In a time when my world felt as though it was crumbling, you gave me a hand, and single handedly held it up for me. You're- I feel something, for you, something that's a lot like-"

His heart was beating at lightning fast speeds. His hands were balmy, and his whole body felt woozy. "Love," he filled.

"Love," she finished.

After digging around for his keys, he hung up with a, "I'm coming, now."