Page 105 of Our Hearts Knew Better

The phone doesn’t immediately steal my gaze from his when I take it, but when I blink down at the screen, I inhale a sharp gasp, only short of a scream.

E-tickets. To a concert. Just a couple hours away.

For Ten Decembers.

“What? Is this—? Are you—” I stumble over thoughts, trying to find them, until it settles in what’s happening, what he’s offering, and even then, I sound like a mess. “Two? Me?”

Levi laughs as if to sayof course you. “Yeah,” he says. “You and me.”

Me and Levi. Going to a concert for our favorite band together.

I’ve been to small things in college, for relatively unknowns, but never something likethis. A venue show. ForTen fucking Decembers!

“They’re not the best seats—”

“They’reseats, Levi,” I cut into his apologetic tone for not getting us better, but he got us in—us—and that’s more than enough.

“Well…yeah.” He laughs again, like he can’t argue that.

My desire to kiss him is the strongest it’s been, that strength growing a bit every day, and I snap my eyes back down to the screen, forcing my thoughts to younger Summer, who imagined herself kissing Kai Coleman more than a few times.

“Wait,” I say. “Wouldn’t these be sold out?”

“Oh yeah,” Levi says, with a nod and look that reflects what I’m thinking; he shouldn’t have been able to get these now, with the show so soon. “I got lucky. A woman and her friend couldn’t go anymore and were auctioning them off and I won.”

I groan a laugh, knowing what that means. “So you paid more than they did.”

“It’s worth it for this.” His hand reaches out, his thumb at the corner of my lip, his touch in a natural gravitation to my smile—

A one second touch before he pulls his hand back fast, his gaze shifting toward the windshield at the same speed.

My smile fades to an open-mouthed stalled breath as I snap my own gaze down to the phone, letting Ten Decembers run through my head—it picks their song “We’ll Get It Right This Time”—over which of my sudden thoughts to Levi’s reaction is the true falseness; that he should be touching me or that he shouldn’t be touching me.

There’s something weighty to the motion, either way, asking a question he didn’t wait to answer.

What if he lingered?

He doesn’t apologize, and I admit to myself I don’t want him to be sorry. He doesn’t attempt to take the touch back at all, as quick as it was, and I let my heart ease, then beat more for his intention.

I hand him back his phone with a sighed “Thank you” as I find my smile again.

He finds his again, too, with a slight uncertain stretch in one corner before he says, “So, just to confirm…you and me?”

My laugh is one burst from my mouth, my nod more of a circling of my head in my own disbelief that we’re going to a Ten Decembers concert. “You and me.”

Levi bites into his smile as he gives his phone a swing between his fingers—cha-ching!—and I turn the heat rush to my facetoward the air conditioning as I move the box from my lap to the floor, shifting to face him as he’s been facing me.

“I need you to tell me how you take care of my dad,” I tell him after the deepest inhale. “Because I’ll be doing that at least once a week now.”

“He was being stubborn, wasn’t he?” It’s more statement than question, as he can guess from his own experience that I asked my dad to tell me himself and he insisted he didn’t need or want that.

“He’s worse than me.”

Levi makes a teasing noise of disagreement and when I kick my foot at him, he gives me his frustratingly comforting and attractive smile again before he goes into everything he gets and has been doing for my father.

I’ve had a long time to think there’s something wrong withallthe men in my life. But as I listen to the second one being better, too, basking in Levi, I admit this is thebetterday, withbetterfeelings, and hope this doesn’t worsen my still helpless heart.

Under the Radar

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