Page 109 of Our Hearts Knew Better

“Stop,” I hiss over my shoulder, and I hear him snicker as I open the door to Levi, whose chest lifts on a slow inhale as we stand and stare. Specifically, as I watch his eyes trail over me, his lips parting more and my heart thudding faster the more he looks. Goosebumps tickle my skin as his gaze explores my body.

With those darkened blues springing back up to meet mine, his exhale blows from his mouth, and I chew my smile as his jaw works around something to say.

He settles on, “Your hair’s curly,” the words thick in his throat.

“Yeah, I…couldn’t compete with the humidity,” I say, my words sounding just as thick, and another low snicker from my father boosts me to get us out of here. “Ready to go?” I crowdLevi with my body to get him to move backward from the doorway, and he does with a nod, before my pull on the door to shut it behind us gets caught on my dad’s halting hand.

“You take care of my daughter,” he says, back on his jokes. “I want her home by midnight or—” He simulates a shotgun firing and I simulate firing bullets at him with my stare.

But when I look back up at Levi and see his half smile beneath raised brows, his amusement nudges at my own.

Then he reaches around me with an angled, sharp-eyed look at my father I don’t have time to decipher before he pulls the door closed on him, our even closer proximity and bumping of our bodies bumping us along toward the truck.

“As strange as he’s been,” I start through a laugh, avoiding the obvious, while holding it to my chest, that he was acting as if we are teenagers going on our first date, “I don’t remember seeing him this…light of weight after my mom was gone. And he’s been good,” I add as a simple update before teasing, “I don’t know what you did but…”

Levi shakes his head with another half smile as his arm brushes against mine. “It’s you, Summer,” he says, lowering his voice as our eyes connect. “It’s all you.”

He keeps walking like he’s trying to run from the words—or probably just because we’re near the truck now—while I still in them. My wedges are small scuffs on the gravel in my stopping, as my heart battles itself, damning him and loving him in the same breath for marking that sentiment onto my brain, inhisvoice, that I’m worthy of being treated well.

I’m only able to move, a blink toward the street, when someone calls out my name like a question.

“Summer!” the voice calls again with certainty—Bonny stepping into my sight, her jaw dropped into a smile.

Her mom lives at the right end of this street, where she’s walking to, with what looks like bags from Linda’s Diner in her hands.

I saw her around once, maybe twice, but she didn’t see me. Until now.

I start pushing for the truck, back to being in a hurry,gotta go, catch up later, as I wait for her to spot Levi. She calls out his name, too, when she does, as shocked to see him with me as she is to see me here.

I can’t say anything as I climb in beside Levi, and he doesn’t, either, but he does throw out a wave as he fires the engine, seeming to be speeding this up too.

Bonny uses her own speed to meet us, smiling in through the rolled down window of Levi’s side. “Hey,” she greets, her eyes big on me. “I can’t believe you’re back.”

“Hey,” I greet back, managing a smile, my hands pressing into my thighs.

She glances at Levi with a kind of nerve-rattled laugh. “With how this one talked about you, I didn’t think you’d ever come back.”

This is when the first pulses start radiating off me to push away anyone and anything that makes me unable to pretendthisis my life. My nook of sunlight. No pasts but this one. No heartbreak. No dreams dying.

No past friends who went on to date Levi. . .

I knew over the years that Levi dated a few girls in town but they weren’t serious. I also knew through Adam’s guy gossip that Levi hadn’t slept with any of them.

My curiosity meter pegged until it fried.Why not?

I never wanted to know who those girls were, but Bonny slipped through the poorly puttied cracks.

So Levi didn’t have sex with her, but she knows his mouth more than I do, and for longer than I did. She knows what it’slike to have once belonged to him and not be left in pieces by a damn bridge.

These thoughts, this squeezing feeling in my throat and pinching in my chest, is why she has to go.

Wehave to go.

I want this day. I need this day, without—

A few things happen at once as I try to get us on the road; my hand reaches for the gear shift as my mouth says things likein a hurryandsorryto Bonny, and I notice my hand is gripping to Levi’s, as his was already on the gear shift, still seemingly having my same idea.

I slip my hand back to my lap and my stare toward the windshield as he picks up after me, saying things to Bonny that are also mostly lost to my ears as they fill with the pounding of my pulse.

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