Page 111 of Our Hearts Knew Better

“Raven,” he says suddenly, a single rasp from his throat. “Nickname,” he tells the confusion moving along my face. “Raven,” he repeats, now with nerves and a trace of questioning, like he’s been holding on to this for years, because he has, and he wants the nickname he chose to hold up.

This song is sending him back to that night, too, but I wasn’t expecting this.

Iknewhe had one. And it’s a slight tension reliever, as another laugh sputters out of me.

“Why Raven?” My voice shakes, but it’s not from my attempt to conceal any feelings about the nickname, because I’m not even surehowI feel about it when all I can feel is Levi’s pulse, still racing. His hands, still on me. His lips, so close to mine. As we take back a moment from our past, sharing these low, secret-like words.

“Your hair,” he says, half a tease, a corner of his mouth pulling up after mine does.

“Myhair?”

He laughs, still low, breathy. “There were other things…”

“Oh,” I start, a tease of my own. “My toothpick arms looking like bird legs?”

His laugh now sounds like a choke, his gaze holding an intention that spreads my shaking to my legs. His one hand, back on my hip, presses me into him just a bit more. “You did not have toothpick arms.”

“Right,” I breathe through the heat warming every place our bodies are touching, still trying to tease. “You thought I was hot.”

“I still do,” he says with no hesitation, and my hand still on his chest digs into his shirt as his hand on my hip digs into my dress. “I still…” He hesitates now, and I should be glad. I don’t belong to him—right?

I should want our bodies disconnected. . .

Like he suddenly does.

“I still do,” he repeats, a sigh, then drops me like I really am hot, his hands scalded, brushing past me and everyone else toward the break area with a mumble about water. But a move I see asaway from me.

The burn he gave me flares through my skin, my whole body reddened and shaking everywhere.

My throat goes dry as I stand here without him, and when my next swallow hurts, I shove through people toward the break area, Levi’s mumbledwaterchanting through my head—

I slam into something hard once I burst onto the open walkway area, a drink splashing at my feet.

Our feet.

This something asomeone, a woman, who bends to retrieve the fallen cup.

When she bends back up, my apology stalls on my tongue as I observe how much more she went out in her dressing for this concert than I did.

Leather shorts with fishnets and Converse. A tight black crop top that shows off her navel piercing that catches the lights. Short white-blond hair, just past her shoulders, the sleekest I’ve ever seen. Not one flyaway.

“So that’s where my wallpaper went,” she says to me as I’m having the thought to ask about her hair products, and it hits me that, I think, she’s insulting my mom’s dress.

But Ididjust cause her to spill her drink, so this is her comeuppance.

“Which room?” I ask, to play along, but still with a small clench in my teeth.

“Bathroom.” She snickers at my cringe. “And the hall and the kitchen. You got around,” she says, a smirking assurance that pulls a scoffed chuckle out of me.

But I still say, “This dress was my mom’s and she’s dead.”So think twice.

“I was dead once too,” she tells me, more jokes, then she gives me a genuine smile like I passed some test, and I soften. “Name’s Greta.”

“Summer.”

“You in a bad place?”

I make only a noise in response and she touches her finger to the corner of her eye, then points that same finger toward me to signify my eyes.

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