Page 117 of Our Hearts Knew Better

“He told me to ask you what happened when we were seventeen,” I prompt him, and after the barest flinch, the slightest hint of apprehension, he looks almost eager to tell me.

“He gave you up. I wanted you too,” he says, with a small shrug and the barest flush of our own time together at seventeen before that’s gone too. “So he just handed you over to me. He didn’t choose you, Summer, and I did,” he emphasizes, and my gaze loses focus, my heart skipping beats as I try to process hishailed and urgent way of words, half not news to me, and the rest. . .

Too.Too.

I still do.

Somewhere sounding too far off, a door slams and Adam’s name is shouted—his dad—and Adam hazes from my sight as he leaves the room, leaves this, leaves us.

Footsteps pound somewhere, different places, around me, then my own join in as I stalk out of the house.

The earthy air from the rain, that has graced to a sprinkle, freshens my senses, clears me from a fog as I continue my stalk through soggy and puddled grass to pavement, where I halt behind the bumper of Levi’s truck.

It’s pulled off, concealed by bushes from the front of the house, like he climbed in and started to go, then hit the brakes and stayed.

He stays for me.

I wanted you too.

He handed you over. . .

My wedges scrape wet pavement, small splashes, as I approach the passenger side and climb in, my stare on the droplets speckled to the windshield as I slam the door.

My hands squeeze together on my lap, and I turn my head to see him staring intently at his dad’s picture before he shifts the same look to me, waiting. . .

I manage one word. “Drive.”

The Man You Deserve

Summer

The air in the fire tower sits heavy on my lungs, between us, as Levi follows me inside.

This spot, his spot, hishome, that pulls me in like it’s mine, too, was all I could see before I saw him already waiting for me.

This is where I was being driven, first by my feet, then by his wheels. I didn’t have to, but I was going to walk all the way here to find him.

Toquestionhim, as I’m now questioning, in a way I never have before, these past years since that summer.

The moment of ticking calm we had in the truck, my hands squeezed together on my lap, both his squeezed around the wheel, stretches a bit longer as the space wraps around me. The tension in my body loosens, but my heart is still on guard as I walk deeper inside these walls, slow but steady, unable to stop moving through the jumpy feeling in my veins.

My nerves are ebbs of sickness through my stomach as I spin to face Levi, where he stands at the still open door, his eyes cautious but intent to all my movements, questioning too.

“Why’d you really buy this?” is the first one out of my mouth.

I told him I’d love to live in a place like this. I mapped the whole thing out and he set it up almost exactly like that. And I’ve read enough and seen enough to know where this could be going.

My blond villain being the book boyfriend hero again.

“Was it for me? Did you…hope one day I’d…”

He takes a breath, lets it out slowly. “I hoped one day you’d…yeah,” he says through the rasp in his throat that scratches at the images of what he’d been doing, ornotdoing, within that hope.

“Bonny,” I prompt next. “The other girls. Why didn’t you…”

His cheeks warm a light pink, but his gaze stays steady. “Same small town. A lot of the same people.” He nods, a flare in his nose. “And yeah,” he repeats, reading all my thoughts and my own hopes. “No one was you.” He says these words almost like they’re simple. Like that’s where we’re at now, just us. No one but me, no one but him.

I spin back around with my next breath knocked out of me, away from something so hard to believe. It’s not that I think he’s lying, but he’s sounding too perfect.

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