Page 124 of Our Hearts Knew Better

Summer

He’s not gone yet.

Levi pulls over beside Adam’s car, still here, the force of it jolting us forward, then we’re both climbing out of the truck, stalking with loud feet and loud breaths through Griffin’s front door.

We clear the main rooms, then I’m halting at the hall entrance, Levi’s hands coming to grip my arms to stop himself from ramming into my back.

Papers and articles, with Adam’s face on them, from his days on the field, are scattered around the floor. Some are bent, torn, and some have shoe prints.

I try to step around as many as I can, as does Levi as he follows me, in the short walk to the guest room.

Adam’s gathered his bags onto the bed, finishing packing what he unpacked over the course of our stay here, balling clothes and shoving them in. He’s also changed clothes, now wearing a pair of jeans and a hoodie. Ahidingwardrobe in this heat.

And that’s how I know this is something worse.

“Adam,” Levi prompts him, a question in his voice.

I follow up with a low, “What happened?”

Adam pauses his movements, turning his head toward his shoulder, toward us, then continues balling and shoving. “I failed.”

“What happened?” Levi asks now, with a step forward, more of a press.

“We came to verbal blows,” Adam says with a spin around to face us.

“You and your dad,” I press now when he takes another pause, my body rigid in the waiting, feeling like I’m the bomb that might detonate if he doesn’t give an actual answer.

And he does, speaking almost too fast for me to keep up.

“I was trying to take him down and everything he’s worked for and get myself out. He found out andthat—” His eyes catch a quick flinch of a glance on the papers and articles, that I notice Levi has just stepped out into the hall to clean up, knowing Adam can’t look at them,hisshoe prints having walked all over them, as if they’ve not been there. “He wanted to remind me of when I was somebody and now I’m nobody without him.” He forces out those last two words, laced with bitterness, trying to be strong within his dad’s verbal violence. But I hear the cracks, ones I’ve moved in and out of too.

And my numbness settles in. I say his name, trying for some comfort, but it doesn’t come to me, my chest suddenly weighed down, a fatigue spilling in and hardening around me like a strange kind of protection.

The sound of shuffling and crinkling behind me pauses as Levi steps back in to say for us both, “First, fuck him and everything out of his mouth.” Then he adds a conclusion that couldn’t even make it through my shut down head, his tone a mix of scolding shock. “Second, you were tampering with his company?”

“Yeah, I never know what I’m thinking, right?” Adam throws back. “What else would I be doing? Actually working for him?” He spits this out like both Levi and I should’ve seen it, but he’s the one who kept it in, wrapped in a bow of lies.

This’ll be good for us.

AndIshould have seen it. I knew better. I knew this wasn’t right.

I feel slapped in the face, and I exchange a look with Levi, my eyes automatically drifting and finding his, our connected gazes my only salve for the sting.

“I was trying to get some retribution,” Adam continues. “Level shit out. Correct it.Something—”

Levi’s jaw jerks and my next swallow is knotted over Adam’s desperation.

“We have to leave here,” he reminds me, but said mostly to himself, as he turns back to shove in the last of his things. “Well,Ihave to leave,” he says, a knowing in his voice that I won’t be leaving with him.

My heart beats, and beats, and beats, probably a hundred times or for just a few seconds, before Adam angles his head toward me. His stare drifts up to mine in a sad, silent plea that then has me exchanging another look with Levi, with a small gesture toward Adam.

Levi nods, then finishes cleaning up as he leaves me and Adam to have a moment alone.

Adam sighs, his stare back down on his bags. “I saw you were gone…and I was thinking how I can’t do this without you. I can’t—You—You’re—” His stumbling breaks move me closer to him, but when he spins to face me in a step back, I don’t move any closer.

“But I have been,” he says now with a scoffed laugh, and my mouth opens with more arguments for my side, but he shows me I don’t need to give the defense. “And so have you. You’ve been doing this because of me and without me.”

My eyes immediately well as I manage through a whisper, “And we can’t do it anymore.” I blink, then clear my throat after a big breath. “We can’t do this. We can’tbethis.” More tears come and I stop fighting them. “I lost you, Adam. And I wasn’t getting you back.”

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