Page 128 of Our Hearts Knew Better

A moan escapes me, my eyes closing when his kisses touch my neck in an explosion of goosebumps. “If being mad at you gets methis, then I’m furious.”

His chest rumbles under my hands in his silent laughter, and I fist his shirt in protest when he pulls back, studying me with a look I’m now all too familiar with.

“How are you now?” he asks me.

Moment to moment, within the little silences, he checks on my head.

“Now I’m good,” I tell him, always keeping my voice strong no matter the answer, even if I’m having a sad moment or a truly mad moment.

And in moments of my emotional fatigue, Levi holds me and doesn’t hold it against me.

I do, though, hold his stopping against him, and I give him a shove to his back, climbing over him and straddling his hips. He grabs onto my waist, his fingers digging in, as he gazes up at me with the biggest breath filling his lungs beneath my hands. I lean down, hovering my lips only centimeters from his, feeling his breathing thin, as I make my next words as seductive sounding as possible.

“I think I need a new nickname.”

Levi’s chest jolts in a not so quiet laugh, more staggered air as I rub myself against him. “You think?”

“Yes,” I say as a hiss, my hips thrusting more, and when I hear Levi’s groan I’ve been after, I halt and push myself back up, saying normally, “Because I do know whatravenmeans.”

His groan now is one of protest, but he’s grinning. “So do I.”

“They’re bad omens,” I say low, my nail tracing distraction shapes over his shirt. “They’re—”

“Intelligent,” Levi cuts in, leaning up on an elbow and locking me into his gaze. “And adaptable. Protective of themselves and their lives and their friends. They’re misjudged, deserving morethan the dark prophecies some asshole put on them,” he says, with a squeeze to my waist. “They thrive in difficult situations. They’re magical. They symbolize transformation,” he finishes, every word so pressing and comforting, he becomes blurred in my vision, speaking of ravens but talking about me.

I groan now as I push him back down, mine more one of acceptance. But against his lips, I still tease, “You could just call mebird.”

His lips stretch as one of his hands glides down to my ass and cups a cheek, pressing me more into him. “Who’s my good little bird?”

I crack up into our kiss, and he flips me to my back, settling between my thighs as his tongue takes its time exploring mine.

I found Levi for a reason that night.

Myfirstnight.

I always found him, and he always found me.

And though secrets, twists, and turns made us lose each other for a while, our hearts always knew better than we did.

The Reason

Adam

I can’t keep anything.

I swear on my dad’s life, everyone’s born with a curse.

My curse is to neverhave.

Twenty-three years ago, life slipped a noose around my neck, and since that first breath, I’ve been taking swings and choking.

Instead of plans and this and that cooking up in my head, my brain was a tumbleweed in a ghost town before the isolation and dead air spun me out and I had to getsomethingon track.

Enter my dad and my reason.

My plan sucked but it was a plan. Another swing.

Another belly-up embarrassment.

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