Page 24 of Our Hearts Knew Better

“Right?” Adam smiled at my mesmerized expression. “I’d say I know where to look.” He now gave me a look of his own that asked,wouldn’t you?

“You do,” I confirmed through a whisper as my eyes went back on the move.

“This,” he said next. “This is what keeps me from running away.”

I clutched my clothes against a related ache for that sentiment and a laugh breaking through my chest. “Do you really wanna run away?” I asked like I knew his answer was no. “From baseball…” That was the ticket he already had. “And Levi,” I added lower. His best friend.

And always right there in my mind. More so now after our second night together and our texts.

Adam stared out at the bay a moment, then glanced back at me with an agreeing shrug that shifted to a smirk. “But if I did, would you run with me?”He was back.

Another laugh was my answer as I kicked off my shoes to hug the sand with my toes. I breathed through the ache still in my chest as my lips quivered to a smile, the tears that filled my eyes making it look like I was standing in the water.

I was a kid the last time I felt this. My little hand in my mom’s.

“You can swim, right?”

I blinked at the question, feeling my nod before I lifted my head to find Adam half-naked, glancing back at me now in nothing but his boxers.

My eyes trailed down his back, my blush deepening the lower they fell. . .

Then I blinked again, down at the clothes in my hands as it finally registered that I would be going back to my house wet.

That wasn’t ideal for trying to—having to—leave no traces behind.

I couldn’t go backwet.

No fucks, Summer.

The conviction gripped me only a second after the hesitation, and Adam’s grin helped me hold to my gall that was getting stronger by the day.

But where was I supposed to change? Behind the bush area?

Adam thought so, gesturing right in that direction. “There’s a bush over there if you need to…”

When I didn’t move right away, he moved, his hands going for the waistband of his boxers. “We can skinny dip—” He cut himself off with a peal of laughter at my widened stare and hanging jaw. “I’m joking.”

I sighed out a laugh of my own. “Ha. Ha.”

He beamed at my mocking. “If you wanted to it wouldn’t be a joke, but…joke,” he affirmed at mynotwanting to, as I hauled my clothes to the bushes.

“How many girls have you skinny dipped with?” I heard myself ask.

“None.”

I chuckled with a headshake behind my lifted shirt as I tugged it off. “I don’t believe it.”

“No, really,” he argued, but I still shot him a side stare.

“And you want me to be your first?”

“For that.” Humor laced his tone. “The other firsts have already been taken.”

I almost tripped over my shorts as I tugged them off as our different experience levels sunk in.

Then I wondered about Levi’s experience level and if it was closer to mine than Adam’s. His firsts that may or may not have already been taken.

My head wouldn’t let me imagine it, the feeling like a shiver through me, shaking itself off as I piled my things together with a new thought. That after my second night with Levi and us now having each other’s number, too, it would be the three of us again.

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