Page 26 of Our Hearts Knew Better

It took a couple seconds for him to find his answer too. “Nothing like you.” Those words pushed my stare down toward the water, a strange bubbling feeling—pleasing or unpleasing, I couldn’t tell—in my chest.

Adam’s hand came up to my chin and lifted my now widening eyes back to his. “That’s a good thing.”

I don’t believe it.

My pulse pounded as his hand slipped higher on my cheek, “Are you staying friends?” the next question that popped from my mouth.

His thumb traced my cheekbone before slipping back down to my jaw, and I felt myself pressing into the touch, while a shake traveled through me beneath the water. “Negative. I don’t stay friends with anyone who hurts me. Would you?” His brows lifted with a doubtfulness for my answer being yes.

“I guess it depends on the hurt,” I said back. “And how they make up for it.” I didn’t think all pain was black and white, and hearts could be mended.

I was half surprised I could think at all with Adam’s skin on mine, persistent, and in a way I’d never been touched before.

“She’s not making up for anything. That’s not her nature. I was always wrong,” he muttered, an undertone of being wrong abouther.

My leg brushed his in some wordless comfort, because I couldn’t find more now, and the move brought his now flared eyes back to mine.

“Can I?” His breath was a soft breeze as his thumb traced over the gasped part in my lips, repeating after me from that night in his car, sounding every bit as awed as I had been over his sunroof.

Adam wants to kiss me.

I was stricken, every limb almost stilled, until my brain reminded me I needed to keep them moving to stay afloat.

I hesitated, figuring out now that anything outside ofthatcould justhappento me, but this was something I wanted tochoose.

My first kiss.

It wasn’t that Adam wasn’t kissable. I just didn’t feel desperate for it.

Maybe, if I hadn’t seen Levi again the other night, I would’ve let Adam kiss me.

I tried so hard not to be messy. When my heart was open to anything, things the beats had never been able to capture before, it was impossible to stay clean.

But something in the pounding beats now were like little pounds away, pushing menotto kiss him, and I sank beneath the surface, out of his touch.

When I came back up, some inches away, I laughed through my hands as I wiped away hair and wet, adding in a splash toward Adam to lighten the red in his cheeks.

His usual fun-loving nature peeked through as he shot me a little splash back. “You’re cute,” he said.

“And a distractionanda rebound…” I teased.

He shook his head, easing my unease at thinking myself so. “Not a rebound.”

I sputtered another laugh. “I’ve never…” I wanted him to know for sure, but I didn’t finish the sentence, my tongue tangled on all the thingsI’ve never.

“Do you want to?” Adam smirked. “I can show you what you’re missing.”

I licked my lips like I couldn’t help it, then dipped my head backward into the water as they twisted against a smile, up at the stars.

I felt like a Disney princess again.He can show me the world.

“You’ve already been doing that,” I told him, water tinkling at my back as I met his eyes again, some wonder inside them. “Thank you too.” There was an affection in my voice for him and what he’d been doing for me and with me that seemed to smooth his slight daze, and he relaxed into a float with another waggly browed grin.

I relaxed back, too, until a looming shadow through some distant trees caught my attention. “What’s that?”

Waves rippled around me as Adam closed in again to follow my stare. “That’s just the old fire tower.”

Justthe old fire tower.

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