Page 40 of Our Hearts Knew Better

“You,” he breathed, then swallowed. “You are. The only way it’ll go is to feel it. Then you keep focusing on you. Keep discovering, Summer.” My name, a third time, an urging on his tongue. “Find your happiness and livethere.”

Adam found baseball.

I found. . .

Levi’s teeth came together with that jerk in his jaw, like, in this moment, he was with me in my unhappiness—and he literally was—inside the closed in walls where I still lived. “He wouldn’t even look at you,” he said, with shock over and disdain for my dad.

My dad’s back, the hair at his neck I had pleaded to, his twisting and dismissing were now the deepest imprint.

“He’s all I really have in my life,” I said, the words leaving me like another plea attempt, the sudden squeeze in my throat so tight I couldn’t say more, Levi’s face, everything around me, now underwater.

I blinked, and a well of tears cooled my flushed face as they rolled down, my sight cleared to show me Levi, not just tracking them, but stopping them right before they met the dirt. His hand reached up so quickly and his fingers were so soft as they grazed my cheekbone.

He’d touched me so many times tonight, in so many ways. And I still wanted more.

He paused, and lifted his hand away with a swallow, studying his dampened fingers and seeming almost…conflicted.

You’re too much, Summer.

I couldn’t hear the thought or bear seeing it in his stare when he’d finally meet mine again, so I started to look toward the stars, always sure and shining, when Levi captured me with his returned gaze, the spark as unmistakable as his words.

“I’m in your life now.”

“Really?” The whisper this time was warm air breezing through me, a thawing to the new cold feeling that had settled into my chest tonight. And somehow, that ached, too, a force strong enough to sit me up.

A noise escaped my mouth, the start of a sob. I bent my knees, wrapping my arms around both and burying my chin in the center, trying not to sink, as years seemed to pour from me. Grief and untouchable yearnings, old and new losses, found freedom and love, soaked every area of exposed skin, my face, my arms, my legs.

I looked and sounded andfeltunrecognizable to both me and Levi, and while I had no choice but to sit with myself, he had a choice, and he still chose to stay.

He’d sat up, too, and remained sitting beside me, his shoulder pressed to mine in his firm steadiness, as I let myself feel the worst and the best I’d ever felt.

The emotions almost ebbed as fast as they flowed. When you knew the scars from a war were coming, you already built that tissue for the first big battle. But it was a release my body thanked me for. I was releasing my dad and making the room for myself.

Ididn’tneed him.

And I promised myself I would never need him again.

Knock Him Straight Over

The house had only one heartbeat that next morning.

One pair of feet creaking the floor.

No coffee in the pot.

No breakfast at the kitchen table.

Dad had sent me a text.At the office. Oatmeal in the cabinet.

He actually thought I was stupid. He worked from home. What office? There was no personal office for him.

I didn’t know where he’d gone that morning—or the other mornings he’d also be gone—but the clear message behind the lie was crystal.

It wasn’t easy fixing old wiring. And sometimes you couldn’t.

I wanted this, to discover, to have a life. I didn’t want to live through silent, and now absent days, feeling even more alone inside these walls.

But the damage was done.

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