Page 45 of Our Hearts Knew Better

This was Levi truly in his element.

And when we anchored in a chill spot, near some caves, and he was still near me, beside me as we sprawled out on the deck, I had to ask about the way he chose to share it with me. My hands wouldn’t let it go.

“Did you want to touch me or did you just really want to steer and I was in the way?” My voice raised with the tease, my body frozen with the anticipation.

He squinted out at the other few boats chilling closer to the caves. “I wanted to steer.” His tease back was half so I waited for the rest, chuckling and staring, watching him blink down before blinking back up and adding like a sigh, “I wanted to touch you.”

I had only enough time for my body, especially my heart, to come back to life before he was adding more.

“I wanted to feel the elevated heat in your skin as you sailed the first time. All the changes in your breathing as you were surrounded by only sea. Your goosebumps as you steered a boat—”

“That wasn’t entirely from sailing,” I cut in low, each reminder and observation settling in again as they had when he was touching my skin, catching a smile he kept speaking through, that dimple being the only tell that he heard me.

“For me, they’re always there, but it could’ve been different for you, and there’s nothing like the first.” He met my eyes then and I absorbed those words in a gasp, undetectable on the outside, but altering on the inside, another change I could, but didn’t, convince myself I was imagining happening in him too.

“No, I don’t think there is,” I said, my voice still low, and Levi swallowed hard before looking back out at the sea.

I let my elbows slip out from under me, dropping back onto the deck and grinning up at the sky, breathing in the bay breeze. “I needed this today,” I said with the exhale. “I…really neededit.” I angled my head toward him, following the light lifting of his shirt sleeve from the wind. “And you knew.”

He dropped back with me, his move more graceful. “If you ever need it again and Idon’thave good timing…” He gave me his half smile in the trailing off. “Call and we’ll steal away.”

I laughed with the abandon of his words. “I might steal your mom,” I teased against the giddiness in my limbs as I shifted with it.

Levi laughed too. “You can borrow her whenever. She’d love it.”

I’d felt his mom’s love just upon first meeting. I’d felt how steady and consistent her love was, for her son, for her husband, for people…for me.

I’d felt like my needs mattered.

I’d felt cared for inside those walls, so many places to breathe, and I never wanted to leave.

“Levi?” My voice was strained, my lips in a smile as the golden sky blurred above us.

“Yeah,” he whispered.

“Thank you for making me feel safe.”

I was attached to the feeling, attached to him. I could tell him anything and I could show him anything and he took it all to his own heart.

He linked his pinky finger through mine, both of us squeezing into the curl as our gazes locked. “Fuck your dad, Summer.” There was so much passion in the curse and in my name, releasing the salt from my eyes. He spoke to the grief pulsing through me.

Life wasn’t fair, but there was nothing more sincere than this moment right here, than this day, thanthislife.

Hot

Summer was flying by. I almost wanted it to run out of steam so I could sit in these moments longer. But the faster the days, the sooner I was out from under my dad’s roof.

I was coming into my own and he still looked away from me. He didn’t want to see his daughter grow up. But he couldn’t stop life. He couldn’t stop mine and he couldn’t stop me anymore.

He shut himself in his bedroom a lot—his new office—and one morning, after my shower, I heard the sounds of Mom’s favorite country songs coming low from behind the door.

Dad was deathly quiet, and I tried to imagine his big smile—like during our dancing moments that were without depth but still those only smiles I had—as he gatekept my mom, now with her music, but the memories or the love or the ingrained sympathy had me imagining him in tears. Alone.

Like he’d left me.

I’d cried some more after that big breakdown at the tracks, cocooned under the covers in my bed, and I didn’t always succeed in keeping quiet my sweet-and-sour emotions. I didn’t succeed in keeping quiet about anything anymore, especially in my dad’s silence, that he still gave me, while I soaked my pillow.

I couldn’t attract any of his attention.

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