Page 50 of Our Hearts Knew Better

The ringing stopped and Levi said, “Yep.”

I sprang up and breathed through another wave of dizziness, telling myself I needed to move slower from here on out, while knowing I was too overtaken with clumsiness. “Why didn’t you answer?”

Levi’s thumbs tapped the screen. “He’ll text me.” Then he eyed the screen like he was reading the text he knew Adam would send.

Adam was coming back soon.Summer flying by.He’d been texting me more again, so he was less busy, the games wrapping up.

“What’s he want?” I asked through a sigh, my head dropping to my shoulder.

Levi’s laugh was just in his exhale, the lines of his face a bit lighter but still. “He’s looking forward to not having his dad breathing down his neck in a year.”

I hummed toward the sky and raised my empty hand in a cheers to that. Though I’d guessedmytrue cheers came the night I was caught. The only breath on my neck was the breeze.

Good.Good.

Good.

I dropped back to lying down. “I had a best friend, too, you know, the night I met you.” I flopped to my side, my hand landing near Levi’s foot, and I tapped at his shoe as he pocketed his phone with his intent eyes on me. “Her name was Clara. She lived in Adam’s house before he did and we drank there together.”

Levi’s smile was soft as he slid to the sole with me, my hand tucking in to give him room as he perched up on his elbow.

“That’s gonna hurt soon,” I warned with a tap at where his elbow met the hard surface below us.

“Well, it’s not yet,” he said as a light tease. Then he prompted, still smiling, hazy and warm, “Clara?”

I laughed, another hum as my answer.

“What else did you do?”

I laughed again, smacking at the little space between us, my flush spreading. “It wasn’t real.” I blinked at his fading smile. “Not like this. This is real.” My heart slammed against my chest in a jolt of panic. “Right?” My hand was fisted in Levi’s shirt, holding on to him, to this summer, to my discoveries, like this had all been a vivid, still out of reach dream, and I was going to wake up not knowing this life anymore.

“Yeah,” Levi assured me, his hand wrapping around mine in a squeeze as desperate for me to believe this reality as I was. “Everything’s real.”

“Legendary” was the Ten Decembers song playing now. The band said in an interview the song was about the journey of their career, but written in a way that anyone could apply the song to anything romantic and revered and unforgettable.

This moment with Levi waslegendary.

“I want to be overwhelmed by you,” I whispered with closed eyes, and I felt his chest rise big beneath my hand, still wrapped in his.

My lids were heavy when I blinked them open, and he was so still as he watched me, drawing my gaze and centering my thoughts to his mouth with the smallest lick of his lips. “How many girls have you kissed?” I knew by simple logic, by simplyLevi, it was more than zero.

His grip on me loosened just enough for my weakened arm to slip down, but I caught the fall with another fist around his shirt.

His cheeks were colored as he said, “A couple.”

I closed my eyes one more time and saw two green fireworks.

“Do you want to kiss me?” I tried to stress me,Summer, but my voice was weakening too. My desire was a fighter, though. “The girl in front of you. Do you want me?” I repeated. “We could try other things I’ve read in books.” I touched him with the flirt, a bob in his throat as my finger took a tipsy trail down his chest.

His exhale was a gust. “Fuck, Summer.”Thatwas the one.

He took my aimless finger, lost in the grooves of his abdomen, and wandering lower, and returned it to my own body. “You’re drinking.”

I shook my head, an ache forming where my skull pressed into the sole. “Not anymore.”

“You’re drunk.”

“I’m not that drunk.” As I denied this, thedrunkwas closing my eyes again. Sleep, sleep, sleep.

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