Page 68 of Our Hearts Knew Better

My hands clench around and hold to the towel. “You don’t have to work—”

“It’s mydad, Summer, come on. We both knew I’d have to.” There are several periods behind those words, a trailingeventually. That time has come. “He’s not gonna help pay for this place anymore,” he divulges, folding his arms over his chest, his knuckles a bit white. The blood flow returns once he sees I’ve noticed.

The blood flow returns to mine too as I give up the towel to the counter and grip my hands around the edge. “That means?” I push, already handling my emotions before what he says next can handle me.

“If I want to be on my ass, it has to be in his office.” He drones the reiteration of his dad’s command, and I soften my expression for the other disparages I know he had to deal with on that call, while silently thanking Griffin for getting his son moving.

There. The southern direction. The price he’s now collecting. Through his orders and ultimatums.

I can’t say I’m surprised.

I can’t say these familiar thuds of my heart aren’t from anticipation over actually going back to Rosalee Bay.

Adam pushes off the island as he finalizes these plans. “We don’t have a choice.”

I move as he does, taking the spot he vacated, and it could be his turned back, his steps taken back toward that room, that makes me send the blow. “Wedidhave a choice, but you…” My teeth lock away the rest, my lips pinching together, when he faces me again.

“But I what?” He doesn’t wait for my response, everything that’s been wrong that I don’t even have to say. “Don’t worry. I’m taking it all back. This’ll be good for us.”

This’ll be good…maybe not for us.

“You’re still just settling.” I don’t know why I’m arguing this. Probably from the resentment and pain that lives there and through the resentment and pain that lives here.

Adam steps closer to me, a sharp plea in his eyes. “Let me believe this’ll be good. Especially for us. Any life outside of baseball was never a plan. I’m gonna hate it either way. At least with my dad I can have leeway and get paid way more compensation than I would anywhere else. Then maybe I can buy a little more happiness.”

“A little more alcohol?” I return, the image of the beer bottle maze relocating houses, floors, knowing the presence of his fatherwon’tbe good for him. I hate to think this, but he just doesn’t have the skin for it.

He stalls open mouthed as a shadow passes over his stare, and I feel the dark settled in mine, too, our vulnerabilities butting heads as ours tilt away, as I can’t shake the added feeling there’s something he’s not telling me. The pauses throughout that speech, his eyes looking off at different points, searching for each one before he said it.

He draws my focus back to his now non-blaming nod when he closes the physical distance between us, my body turning toward his. “I’m always gonna drink,” he says like a brushing off, playing with the strings on my drawstring shorts. “I always have. But no, not like that.” His gaze is assuring, and while I lean into it, I’m not assured.

But if I didn’t know any better, I’d say he seems determined to prove something. I want to tell him it’ll be more wasted time, but we share that conflict over our fathers. And I can understand the length of time acceptance can take when you’re complying with a gatecrashing.

If there’s no stopping him. . .

“It’ll get me out of my head,” he continues, my pulse speeding up as my mind spins through every possible outcome of us being back in Rosalee Bay. “We both need that, don’t we?”

I take his hand off my shorts at the wheedling in his tone, but keep a hold of him as I tell him, “I just want good things for you.”

“For us,” he corrects, entwining his fingers with mine, studying me as my lips part with nothing but air. I wasn’t trying to separate us, but my mouth dries to the confirmation. “I need you,” he tells me, that need glazed in his eyes. “I wouldn’t have—I won’t get through any of this without you. And if I have to do this, I need to be with people who care about me while I do it.”

And that’s the ticket.

I squeeze his fingers with a sigh, knowing how much weight of my own was lifted under my father’s roof when I had both him and Levi to see and be with almost every day.

My face is now lighter feeling, too, telling me how much tension was there, as I tilt him my own accepting look. “So when are we leaving?”

His smile looks more real than mine feels, and I inhale a gasp over the hope that gives me.

I’m picking you one more time, you bastard.

Adam kisses my hand before he lets it go, walking backward in that similar way he used to, the smallest peek from that carefree guy that blows the smallest breeze through the pressure in my chest. “I know you’re worried. You can still do what you want,” he says, as if me living under a dad’s roof or a parent’s roof is that shallow and didn’t completely alter parts of my brain chemistry.

But I’m not worried. Because I’m notthatgirl anymore. Iwilldo whatever I want under Griffin Cobalt’s roof.

And he’s notmydad, the keeper of my wounds, the one who built the walls that will always close in.

“Money will be taken care of so you’ll have time to look for another job, if you want,” Adam adds, now with his back turned, before he disappears inside the bedroom, another gasp filling my lungs when he leaves the door open.

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