Page 75 of Our Hearts Knew Better

Or his gaze is…trailing me. Trying to. Searching for expanses of my bare skin beneath the water.

The idea stills more of my breath I’ve managed to sip in and settles like heat between my legs, quickly spreading to my brain, making me more hot headed.

Over his nerve.

Over what he still does to me.

Over what I’mlettinghim do to me.

I’m not the girl then. I’m the woman now.

I’m a fucking dragon.

And he’s not leaving, not giving me the space to come out without eyes on me—his.

It’s like taking back control, taking myself back, when I drop my arms and walk out of the water, feeling it stream from myhair and down my skin as I fix my concentration to my legs, to keep them moving me toward my clothes, all my shaking hidden inside.

Levi has gone completely still, the heat his earlier trailing had given me now transferred to his gaze, stuck on my body, intensifying my goosebumps.

His lips part with the smallest jerk in his chest—then that jerk jumps to his jaw as those lips that once claimed mine press back together and he forces his gaze toward the bay, both of his hands shoved into the pockets of his shorts.

I watch him struggle,lettinghim struggle, still hiding my own struggle.

Until I can’t, the shaking manifesting as a tremble from being wet, and naked.

In front of Levi.

My next inhale is a gasp as I yank up my towel to cover myself and dry off, standing in the conflicting emotions of what I’ve just done…before I scrub them away.

I know what I’ve done.

And I know what I saw in Levi’s eyes. The same wanting I felt when he kissed me, still there at the edges, even as he can’t meet my eyes now.

He does once I’m dressed, showing the remnants of his dilated pupils, still more black than blue. “Thanks for the warning,” he says with a strain in his throat, that nerve that has me spitting my fire.

“I didn’t get one,” I throw back, piling my hair on top of my head and almost snapping the tie.

His head rears back in a single almost undetectable movement of surprise—until he’s not, all his tension sighed out into something resolute, sucked back in time, too, as he now looks like that same guilty,lyingguy.

The guy who’s been going behind my back to help my father.

Before I can question him, he redirects my thoughts. “Adam’s looking for you.”

So he noticed.

But he’s not the one standing here.

“Right,” I say, stepping into my wedges. “He made you put in the effort.”

“I volunteered.”

I halt, my heel sticking out from my second wedge as I meet his eyes, processing the strength in those words, like he needed me to know, then the shift in his jaw and his single glance off to the side at having admitted that.

Don’t ask.“Why?” I ask.

Don’t say it.“I knew I’d find you,” he says, and I stomp my foot the rest of the way into my wedge at that spark I haven’t seenherein years.

It softens me. Because now I’m seeing the guy who’s also my friend. The guy who knows me. The guy on my side, a couple faulty choicesaside.

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