Page 78 of Our Hearts Knew Better

I follow, meeting her at the front, unable to look anywhere but at her. Again, I’m making her privacy ours, as my eyesstalk along the rebellious strands of her drying hair, curling around her face. The sliver of skin at the short hem of her shirt. Although now I’ve seen more. I’ve seeneverything, and can’t help wondering if the bow around the waistband of her shorts is decorative or if I can make those shorts fall with just one tug of the ribbon.

The thought has me falling back against my truck and Idostop myself from following her as she keeps trekking toward the honeysuckle bush, taking in every breath that only she can give me. I took in my first one when I saw her back at the bay, like I haven’t been breathing at all since she left this town. Her presence here, the thunder under her feet, shaking my world back on its axis and releasing another brick that’s been sitting on my chest.

Summer picks off one, then two of the flowers, more of that pressure releasing from my chest as she smiles down at them.

Sulking talks with Adam run through my head about how he doesn’t see her smile anymore, and seeing that upward tilt now, when it’s been so long for me, too, is a tether for me to be back at her side.

“I missed that,” I say, a low fervor on that soft curve of her lips, and I have to put my hands back into my pockets.

She glances up at me, a slow side look, and in that second our gazes connect, everything else does, her and me, a mended bridge for us to meet in the middle.

But we don’t make it there, as her smile dwindles in a partedO, then to a scowl, like she’s now noticing the wrong guy is standing at the other end.

Adam should be in my place. His place. He should be saying this. Craving her and missing her.

My jaw tenses as I observe that frown in her mouth, the tired rims of her eyes, not entirely realizing she’s deposited the second flower on my rebellious reaching palm until she’s brushed pastme for the house, and I plummet into the memory of bringing her two of them during our night out at the fire tower.

I was so worried they’d be crushed in my pocket, and the moment I surprised her had to be perfect. I was shaking with how Ihadto keep those honeysuckles perfect so she could taste them. So I protected them in one of the boxes my dad used for hook storage.

I had to replace the box, but being told that from Dad, while getting teasing jabs of his elbow aboutthis girl, was worth seeing Summer so happy to have something of her mom returned to her.

A life I’ve too had to take on board.

I lick the nectar, although she’s not next to me anymore, hearing again what she was saying now without telling me.

What I give her, she’ll give back to me.

I follow the ghost of her steps, following her everywhere, through the grass and the cobblestone to the house, with more turbulence in my heart that I have to moor myself against, strapped down to the picture in front of me when I stop inside the door.

Mom has Adam and Summer in a tight hug, one on each side, their eyes closed as they hold each other. My mom’s and Summer’s cheeks both are shining with tears.

My family loved her from the beginning. My parents got to know her first through me, and they could tell I was falling for her too.

A shudder starts through my body as I walk a few more steps, needing closer, with the same sort of feeling I had when I was present for Summer having something more of her mom returned to her in my mom’s banana nut bread.

We all felt so freed that summer. Now we’re clogged up by loss, and the one man who would know just what to tell each of us is gone.

My head goes back to words he told me then, guidance that holds half the weight it did.

You’re a good kid, Levi. And you’re gonna be a good man. Keep your eye on that, have some patience, and this will all work out how it should.

Everything comes back like a landslide. How I let Summer go. Why I let her go.

I was young and had no choice.

I was doing what I thought was the right thing.

Now, I’m still doing what I think is the right thing, but what’s right can get blurry. What’s right can change faces.

Summer leans in for more of my mom’s hug and Adam pulls back to let them cling to each other. My jaw tenses again when he meets my stare, an involuntary defense for offenses against Summer. He can’t help the offenses against himself, but helped or not, he’s not holding onto her like he should be.

The downward tilt of his head as he eyes me through his lashes tells me he knows what I’m thinking.

You’re going to lose her.

He lifts his chin slowly, a kink in his brows.Is that a threat?

I blink, a pointed tilt of my head.It’s a warning.

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