Page 83 of Our Hearts Knew Better

He doesn’t move, and I’m out the door.

The crickets are singing tonight.

The mosquitoes arebiting. I’ve slapped once at my arm and once at my leg.

Why am I out here again?

I can sense why. Like a chill along my skin in this heat.

When my life is broken, I walk. Pace through it all. Hoping to find something that will fix it. Change it.

I know that something can be me—myself. But I also have unfinished business that won’t let me rest. So I’m back in a pace, around the witching hour, floating down darkened streets while everyone is asleep. Everyone is quiet. Nothing is expected of me.

My feet slow to a stop, my gaze glued to the area of sky in the distance above the dock, to the memories of a rainbow of colors lighting up the black.

We arrived just after the Fourth. We just missed the fireworks on the bay. But I got to see them in that glory my last summer here after senior year. On the Gilligan with Elliot and Isolde, and Levi and Adam and a couple of their friends. I stood in between Levi and Adam, feeling Levi’s arm brush against mine, more than once.

My body leaned into the subtle touch instead of away into Adam’s. . .

“Where’s your head?”

I blink at the voice, low enough to draw me out of my thoughts and not startle me, and I whip my focus to Levi, finding me again.

He’s standing a bit out of my space, his gaze searching mine with an almost pleading tinge, like he needs to be inside my mind, a softness like he wants to comfort me.

My thoughts weren’t dark, but I was frozen in them, and as I relax the edges of my face, I know my expression told him something different.

We’ve seen each other during some of my visits with his mom, but we haven’t been alone like this since the bay.

Since I showed him my body, and he still turned away.

He was right to. I’m nothisto look at, but something in my chest grows hot, and achy, when I remember the heated claim in his eyes anyway as they roamed my bare curves. Thewhat ifof us.

His eyes now are keeping their connection to mine as I’m noticing again a heavier shade of blue that wasn’t there before his dad died.

“Fireworks,” I answer, low back, a similar softness in my voice from wanting to comfort him too.

But as he glances up toward that area of sky, I breathe out the feeling and breathe in the warm air, that burn he gave me, one more fresh.

“Stop helping my father,” I order him, my voice hard now, but there’s a shake in the words that clenches my teeth together.

Levi reconnecting his gaze to mine is slow, but not swayed. “You don’t want me to do that.”

I’m spinning and walking back the direction I came in a flash, not caring how well hethinkshe knows me, not caring what was within the lines of my tone. I said what I said and that’s the end of it.

“Summer, you don’t,” he insists, right behind me, the slapping of his shoes against the pavement competing with mine.

I spin on him, halting us both in the glow of a streetlight, my heart thudding out of my control. “He hasn’t had another heart attack, so he should be fine now. Stop helping him.” I push those last words, three dragon breaths. “He doesn’t deserve it.”

“You wouldn’t have wanted me to let him die,” Levi argues back, the blue of his eyes glossing even heavier for his personal pain, and with such sympathy for mine, it peels at his personal scar he put on my heart.

“I never wished forhimto die, but what he did to me needs to,” I throw back, fighting through tears I won’t let fall, my father still affecting me, the neglect and the isolation—all of that still with me.

Levi steps closer, and I tell myself to step back, but I can only move my mouth. “Summer—”

“You couldn’t save your dad, so you’re trying to save mine,” I cut through, and his stomach visibly jolts with the verbal punch. “You saved him. It’s done. You can stop now. You can leave him alone, just like he left—”

I swallow the rest. Or more so the strain in my throat steals the rest from me. The root of my pain and anger.

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