Page 85 of Our Hearts Knew Better

We’ve turned for the third flight of stairs before it registers we’re climbing the fire tower, and that muscle memory has me stepping on all the non-creaking spots, though I wouldn’t be able to even hear them over the storm.

The tower does have an expanded section of roof to shelter under…but once we reach the top, Levi walks us right to the door.

I follow quicker this time with narrowed eyes and an opened mouth as he pries keys from his wet shorts pocket and inserts one into the lock…and opens the door.

I’m processing what this could mean when I realize neither of us are moving. I blink from the darkened space to Levi, who has his head angled down, toward me, but his eyes not on me, and with a big breath, he reaches into the shadows and turns on a light.

My lungs expand, too, as I blink back toward the space, now aglow.

“Welcome to my home,” Levi tells me, a low confession, as he presses his back against the door jamb.

“Your home,” I whisper, with the softest emphasis, as I step inside the fire tower—hisfire tower—my hands clinging to his wet shirt.

I stall on the big rug so I don’t track in damp footprints as I take this in with conflicting emotions swirling in my throat, a squeeze of a gasped laugh and another painful punch that reverberates down to my stomach.

I drop the shirt.

It’s almost exactly how I imagined it at seventeen, just with Levi’s stylistic touches. There’s the kitchen area. The dresser. The bedroom area. And a couch space. Mini lights are strung along the tops of every window, with open cabinet spaces above them. There’s trinkets from the sea, and related to the sea, some I recognize as having been Elliot’s.

My perusal becomes blurred and not even a blink clears it.

It’s so cozy, like a hug I’ve needed since my real hug with Isolde. And though there’s no cat and no jungle gym for my cat and no bookshelf, this feels like mine.

But that’s not right.

“You stole my house,” I say, as a bit more than a whisper, an attempted teasing. He stole my house. He stole my heart. The thought blares through my head and through that heart still beating for him that he could even steal my loyalty if he had none of his own.

Especially with how he’s watching me now, standing back in front of me, still without a shirt on, and his face even more naked with relief, like we’ve been house shopping together and he’s been waiting tosurprise me with the one I wanted. His chest swells with how much he can see I love it.

“And you didn’t tell me…” I trail the accusation, a push back through the love.

“It wasn’t a secret,” he responds, simply and sensibly, almost feeling insulting, until he adds, “You just never asked me.”

I didn’t ask anyone. I would’ve been too tempted to show up on his doorstep.

And now, with a place likethis? I’ll need my own damn key.

Levi holds one of the towels now in his hands out to me, and I take it—but he doesn’t release it, the towel stretched between both of our grips.

I still at the slide of his eyes over me, his full intake of breath that seizes mine, and I stop my own eyes from tracking the water still dripping from his hair down his chest to keep close watch on that gaze.

And when it reconnects with mine, I see that similar torment I saw at his truck at the bay, the storm within the blue stronger than the one outside, moistened with morewhat ifs.

What if he touches me?

What if I touch him?

What if we go back in time and correct our future?

What if he yanks, and my racing heart collides with his?

With a bob in his throat, he releases the towel.

My arm jerks some with the give, the connection breaking as we dry off like we’re mad at our skin.

He’s completely disheveled, mussing his wet hair, every muscle of his hard frame tightened, and I’m remembering when it was once my hands that made him this way.

“You’ll have to go back down if you need a bathroom,” he says, an apology in his voice.

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