Page 86 of Our Hearts Knew Better

I chew the smirk or scowl in my lip at the boyish nerves in his voice too. “You built a bathroom.”

He pauses his drying and nods, all soft and humble.

Even this place looks near brand new.

“How did this”—I swat around the space—“come to be?”

“I didn’t want to live at my parents’ anymore,” he says as he walks to the dresser, an underlying tone of that not being amanlything to do, and my mouth curls into that smirk-scowl. “There wasn’t a house for sale…”

“How much did this cost you?”

He walks back to me, pulling a dry shirt over his head, this one white, clearly just a barrier. “I used my savings. That truck,” he says with a thumb pointed toward the outside. “I accepted it from one of my dad’s friends so I could keep saving. I located the original owner…” He trails off again, with a nod around the tower, the rest an easy fill in the blank.

“And,” he starts again, low, with a glance toward one of the walls of windows, “I have a good view of the bay here.”

The tightness in his throat around those words draws me close to him, the squishing sound of my wedges drawing his gaze to mine. “Your mom?” I don’t have to ask, but I do, and he doesn’t need to answer, but he does.

“Yep,” he sighs out, shifting toward me, a flutter in his lids as he breaks our connection again. “She’ll come up here sometimes and stand at the windows.”

My swallow is knotted, a pinch in the extra beats of my heart for Levi to have the hope of having his dad back. “You can look too.” I manage to keep my voice steady, encouraging for any small part of him that still wants to believe Elliot is alive out there, for the softening in the corners of his mouth when I do.

And when his eyes flutter back to mine, they’re wide with that hope, then hooded with fear, then hardened with resolve. The transformation almost happens at once.

“He’s gone, Summer.” He reiterates this with a flare in his nose, then he’s moving around me, away from this, to his wet shirt on the floor.

As he carries it to the hamper, my mouth loses its openness, my teeth fixing together as I squish more around the room—he’s been squishing around too—studying Levi’s collection of things from his dad, like I studied the collection of things from my mom back in Virginia, thinking again whatbothElliot and Mollie would tell me to do if they were here.

I knew what to do last time, but I was steered away.

I shake away those thoughts, but only enough to rock them to the back of my mind.

“It’s unfair that we still need our parents,” I say low, half to myself, but for us both.

Levi is close enough to catch the words, saying low back, “I don’t think we ever stop.”

My swallow is in knots again as I come upon what appears to be a curtain draped down a space the size of a door, but I pass it over, remembering from my peek inside that summer it was just a random wall area, and Levi probably covered it to look better. The white of it even reminds me of a sail.

I stop when I spot a bike tire, attached to a bike, Levi’s old bike, that he seems to now have as decoration. Strangely, it works, but I snicker as I face him, where he’s leaned back against a desk. His gaze is glued to me, and I blame my shiver on still being damp.

“Couldn’t get rid of it,” I say as a tease.

He just shakes his head, and something in the way he keeps his eyes locked to mine makes me ask, “Why?”

This pushes his eyes toward the floor, then around the space, and I narrow mine, pressing a repeat. “Why?”

He drops his head back, his chest rising on an inhale, then swings his focus back over to me with a sigh. “I don’t know what to say. Everything I want to say, I shouldn’t say.” A small scrunch touches his face like even that was saying too much, and I stare him down, as he knows I don’t walk away anymore without answers to my questions. That’s why my throat closes around certain ones, but I didn’t think this one would damage me.

“It’s linked to you,” he tells me, and I feel the tear, as the rest of his words try to repair it. “I couldn’t get rid of it, because it reminds me of you. Of us, then, before…”

“Before you ruined us?” It’s not a question but my throat isn’t cooperating.

My feet are, though, starting me for the door to head back out into a more bearable storm. I feel sluggish, drained, but also on edge, and the slightest tap could tip me over.

“I need you in my life, Summer.”

I feel Levi’s tug like a string between us at my back, pulling me to a stop at the door, said like these are my final steps out of his life instead of just out of the tower.

“Then why wasn’t I?” I argue as I face him again, tipped over, then jolted back by the glossy war in his eyes. By his own steps he took, like the string was pulling him to me too.

---