Page 96 of Our Hearts Knew Better

And I feel it in the gasp of her inhale. I feel it as her fingers push through a belt loop of my shorts in a soothing tug.

Mom’s kiss is a light touch against my cheek that causes my eyes to close as my fingers stretch away from the kisses I nowhave to put away, because her husband is alive and my dad is dead.

And I’m not him, and he can’t eat them anymore, and they’d stick to my throat if I tried to eat them myself.

Mom wants me to save them for him, anyway.

She still gets out eight chocolates and leaves half for him, through me.

He’ll want them when he gets home.

Every sound mounts as I start for the pantry in the wall by the bar; the thumping of my soles against the floor, the swooshing of Mom’s socks as she leaves to the hall, the creaking of Summer’s chair as she follows me on this trek.

My body is so stretched, like it’s about to fly into pieces as I add the chocolates to the stack overflowing in the designated basket.

Summer’s touch is the dismount, alighting me from the deepest force of the pressure to be able to hear my own breath and feel the mooring pressure of her fingers in my arm.

“You don’t have to hold it all together,” she tells me, low, and I come close to pouring everything onto her lap.

But I won’t add to her mess. And I’m not as messed up anymore. I have the crimp but I straighten out.

“Yeah, I do.”

But that doesn’t change how I need her. I’ve needed her. WhatIneed is Summer, and it’s a split second, but as her hand slips away, I grab her wrist.

My eyes trail over the shudder in her parted lips before my gaze locks with hers. My hand then trails up her arm, a slow stroke and charge through my own skin over each new pebbling of hers.

I tug her to me, and it takes only another split second before she’s out of that chair and in my arms, the crash realigning ourworlds, our hearts meeting and kicking to life from the parts that have felt flatlined without the other’s.

We hold each other with a sigh that presses us in even tighter. Her presence back in this town. Her face in a room. Her body near me. Her breathing. Her voice. Having her touch and touching her back. . .

It’s like no time has escaped us.

But there’s still mountains between us, hills of how our lives have changed.

We can be us, in some ways.

I don’t deserve her heart, but I deserve this chance to have her like this in my life again, if she’s willing to give it.

I can’t have her, but I can have this.

Fuck. She smells the same. Like flowers and cinnamon.

I bury my face in her hair at her neck until the feeling passes of wanting to see if she tastes the same.

Like my Summer.

I can’t have her.

Knowing this doesn’t stop me from wanting her, and the feeling never passes, but knowing that finally separates us like a cold wave, to where I can look her in the eyes again without claiming her mouth with mine like I did that one and only time, the cost be damned.

The cold wave has also washed over her, as she sits back in the chair at the moment itself passing, but the way the corners of her lips purse in with her smile tells me she wants to hold on to it too.

“Come out with me,” I say through a breath, my hands now in my pockets.

Summer’s hands are running through her hair, and they pause at my words. She blinks, one corner of her lips now in a lift. “Sailing,” she breathes, like it’s still a marvel for her, and I’m electrified to see her on a boat again.

“Sailing,” I repeat, smiling double. “It’s where I do my best work, anyway.” I’m half kidding, but I know what I said, and now I’m electrified by the pinkening of her cheeks.

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