Page 99 of Our Hearts Knew Better

Until he does, his eyes trailing up to mine with that swirling torment I’ve seen for the third time now—but who’s keeping track?—before he leans back against the rocks.

I’m sinking. So I swim out into a float.

What if. . .

I’m not sure how long I study the ridges of the cave’s ceiling, trying to relax the shake in my body and keeping my mind as clear as can be, before Levi finally speaks away the silence.

“Do you wanna talk about what happened with your dad?”

I sigh, his tone sonormal, sonothing just happened just now—because nothing did.

We can both tell ourselves thatsomething isn’t happening, but. . .

I shift back into treading and face him to catch some of that normalcy. “Nothing really happened.” I snicker at that wording now. “He…” I picture the box now waiting for me in Levi’s truck, an instant sting back in my lids, with both a heaviness and alightness in my chest, as I tell him with unshed tears in my voice, “He gave me back my mom.”

Levi studies me so intensely, with emotion coloring his face and a smile on his lips that I recognize as being more than just happy for me, but inside the feeling with me. “I know.”

My laugh bounces me in the water, some splashing my face. “Right.”

The warmth I feel toward Levi for how he’s been thinking of me swims my body closer to him again. . .

Until the flare of the burn shifts me back into a float.

“I’ll talk with him.” I acknowledge the decision I already made the moment my father gave me my mom. “But he’s not why I’m here,” I add, like a confession, letting the words hang. Every reason not related to my father is a throb through my veins, putting this into the universe, mostly, for it to not put any expectations on me and for me to not have any for whatever our next conversation will be.

Levi stays quiet, and the throb turns into a zip that moves me into a swim around the cave.

I stroke from one side to the next, flipping to my back now and then.

And when I finally feel settled enough to swim back to Levi, I see him watching me with a smile that makes me realize I’m wearing one too.

It hurts my cheeks with how real it is, and almost fades with the more familiar pain of knowing that once this is over, it’ll be gone.

“I’ve missed seeing you like this,” he says, the words more exhaled, and my inhale catches every one, especially at seeing some reflection of that pain in his eyes, like he knows it’ll be gone soon too.

“How do you do it?” I ask him, and his face changes like he’s already considering the answer before I finish with, “Be…like this?” My little laugh prompts his.

“Fuck, I…” He swims out, closer to me, from the rocks, shaking his head. “I just think about what I still have.”

“What do you have?” The question is half selfish, half seeking.

His treading slows as he holds my gaze. “This,” he says with a gleam for all thethiswe’ve been talking about, now sounding likeYou.

I give my face a quick dip below the water to wet my suddenly dry mouth.

“The sea,” he continues with a glance around, not quite like a retraction, but still a redirection. “My mom…a place to call home…music…”

I hum, tilting him a look. “Ten Decembers?”

His dimple pops again, a curious raising of his brows. “Thoughts on the latest album?”

I think of those long nights back in Virginia, with my earbuds in, Ten Decembers singing me through the dark. I haven’t listened to them lately, but… “I would’ve had a harder time getting through this year without it.”

Levi’s treading, that had picked up, slows again as he nods and murmurs, “Yeah.”

If I could let anyone take Kai Coleman from me, it would be Levi.

But I didn’t let him. I couldn’t. That band’s music has been there for me since I was a wandering teenager—now only a little less wandering adult.

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