Page 16 of Second to None

And once more, with feeling—ouch.I pressed my tongue flat against the roof of my mouth, held my breath for two, three, four, and exhaled. “You’ll take anything I say and twist it into its worst possible interpretation, won’t you?”

Something moved behind his eyes. “Can you blame me?”

Not even a little.

“No.” I leaned forward to touch his arm and thought better of it, hand dropping back into my lap. Brightness flashed on the edge of my vision—reflected sunlight that glinted off a nearby boat. “I know I fucked up, and I’m sorry. You were just… much braver than me.”

“Or maybe I was so in love with you that everything else paled in comparison.” There was no softness to his statement, gaze level as it held mine. I was first to drop my eyes.

Past tense. Of course—we barely knew each other anymore, even if my stupid heart shrank away from this truth that I’d set into motion.

“I was in love with you, too.” It wasn’t a revelation or anything—we’d said it back then, words shaped against skin, squeezed into the gaps between open-mouthed kisses. But out here in the open, it felt like a plunge into uncharted waters.

He blew out a harsh breath. “Just not quite enough, huh?”

Enough to scare me shitless. Enough that I don’t think there’ll be anyone else, ever.

“You’re wrong,” I said, quiet yet firm.

He appeared poised to argue when our gazes caught again. This time, I fought the temptation to look away, and whatever he found eased the sharp lines of his forehead. Waves washed against the boat hull, the others’ laughing voices drifting up from the deck below, a counterpoint to the layered silence that spun out between us.

Levi glanced down, something delicate about his torso framed against the cloudless, indifferent sky. “Maybe I shouldn’t have backed you into a corner.”

Oh.

I shoved a hand through my hair, curls tangled by the salty breeze. “You were tired. You were so fuckingtiredof it all. I think you were looking for a way out, and you needed to know where I stood.”

“Yeah.” He rolled his bottom lip between his teeth and released it again, voice slow and deliberate. “But that didn’t make it fair, did it? Asking you to choose. Forcing your hand like that.”

“I should have chosen you.” It came out rough, the words scraping against the back of my throat. In my mind, I’d said them so many times, but putting them out in the open like this, for Levi to hear and weigh—God, it scared me.

Something in his expression gave way, like the aftermath of a wave’s collapse, its hard crest dissolving into foamy whitewash. A softening, no longer resisting the quiet pull of the tide. “We were just really young,” he murmured. “Weren’t we?”

“You think we wouldn’t have lasted?” The idea tasted strange on my tongue, new and unfamiliar.Ihad fucked us up. It had never occurred to me to wonder what else could have.

“I don’t know.” One corner of his mouth quirked up, wry. “It would have been all eyes on us. Paps, interviews, the works. Not like I handled it well when it was the five of us, and just us two at the center of a publicity storm… It would have been next level. Although I might have done better that way, being myself rather than The Funny One.”

I shook my head. “Levi…”

“Who knows, huh?” He raised a hand, palm open, in some version of a shrug. “Or we’d have made it, only for reality to kick in. We would have lost some fans, most likely. Our next album might have done just okay. And maybe you’d have blamed me for that.”

I wanted to dismiss it and couldn’t. Levi was right—losing fans would have bothered me. Their adoration had been my crutch, an external source of confidence I’d lacked.

“We might have lasted, though,” I said softly.

“Maybe, yeah.” He sounded unconvinced, like he was humoring me rather than believed we’d truly stood a chance. Because he’d realized there was a better fit for him? Another love, a real grownup—not some lost little boy too scared to hold his hand where people might see.

Have dinner with me?

The question shriveled in my chest, crumbling like a plucked flower left without water. He might say no. He probably would. If his heart was already taken… Although the way Mason had acted, I’d thought maybe not. But even if it wasn’t, why would Levi believe that this time would be different?

I needed to show him.

Steps on the teakwood stairs burst our two-person bubble. A moment later, a crew member appeared to offer us drinks, snacks, anything that might make our stay on board more pleasant.No, thank you.

“Time to rejoin the others?” Levi asked, and perhaps it was for the better, so I nodded.

He was here for a week. I would do my damned hardest to make it count.

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