Our Hearts Knew Better (Our Hearts #1)

Bullet Points

“I really was joking about calling you a distraction,” Adam told me as we walked along, his pace now even with mine, the laugh he released like a blown out breath. The apology was in his voice, and I waved him off, looking more like I was swatting a bug in the air, as I tried to find a response, but still didn’t have one for that.

“Levi told me about your breakup,” I said instead, using distraction as a lead to keep him talking about himself, a subject he’d seemed to be a big fan of.

“Ah, great,” he sighed out, altering my assumption. A big fan…as long as he chose the bullet points. “What’d he say?” he asked, sounding like he dreaded to know, but eyeing me like he needed to.

Levi hadn’t told me much at all. And I guessed because he knew Adam didn’t want him to.

The thought made me smile as I shook my head, relieved to not have to dump the personal details back on him since they remained that way.

“Nothing. Just that there was one.”

Adam nodded up at the sky, releasing another sigh, but now with his own smile attached. “He wouldn’t have talked about it.”

I kept my gaze on him as his face shifted, trying to read him. He looked conflicted now, his mouth moving slow in puckers with his thoughts, his brows drawn in. “Do you want to talk about it?” I nudged, telling that seeming indecision I was open to his story as much as both he and Levi were open to mine.

Sometimes it’s easier to talk things out with someone who isn’t close to all the delicate and disquieting truths you hold in your heart. So many times I, myself, would chat up strangers in grocery stores. I would tell them things I would’ve told my dad. Things I should’ve been able to tell my dad.

“I’d rather talk about you,” Adam said. He was diverting, but still flirting with the words. Still heavy and un blushing as I dipped my blush behind my hair, thankful for its bigness right now.

And I stayed turned away until my cheeks cooled, until he released a breath and made his voice lighter.

“I’d rather talk about what we’re doing tomorrow night.”

“Tomorrow night,” I repeated, low to myself, a buzz back beneath my skin for more nights like this. I could feel the bounce in my feet traveling through the rest of my body, and I shifted the sensation to my next words, moving with the tease as a cover for my eagerness. “So I am a distraction.”

He exaggerated a humming noise. “ Only if you want to be.”

“I want to be…” I trailed off, low to myself again, his words triggering my thought of being . But I realized when I eyed his stretching smirk that he could’ve taken my pause as a confirmation, so through a sputtered laugh, I quickly added, “Out of my house. I wanna be out of my house.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do.”

My head started shaking, a reflexive revolt against these plans being real. Plans like these. The hope of having them. Plans I wanted to make and keep .

“But why?” I asked from the thought. These guys had just met me. They had no idea what they really could’ve been getting themselves tangled in.

“You want it,” Adam said, like it was so simple to him, my silent thoughts being repeated back a comfort. Then he angled a grin at me. “Adventure, right?”

Another thing I could say about Adam was his attitude was infectious. “Adventure,” I echoed without any more second thoughts, still picturing both him and Levi, wondering if this would include his best friend.

I shushed him as we reached my driveway, cutting him off in the middle of a sentence as my thudding heart picked up. His words faded into silence, but then I had to tell him to soften his steps. It could’ve been those returning pounds of my pulse magnifying everything, but he sounded like he was kicking the gravel as he walked.

Shadows were tricking my mind, making me pause every few steps, thinking each new darker spot that crept up on us was my dad waiting to bust me.

My exhales came out as sighs as I realized my dad was still in the house, those breaths half easing the pressure back on my lungs from the pressure of those walls.

I learned fairly early on that it wasn’t a building that made a home, it was the people inside of it. I’d lived in many different houses, going anywhere and everywhere with my dad, and all the walls would close the same.

My body was naturally protesting, but I had too much of a headrush to be down about having to go back up.

“This is me,” I whispered, pointing to my window as we stopped at the trellis. Still there. Everything was still dark, my dad’s curtains still closed.

“You can’t go through the door?” Adam whispered back, strengthening my trust in him to follow my cues.

“Creaky floors. And my dad’s not the deepest sleeper.”

“Is that why we’re whispering outside?” He was poking fun, and I didn’t know if it was from my bit of ease for being in the clear, but I poked fun back.

“You’ve never whispered outside before?”

He snickered. “I’ve never had to.”

“Well…maybe I’m giving you an adventure too.” I moved again with the tease, and he observed me the same way he did on the boat, his lips in a curve.

“Give me your number.”

I froze, my throat going dry, our whispering out the window literally out the window as I blurted out, “You want my number?”

He snickered again as he pulled his phone from a pocket of his shorts. “You’re cute.”

And that was all he said, still speaking low, but it didn’t sound like a reason for wanting my number; it sounded like his own why wouldn’t I?

Adam stared at me, with his phone now in his hand, waiting, his eyes kind of roaming like he expected me to pull my own phone from pockets I didn’t have, and I blurted again, this time my number.

“You know your number from memory?” he asked after thumbing it in.

“You don’t?” I knew people just put numbers into their phones and forgot about them—even my dad was like that, but even he remembered his own. And mine, as I had to remember his.

“You’re cute,” Adam repeated, still tapping on his phone, the screen shining on his amusement over me.

“You said that twice,” I murmured, and he peeked at me through his lashes, a gaze longer than a blink, and I looked for a dimple to hint at any stretch of a smile, but he didn’t have one.

“Could you give it to Levi too?” I told him from the thought, then flushed, biting down on my lips as he nodded.

“Sure.”

As Adam finished up on his phone, I wondered what he had put me as in his contacts. Something like Cute Girl. Or Cutie .

But it was probably just Summer . He didn’t have to use code names in case his dad looked at his phone while he was using it.

My dad wouldn’t expect me to lie. I didn’t want to be a liar. I risked the consequences of things, tried to prove myself so he’d trust me, so he’d loosen his collar around my neck. But any time I dared to step outside of his perimeters, he pulled.

“There. You have mine too.” Adam said as he pocketed his phone. “Now I can be your sneak out buddy,” he added in a walk backward to leave me to my climb, and I gave him a small wave.

“Distract you later,” I joked, and he grinned, then spun around, a bounce in his hurrying off.

Then there was just me again.

But not how I was when I first made this climb.

It was more difficult going up with these flip flops on and getting through the window, but I couldn’t take the shoes off because I needed the work of all my limbs and appendages to hoist myself back inside. I almost landed on my face, swaying on my feet and then finding my balance before eyeing my closed door and stilling every muscle to listen.

My pulse pounded to no other sounds. Nothing.

I closed my window exactly how I opened it, one inch at a time, kicked off my shoes, then dove onto my bed like I was a kid in a bounce house, with that innocent-like excitement, my body vibrating from the rush and the nerves and the relief of the night.

With two attractive and interesting and nice boys.

Boys who were interested in me.

And I couldn’t stop thinking about both of them—one a bit more than the other—replaying every moment. My main character moments.

And all I had to do was climb down from my tower.

The covers were all the way to my chin before I could finally release a breath. Then one more jolt of adrenaline had me reaching for my phone on my bedside table.

Adam had sent me two texts.

You’re cute.

Did the third time charm you?

I smiled as my thumbs danced above the keyboard, about to assure him of his charm. Because he did charm me.

But Levi charmed me too. And in a steadier way.

I decided to just send a neutral thumbs-up, then quickly put my phone, face down, back on the table, pressing deeper in the sheets and wondering how I was supposed to just wait for sleep to take me when I was now taken by possibility.