Our Hearts Knew Better (Our Hearts #1)

Would You Run With Me?

Adam was different the next night I saw him. His gaze was kind of glossed over—when he climbed my trellis and I had to hiss at him to get down again—and all he told me as he ran for the street, without waiting for me, was to grab a swimsuit.

His rush was another rush through me, but there was also a twisting feeling in my stomach as I kept glancing toward my window, where he appeared in one second and vanished the next.

I didn’t own a swimsuit, but Adam left me with no time to think, only do, as I raced around my room on tiptoes to collect a tank top and a pair of old girls’ boxer shorts. They had gotten tight on me, but they were stretchy so still comfortable.

In the car, Adam was extra hurried and unusually quiet. The roads were deserted and we were still between the lines, but he was pushing over the limit. And as my pulse increased with the speedometer, I realized this was another day where he was feeling too much.

I asked him if he wanted Levi instead, not thinking he would answer me, but he said no, easing his foot off the gas like my voice snapped him from his spell.

He needed me.

You’re just what I needed.

When he slid his hand down to the bottom of the wheel, I wrapped mine around his wrist and squeezed. A big sigh released the tension from his body and he slowed his speed some more with a soft crease in his cheek as he glanced at me.

I guessed he’d want to go back to the train, but he passed that area by and pulled up and over near a different grouping of trees.

With my tank top and boxer shorts balled in my hands, and a couple towels clutched in his, I followed him through the mini forest to the beach part of the bay. A gasp parted my lips as I took in its expansive full-frontal beauty in front of me. And it was night . So I could only imagine how breathtaking the bay looked under the sun from this viewpoint.

And now I was stirred to find out.

This town loved its lights—like wanderers in the dark were expected here, though Adam and Levi were the only two I’d run into—so a soft glow was draped over this spot, too, showing me the rising cliffs and the rippling water and then the blackness beyond.

The lighthouse was towering from down here, up this close.

“Right?” Adam smiled at my mesmerized expression. “I’d say I know where to look.” He now gave me a look of his own that asked, wouldn’t you?

“You do,” I confirmed through a whisper as my eyes went back on the move.

“This,” he said next. “This is what keeps me from running away.”

I clutched my clothes against a related ache for that sentiment and a laugh breaking through my chest. “Do you really wanna run away?” I asked like I knew his answer was no. “From baseball…” That was the ticket he already had. “And Levi,” I added lower. His best friend.

And always right there in my mind. More so now after our second night together and our texts.

Adam stared out at the bay a moment, then glanced back at me with an agreeing shrug that shifted to a smirk. “But if I did, would you run with me?” He was back.

Another laugh was my answer as I kicked off my shoes to hug the sand with my toes. I breathed through the ache still in my chest as my lips quivered to a smile, the tears that filled my eyes making it look like I was standing in the water.

I was a kid the last time I felt this. My little hand in my mom’s.

“You can swim, right?”

I blinked at the question, feeling my nod before I lifted my head to find Adam half-naked, glancing back at me now in nothing but his boxers.

My eyes trailed down his back, my blush deepening the lower they fell. . .

Then I blinked again, down at the clothes in my hands as it finally registered that I would be going back to my house wet.

That wasn’t ideal for trying to— having to —leave no traces behind.

I couldn’t go back wet .

No fucks, Summer.

The conviction gripped me only a second after the hesitation, and Adam’s grin helped me hold to my gall that was getting stronger by the day.

But where was I supposed to change? Behind the bush area?

Adam thought so, gesturing right in that direction. “There’s a bush over there if you need to…”

When I didn’t move right away, he moved, his hands going for the waistband of his boxers. “We can skinny dip—” He cut himself off with a peal of laughter at my widened stare and hanging jaw. “I’m joking.”

I sighed out a laugh of my own. “Ha. Ha.”

He beamed at my mocking. “If you wanted to it wouldn’t be a joke, but…joke,” he affirmed at my not wanting to, as I hauled my clothes to the bushes.

“How many girls have you skinny dipped with?” I heard myself ask.

“None.”

I chuckled with a headshake behind my lifted shirt as I tugged it off. “I don’t believe it.”

“No, really,” he argued, but I still shot him a side stare.

“And you want me to be your first?”

“For that.” Humor laced his tone. “The other firsts have already been taken.”

I almost tripped over my shorts as I tugged them off as our different experience levels sunk in.

Then I wondered about Levi’s experience level and if it was closer to mine than Adam’s. His firsts that may or may not have already been taken.

My head wouldn’t let me imagine it, the feeling like a shiver through me, shaking itself off as I piled my things together with a new thought. That after my second night with Levi and us now having each other’s number, too, it would be the three of us again.

It wasn’t, but I was okay to keep both of them to myself when I got them.

Adam hollered as he charged into the sea, like a release of the weight he carried tonight, and I felt a jerk in my throat to do the same. Especially after his laughed shout of, “Come on!”

I ran toward him in my bra and my panties, not thinking, only doing, as my own holler unleashed, with a squeal attached as I splashed through the water to be silenced as I slipped under.

I came up with a gasp, fingering my hair from my eyes to see Adam watching me with a shine in his gaze, his bottom lip folded between his teeth.

It was a look that made running out here half-naked, too, worth it.

It was a look that reflected the words repeating in my head. You look great.

I dipped my face back beneath the surface to cool my cheeks. As they filled with water, I told myself I wouldn’t have to spit it at him if he’d take the heat off me himself.

He didn’t, so I did, spouting the mouthful his way that he dodged with a splash that turned into more splashes, back and forth between his hands and mine. More squeals from me, more laughter from both of us. So much water to the face, until I was pleading for mercy.

“Thank you,” Adam breathed as we fingered residue of our attacks from our faces. “This is good for me.”

“This is good for me too,” I said back, lulled by the little waves we were making, and perked by that shine back in his gaze, that feeling back, too, that made me want to dip down again.

I laughed out a diverting question instead. “But haven’t you done this with people before? This is…a thing you do…” Like with Nadia maybe—before the breakup. “Like with Levi.” His name was the one that came out.

Adam released a laugh, then filled his cheeks, releasing the water in a forceful stream off to the side. “Levi’s idea of fun is the Gilligan.”

I knew that Adam had been on the boat with Levi and his dad, but there was something in the words that made me question. “Haven’t you sailed with them?”

“Yeah. And it’s fun,” he said, with traces of that fun, bits of memories, in his words now. “But Levi’s never train dodged with me,” he emphasized, bringing us back around to me, stroking his hands closer to mine where we trod. “And he wouldn’t swim at night.”

“Yeah, but he’s still there when you need him,” I said low, my limbs weakening over my imaginary Clara. A best friend I didn’t have. “He’d do anything for you,” I added, now remembering Adam calling on him the night their world collided with mine.

Adam stared toward the blackness a moment before his voice dropped low too. “We’ve been through a lot.”

For another moment, the only sound between us was the motion of our bodies staying afloat. I gave him a small splash that washed away the clouds over his face. “I just meant, you don’t have to bring me out here,” I said with a soft laugh.

He shot me the same side stare I’d given him about his skinny dipping. “You don’t wanna do all this alone.”

I didn’t want to live alone and I would need more courage to walk solo every night, but I would’ve found it. Adam knew my want for company, and I had that from both him and Levi.

“And I’m your sneak out buddy, so yeah, I have to,” he added with a waggly browed grin that had my hand on another splash attack. “And you’re down for anything,” he teased with a forward stroke closer to me.

He was only a few inches away now and I spun around with a jolted laugh, focusing on the sway of my fingers.

“I’m just trying to…figure me out.” I was the clay I’d mold in ceramics class, experience being the fingers that would shape me into something that worked.

Was I down for anything? I was down for a lot of things. But anything?

I was starting to figure out it would depend who was asking.

“Well, that’s a constant thing. We’re always figuring out who we are.”

I eyed the ripples he was making blend with mine as he swam even closer, and I spun around again with my lips curved in challenge. “I’m trying to be a normal teenager then.”

Adam’s grinning and treading both spread wider. “You’ve come to the right guy to help with that.”

I chuckled, sprinkling him with another splash, and as he closed the space between us, another question popped from my mouth. “What was she like?”

“Who?”

It took me a couple seconds to find a name, my own question almost like whiplash. “Nadia.”

It took a couple seconds for him to find his answer too. “Nothing like you.” Those words pushed my stare down toward the water, a strange bubbling feeling—pleasing or unpleasing, I couldn’t tell—in my chest.

Adam’s hand came up to my chin and lifted my now widening eyes back to his. “That’s a good thing.”

I don’t believe it.

My pulse pounded as his hand slipped higher on my cheek, “Are you staying friends?” the next question that popped from my mouth.

His thumb traced my cheekbone before slipping back down to my jaw, and I felt myself pressing into the touch, while a shake traveled through me beneath the water. “Negative. I don’t stay friends with anyone who hurts me. Would you?” His brows lifted with a doubtfulness for my answer being yes.

“I guess it depends on the hurt,” I said back. “And how they make up for it.” I didn’t think all pain was black and white, and hearts could be mended.

I was half surprised I could think at all with Adam’s skin on mine, persistent, and in a way I’d never been touched before.

“She’s not making up for anything. That’s not her nature. I was always wrong,” he muttered, an undertone of being wrong about her .

My leg brushed his in some wordless comfort, because I couldn’t find more now, and the move brought his now flared eyes back to mine.

“Can I?” His breath was a soft breeze as his thumb traced over the gasped part in my lips, repeating after me from that night in his car, sounding every bit as awed as I had been over his sunroof.

Adam wants to kiss me.

I was stricken, every limb almost stilled, until my brain reminded me I needed to keep them moving to stay afloat.

I hesitated, figuring out now that anything outside of that could just happen to me, but this was something I wanted to choose .

My first kiss.

It wasn’t that Adam wasn’t kissable. I just didn’t feel desperate for it.

Maybe, if I hadn’t seen Levi again the other night, I would’ve let Adam kiss me.

I tried so hard not to be messy. When my heart was open to anything, things the beats had never been able to capture before, it was impossible to stay clean.

But something in the pounding beats now were like little pounds away, pushing me not to kiss him, and I sank beneath the surface, out of his touch.

When I came back up, some inches away, I laughed through my hands as I wiped away hair and wet, adding in a splash toward Adam to lighten the red in his cheeks.

His usual fun-loving nature peeked through as he shot me a little splash back. “You’re cute,” he said.

“And a distraction and a rebound…” I teased.

He shook his head, easing my unease at thinking myself so. “Not a rebound.”

I sputtered another laugh. “I’ve never…” I wanted him to know for sure, but I didn’t finish the sentence, my tongue tangled on all the things I’ve never .

“Do you want to?” Adam smirked. “I can show you what you’re missing.”

I licked my lips like I couldn’t help it, then dipped my head backward into the water as they twisted against a smile, up at the stars.

I felt like a Disney princess again. He can show me the world.

“You’ve already been doing that,” I told him, water tinkling at my back as I met his eyes again, some wonder inside them. “Thank you too.” There was an affection in my voice for him and what he’d been doing for me and with me that seemed to smooth his slight daze, and he relaxed into a float with another waggly browed grin.

I relaxed back, too, until a looming shadow through some distant trees caught my attention. “What’s that?”

Waves rippled around me as Adam closed in again to follow my stare. “That’s just the old fire tower.”

Just the old fire tower.

Like everything else in this town, it had a story, one he didn’t elaborate on.

But I knew who would.

My arms and legs pumped me higher above the surface with the sparked energy of having plans .