Our Hearts Knew Better (Our Hearts #1)

We’ll Steal Away

I already knew imagined experiences weren’t the same as real ones, and after having now experienced so many things I’d only imagined, only read about or saw as a bystander, I kind of never wanted to imagine things again. At least not things I couldn’t also experience.

There was wind in my hair and the waves were rushing, with the Gilligan in action.

The vibrations were full-bodied, like calming, steadying hands, a rocking lullaby.

The open sea washed life’s dirt from my skin and the salty air cleared the soot from my lungs.

This was Levi’s thrill, and my new thrilling escape. Discovery. Claim.

Elliot got us going, showing me how, including how to raise the sails, then stayed closer to the sails to keep watch as I took the helm—me!—with Levi as the teacher now.

He stood behind me, near enough for my back to brush his chest anytime I shifted, with his hands on mine at the start. Which he didn’t have to do. But he did, the tips of his fingers dipping inside the spaces in mine, a light hold as I still led us and he followed.

Elliot glanced back at us, doing a double-take, and I noticed the crease in his cheek.

Levi got something else from his dad—his dimple.

I wouldn’t catch my own dad smiling over this picture. Levi’s dad would probably poke playful fun at him later. Some father-son teasing—about me!—that was as normal as they were.

I peeked at Levi over my shoulder to see that adoring look directed out ahead, then down at me, the slowest and most exhilarating smile spreading on his face.

Still touching me. . .

I had to force my focus. I’d told him he could touch me and he was, with none of his hesitance, and I wanted to be swept away by him instead of the sea.

I pressed back against him, feeling the stalling then restarting of his breathing as his fingers tightened around mine.

I was living my Titanic moment. We weren’t at the bow and he wasn’t singing in my ear and we weren’t kissing and he wasn’t going to draw me nude after this—I flushed at the image, knowing if Levi could draw and he wanted to draw me naked, I wasn’t sure I’d say no. He’d have to keep my bareness under lock and key, but I trusted he would.

I trusted him too. We’d taken so many of those steps and hadn’t fumbled a one.

Still touching. . .

“Can you draw?” I blurted from all the overwhelming sensations, all real and all from him, the question important to my overactive brain at this moment.

And he put two and two together; most people knew what a boat plus drawing equaled. “I can make you look like the best stick figure around,” he joked close to my ear, and I flushed even more. “My mom loves that movie.”

“It’s one of my favorites,” I said, thinking maybe his mom and I could watch it together sometime. “What about you?” I asked him, waiting for the boy smack talk of chick flicks , but he answered like the boy I knew I was with.

“I like it okay. I felt real bad for the ship.”

It took me a second to register his stressed, half teasing passion for that casualty, then I burst out in laughter, feeling the light jerks of his silent amusement against my back.

This was Levi truly in his element.

And when we anchored in a chill spot, near some caves, and he was still near me, beside me as we sprawled out on the deck, I had to ask about the way he chose to share it with me. My hands wouldn’t let it go.

“Did you want to touch me or did you just really want to steer and I was in the way?” My voice raised with the tease, my body frozen with the anticipation.

He squinted out at the other few boats chilling closer to the caves. “I wanted to steer.” His tease back was half so I waited for the rest, chuckling and staring, watching him blink down before blinking back up and adding like a sigh, “I wanted to touch you.”

I had only enough time for my body, especially my heart, to come back to life before he was adding more.

“I wanted to feel the elevated heat in your skin as you sailed the first time. All the changes in your breathing as you were surrounded by only sea. Your goosebumps as you steered a boat—”

“That wasn’t entirely from sailing,” I cut in low, each reminder and observation settling in again as they had when he was touching my skin, catching a smile he kept speaking through, that dimple being the only tell that he heard me.

“For me, they’re always there, but it could’ve been different for you, and there’s nothing like the first.” He met my eyes then and I absorbed those words in a gasp, undetectable on the outside, but altering on the inside, another change I could, but didn’t, convince myself I was imagining happening in him too.

“No, I don’t think there is,” I said, my voice still low, and Levi swallowed hard before looking back out at the sea.

I let my elbows slip out from under me, dropping back onto the deck and grinning up at the sky, breathing in the bay breeze. “I needed this today,” I said with the exhale. “I…really needed it.” I angled my head toward him, following the light lifting of his shirt sleeve from the wind. “And you knew.”

He dropped back with me, his move more graceful. “If you ever need it again and I don’t have good timing…” He gave me his half smile in the trailing off. “Call and we’ll steal away.”

I laughed with the abandon of his words. “I might steal your mom,” I teased against the giddiness in my limbs as I shifted with it.

Levi laughed too. “You can borrow her whenever. She’d love it.”

I’d felt his mom’s love just upon first meeting. I’d felt how steady and consistent her love was, for her son, for her husband, for people…for me.

I’d felt like my needs mattered.

I’d felt cared for inside those walls, so many places to breathe, and I never wanted to leave.

“Levi?” My voice was strained, my lips in a smile as the golden sky blurred above us.

“Yeah,” he whispered.

“Thank you for making me feel safe.”

I was attached to the feeling, attached to him. I could tell him anything and I could show him anything and he took it all to his own heart.

He linked his pinky finger through mine, both of us squeezing into the curl as our gazes locked. “Fuck your dad, Summer.” There was so much passion in the curse and in my name, releasing the salt from my eyes. He spoke to the grief pulsing through me.

Life wasn’t fair, but there was nothing more sincere than this moment right here, than this day, than this life.