Our Hearts Knew Better (Our Hearts #1)

Unpredictable Predictability

Summer

I smell the sea through the car vents as soon as the tires touch the Rosalee Bay town line, and it feels like the first biggest breath I’ve been able to take in years. Those salty and sweet emotions a wave with each one. My heart thudding my ribcage.

Well, teen Summer…we’re doing it.

This is the closest I’ll ever be to home. The closest I’ll ever be to the girl I found here, the girl who has always deserved more.

You deserve wholly.

That’s what I need again. That feeling I had that summer. That promise.

I hate I’m thinking this again, but thank you, Griffin .

With a stop at the first red light, both my feet jumpy inside my wedges, but my right still gentle on the brake, I exorcize that thankfulness with a thank you, Clarissa . She can be a little demon all her own when you need her to be, but she’s the savior.

I peek at people in their yards as I pass through streets—avoiding my father’s—most faces ones I recognize. Which means they’ll recognize me, and most definitely Adam. We’ll give them something to talk about, and I doubt it’ll be love.

The blast of the air conditioning and Adam’s low snoring from the passenger seat is the only music to my ears as I turn the wheel and press the brake and hit the gas some more times, until I stop at the curb of Adam’s old house. Now our new house. With his father.

I leave the car—no longer the bribe from Adam’s dad, but an older model, with bench seats—running to keep my body cool as I try to do the same with my mind.

My eyes become reacquainted with every window, the deep slanted roof, the plain front door, and the garden, still tended to, the only form of calm I’ll catch when I need some.

My eyes drift down to Adam’s sleeping form, my heart bleak beats over the familiar sight, the only true form he takes now, any calm he would’ve provided me while staying with Griffin a chaos in its unpredictable predictability.

I watch him a moment longer, the air from the vents blowing wisps of his dark hair, trimmed to be more presentable , then shake him awake. My touch on his arm is gentle, too, knowing this will be worse for him and having doubts about him returning to the carefree guy he was. Though I picked hope one more time.

And no matter how gentle I am, he still jerks to life like an explosion went off.

He blinks, sighing against the seat when he reregisters me beside him. “We make it?”

His phrasing puts a clench in my stomach, some kind of laugh, some kind of ache, and I let him pop himself straight as he looks out the windows, around his childhood yard and house.

A shadow passes over his face when it hits that we’re here.

This next phase of our life, whatever that will be, is about to begin.

We both know exactly what this will be, our bodies slumped to our seats in our apprehension to leave the car.

The smile Adam gives me isn’t like the seemingly real one he gave me back in our now old apartment, but he’s trying. “Let’s go,” he drones.

Let’s go. A call, a whisper, in his seventeen-year-old voice right before we would do something exciting is what I hear instead, an echo around every wall of my heart.

“Let’s go,” I mumble to myself as I cut the engine and unclick my seatbelt. Then he unclicks his, an eagerness suddenly taking him over as he shoves open his door. Then he’s gone, almost speed walking toward the back of the car, his door left open and swinging back and forth.

I don’t have the energy to bitch and moan, and I don’t have the energy to reach across the seat and pull it closed myself, but I muster one good spring.

I slam mine like an announcement after I step out into the heat, adjusting my crop top and shorts, squinting into the sun. The humidity here, especially in the mornings, is going to be great for my straightened hair.

Adam has his bags at the bumper when I meet him at the trunk, my own bags waiting for me to haul them out too.

My eyes drift in another look toward the house, then back down at my bags.

“Let’s go.” I blurt out the repeat, sounding close to those excited teenagers we were, but with more of an urge to buy more time before we have to settle in with his father. “Let’s forget this for now and go do something.”

The Adam I knew would’ve run away from this and to me.

But he just stares at me with bent brows, looking far from wanting to get reacquainted with our old town, our old spots, our old selves. This town was never his favorite place to be, but I became his favorite person here, so his lack of movement to go , to find us again, stings.

But it’s in the way I’m used to, so I don’t bat an eye when the shadow covers his face again, his eyes scanning the neighborhood with a flicker of consideration that gives me no gasp of hope, because I feel his scowl reflected in my lips before it touches his own.

“I’m just trying to get this over with,” he says as he turns for the house with his hands full.

I grip the trunk lid. “I thought this was gonna be good for us.”

He halts, some seconds passing, then he drops his bags, thuds at his feet, and steps in close to me. “It will be,” he promises, tugging at the hope. “But this is gonna take a while,” he complains over our stuff. “And we still have to meet up with Levi and his mom.”

My throat squeezes at the reminder of Levi and Isolde…without Elliot, who was a dad to me, just like he was a dad to Adam when we both needed one. At everything that’s been lost, everyone who’s been taken away.

Adam holds my stare, studying me, a crinkle in his eyes that softens as he takes my hand, lifting my fingers to graze a kiss along my knuckles. I still love when he does that little gesture, now rarely.

But still happening.

My lips want to stretch, and they start the pull into a smile, when the bend returns to Adam’s brows.

“Oh, there’s something—” He cuts himself off as he studies me some more, not appearing like he’s just remembered this something , but that whatever it is has been on his mind a while.

“What?” I prompt, feeling almost numb to anything he could tell me right now, knowing nothing could be worse than everything that’s already happened.

He sighs, then proves me wrong. “Levi’s been taking care of your dad.”

I suck in a breath, sharp but slow as it settles heavy in my lungs, the rest of my insides so unsettled, I can’t place a feeling. So many feelings that I can only stand here, not speaking as Adam waits for words.

“I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d hate it,” he says next, filling in the silence, his tone half defensive.

“So you’re telling me now?” I manage to get out after his naming of an emotion brings that one to the front.

He shrugs. “You’d find out now.”

An ache spreads through my gums and I relax my jaw. “How long have you known?”

Movement behind Adam’s head catches in my periphery and Griffin calls out, “My boy!”

I blink, then I’m staring at Adam’s father, waving big from the open doorway with a grin, being showy because he’s outside with a potential audience.

The ache returns as I watch him, Adam the one now caught in my periphery as he abandons our conversation for his bags and his dad, who pats him on the back—for being his boy and making the right choice—before giving him a push inside.

I eye my bags, my body still processing more than my mind as my hands rifle through one for a towel and a hair tie, wanting to forget this more than ever.

Adam can get my bags too. He probably won’t even notice I’m gone.