Our Hearts Knew Better (Our Hearts #1)

The Caves

Summer

One condition, Levi said. I had to put some food in my stomach.

Get the squash.

Eat.

Finish the meatloaf, said with his teasing point to my finger swipe in the ketchup.

His version gave me more of a boost to my appetite.

Along with the promise of sailing…with him.

Four big hurried bites and one ketchup stain on my strappy green top later, I have my face toward the sun at the bow rails of the Gilligan, the breeze blowing through my hair, as Levi sails us away.

Where to? he asked, a smile in his gaze.

And with my own smile dipped away, I said, the caves .

I’ve been close to them, but never inside them. And today, I’m going in.

I’m rocked by the water, still feeling held by Levi, his hug, that physical contact, refusing to leave my skin. His body fit back into place with mine so easily. It felt better than it did then to be that close to him. It felt right.

My throat squeezes with a sting in my eyes that I don’t want just good things. I want the right things. I want this.

I want fresh air. I want easy breathing. I want smiles that crinkle my eyes and make me feel like I’m alive again.

I want the open sea. I want the steadying hands of the Gilligan.

I want a warmth that doesn’t burn.

Levi steers us right up at the caves, blessedly and treacherously empty of other people, and once we’re anchored, I take a moment to soak them in this close. They shine like crystals. Rocks as wide as they are tall, smooth in some spots, jagged in others, wrapping up the sparkliest blue-green water.

The one we’ve stopped at has a hole in its roof, creating a glow inside from a beam of sun.

Levi’s body heat closes in on my back, just as when he stepped up behind me after we climbed onto the boat, before we took off.

Breathe, he told me, the low command alone like a second boost, that time to my lungs. You can slow down.

And I did, and I do the same now, breathing in the salty breeze that clears my lungs, that relaxes my fried nervous system.

All of this—the physical contact, Levi’s proximity, his care, the bay—this familiar, and believed to be inaccessible again, feeling is so overwhelming, I have to grip the rails.

I said I wanted to be overwhelmed by him, and he delivered.

He’s still delivering.

My heart sinks and swims with Levi. I’m holding my breath, but I’m also finding it again. Never really knowing which way is up, but still making it to the surface.

My heart does the opposite of slow down as I peek a glance at him over my shoulder, to find his eyes fixed up on where mine were. He connects our gazes with a blink down, and I dip another smile toward the opening of the cave.

“What now?” he asks, a tingle at my ear, a soft push for me to show the rest of the way.

I slip off more to the side, as I feel my back starting to lean into his chest, and I strip, while trying not to think of his eyes on me. While also stripping quick enough so he doesn’t think I’m getting naked for him again.

My bra and my panties—basically a swimsuit—are still on as I dive into the water.

I swim under, a bit away from the boat before I come up, fingering my hair from my face, and turn to Levi. He’s watching me with the spark that energizes me, my treading speeding up.

“Come on,” I call to him as I start a stroke toward the cave, these, too, energized at the sound of his splash behind me.

Water laps at my grin as I stroke and kick forward, my pulse pounding as I hear him gaining on me. . .

But I win, my hand slapping onto the far rocks inside the cave as I lean against them. Levi’s right there, though, touching the rocks just a few strokes after, leaning against them beside me, with a couple bodies worth of space between us.

As he looks up, I take the moment he’s not looking at me to track the water that runs down his cheeks. Then over his parted lips, mine folding in on the memory of how those lips once felt.

My pulse pounds again at the failed skirting around, and I continue tracking the water all the way down his bare chest, half blurred under the sea, where I see he left his shorts on.

As he should, Summer.

“I’ve never done this before,” he murmurs with that adoring look I last saw so long ago but makes me have to force my focus as if it were only yesterday. Another blink back down to connect our gazes snaps me to his words and I snap out my own.

“What?” I can’t believe he’s never been inside a cave before. “Yes, you have.”

He shakes his head. “My dad didn’t, so I didn’t, either.”

I sink some against the rocks. “I’m sorry for your mom.” A big breath. “But I’m also sorry about your mom.”

Levi sighs back against the rocks at my emphasis, licks water from his lips. “She doesn’t understand how I could just…give up on him that fast.”

Now I’m shaking my head before he even finishes that thought. “You didn’t.”

“Didn’t I?” he asks, a low seeking of an answer, a small raise in his brows. “He can’t be alive, Summer.” His ache and almost breathless desperation through my name moves me closer, water lapping gently against the rocks. “I want more than anything for him to be alive…but he can’t be, because if he is…I failed him. I let him go too soon. I grieved him…” He squeezes his eyes closed, putting a squeeze in my next heartbeat, but it’s only for a second before his eyes are open and he’s breathing in the salty air to clear away his pain.

“He was gone, Levi.” My fingers trail through the water, pressing a touch to his arm to get him to look at me, and when he does, I linger only a moment before pulling back. “And you know he wouldn’t have wanted you to go with him.”

His throat bobs as he swallows, his eyes now tracking the water running down my cheeks. When a droplet gets to my lips, I lick it away, and he glances away.

“I felt his death,” he tells me, and from the slow way he does, like he’s trying to feel out the words, I know this is the first time he’s said them before he confirms it. “I never told anyone that. It sounds nuts.” He scoffs the smallest laugh, and I shake my head again so he knows for sure I don’t think so. But the squeeze feeling has grasped my throat so I can’t say anything right now if I try.

“But I felt it,” he continues. “I was just…I couldn’t breathe for a moment. It’s like I was sinking, and I wasn’t even on the boat. My heart raced, and something in my head just…shifted. I felt nauseous. I ate some bread.” His laugh now is softer, sadder. “Then it passed. Then my dad was missing.”

“Levi.” I whisper his name, and he faces me fully, closing enough space between us to give my heart a jolt, a yearning for so much at once.

“He may never turn up. You know, what will she—” He cuts himself off with a cringe, and I swallow to release the hold on my throat so I can say something. That’s another reality they’re toeing. Levi having his answers, and Isolde never getting them.

“Your mom’s tough,” I finally manage to say. She’s difficult to keep down. That’s where she gets her hope from. “She’ll find what she needs. You don’t just take after your dad, you know,” I add as a light tease to put some light in him.

And when his dimple makes an appearance, a curve finds my own lips that his gaze latches onto…as he starts moving in even closer.

My body draws in to his too. . .

Then we go still, our smiles slipping from our faces.

My pulse thuds in my ears. I know as our breaths grow louder and mingle together in this enclosed space that he should back up, or I should move.

But he doesn’t, and I can’t.

Until he does, his eyes trailing up to mine with that swirling torment I’ve seen for the third time now—but who’s keeping track?—before he leans back against the rocks.

I’m sinking. So I swim out into a float.

What if. . .

I’m not sure how long I study the ridges of the cave’s ceiling, trying to relax the shake in my body and keeping my mind as clear as can be, before Levi finally speaks away the silence.

“Do you wanna talk about what happened with your dad?”

I sigh, his tone so normal , so nothing just happened just now —because nothing did.

We can both tell ourselves that something isn’t happening , but. . .

I shift back into treading and face him to catch some of that normalcy. “Nothing really happened.” I snicker at that wording now. “He…” I picture the box now waiting for me in Levi’s truck, an instant sting back in my lids, with both a heaviness and a lightness in my chest, as I tell him with unshed tears in my voice, “He gave me back my mom.”

Levi studies me so intensely, with emotion coloring his face and a smile on his lips that I recognize as being more than just happy for me, but inside the feeling with me. “I know.”

My laugh bounces me in the water, some splashing my face. “Right.”

The warmth I feel toward Levi for how he’s been thinking of me swims my body closer to him again. . .

Until the flare of the burn shifts me back into a float.

“I’ll talk with him.” I acknowledge the decision I already made the moment my father gave me my mom. “But he’s not why I’m here,” I add, like a confession, letting the words hang. Every reason not related to my father is a throb through my veins, putting this into the universe, mostly, for it to not put any expectations on me and for me to not have any for whatever our next conversation will be.

Levi stays quiet, and the throb turns into a zip that moves me into a swim around the cave.

I stroke from one side to the next, flipping to my back now and then.

And when I finally feel settled enough to swim back to Levi, I see him watching me with a smile that makes me realize I’m wearing one too.

It hurts my cheeks with how real it is, and almost fades with the more familiar pain of knowing that once this is over, it’ll be gone.

“I’ve missed seeing you like this,” he says, the words more exhaled, and my inhale catches every one, especially at seeing some reflection of that pain in his eyes, like he knows it’ll be gone soon too.

“How do you do it?” I ask him, and his face changes like he’s already considering the answer before I finish with, “Be…like this?” My little laugh prompts his.

“Fuck, I…” He swims out, closer to me, from the rocks, shaking his head. “I just think about what I still have.”

“What do you have?” The question is half selfish, half seeking.

His treading slows as he holds my gaze. “This,” he says with a gleam for all the this we’ve been talking about, now sounding like You .

I give my face a quick dip below the water to wet my suddenly dry mouth.

“The sea,” he continues with a glance around, not quite like a retraction, but still a redirection. “My mom…a place to call home…music…”

I hum, tilting him a look. “Ten Decembers?”

His dimple pops again, a curious raising of his brows. “Thoughts on the latest album?”

I think of those long nights back in Virginia, with my earbuds in, Ten Decembers singing me through the dark. I haven’t listened to them lately, but… “I would’ve had a harder time getting through this year without it.”

Levi’s treading, that had picked up, slows again as he nods and murmurs, “Yeah.”

If I could let anyone take Kai Coleman from me, it would be Levi.

But I didn’t let him. I couldn’t. That band’s music has been there for me since I was a wandering teenager—now only a little less wandering adult.

“What do you have?” Levi asks me now, soft and seeking as I was, with the same underlying selfishness I had too.

“Music…” I start my list with a nodded thanks for that reminder. “A job that’s good to me…Clarissa…this…” My swallow is knotted and I take more water into my mouth.

“You can have this whenever you want.” Levi’s invitation sounds like another step over the line, so personal, an intimacy in his voice that stirs my yearning, thus turning me away from him.

I give another hum, stroke my hands through the water in front of me. “I can steal the Gilligan?” I turn back to him when I can feel the teasing reach my face, and see the jolt of his silent laughter.

“You can steal Seaduction.”

My laugh is one loud echo through the cave. “Seaduction, that one, still ?”

Levi tilts a smile toward the ceiling, and I laugh more with my mouth dipped below the surface again, creating bubbles.

“How is Clarissa?” he asks me now, traces of humor still in his tone, probably because my best friend has given him some good chuckles with her banter toward him.

Well, she still swears Leviathan is on your birth certificate, but lately, she’s been referring to you as the twelfth letter of the alphabet.

“Good,” I tell him. “Better than me.” It’s an added mumble that escapes me before I can stop it, and now the only sound between us is the lapping and tinkling of the sea, lulling me back to the rocks.

Levi follows, a slow breath leaving his lungs as his eyes dance in thought. “I’m sorry for Adam. And I’m sorry about Adam.”

Neither of us have mentioned Adam until now. An underlying pulse there to remind me he’s the only one who should be pumping through my heart.

I study Levi, letting his adapted apology warm my skin, even as all of this puts a slight clench in my teeth.

“He’s never been…like this . I don’t—” He shakes his head, having nothing else to offer me that he hasn’t tried to already this past year, us both at a loss.

I press more against the rocks, against the piece poking into my back. “I’m sorry too.” Adam’s his best friend, someone close to him, too, being so distant. “He could not be…like this , if he really wanted to.” These words taste like my feelings—bitter.

Levi sighs, his jaw working around silent words before he decides to say them. “He charged at a kid the other day at the batting cages.”

I straighten against the rocks. “What?”

“I stopped him,” he assures me. “And he might not have been,” he retracts with a flash of denial in his eyes as he faces me fully. “He said he wasn’t, but…” Acceptance flashes now. “I had to stop him.”

I wait for my body to have another reaction, but it doesn’t. It’s almost like I’m immune. Or numb. Numb to everything but this nook of sunlight I’m wrapped in at this current moment.

I’m not moved by Adam being down, when I’m trying to get up and stay up, myself.

“He told me not to tell you,” Levi says through the quiet.

This moves me, specifically the pumps of my heart for Levi. “Why did you?”

He hesitates a response, the string of yet to be said words tugging us closer. “I’m your friend too,” he says, another lightning righted stumble, and I wonder for a second if that’s what he really wanted to say. “And,” he adds with a pause, “if there could be more to worry about.” His gaze holds a questioning concern, as I’ve been the one around Adam this past year we’ve been dealing with…life’s struggles.

“I’m not sure,” I answer honestly as the exhaustion in my bones wakes back up. “But I’d guess no,” I say as I move my limbs through the water, swimming out from the rocks, sending that shit back to sleep while I still can.

Levi gives me the grace, saying after several moments of my big breaths, “We are…” There’s another question in his eyes. “Friends,” he finishes, a need in his tone for me to solidify our strained friendship.

I manage a smile. “We’re getting there.”

He gives me a look I can only describe as cha-ching!

My laugh is another loud echo as I do a spin in place through the water.

“What now?” I repeat his earlier question, mine more playful with my playing mood.

“Whatever you want,” he says, an almost mesmerized lilt to his voice, and to his face, like he’s soaking in seeing me like this, and I dip under, giving my blush to the sea.

It’s here, holding my breath underwater, that I hear what else was inside that whatever you want . A fear of my wants and a yearning for me to have them.

I want more of this . . .

Laughter that’s joyous. Moments that fill me up. Days that are short and sweet.

And I’m going to have them.