Chapter 11
“There’s not much to say,” Levi started, and Haddie found herself sliding forward on her metal folding chair, elbows resting on her knees and her chin in her hands.
“A ref made a bad call on one of my players right before halftime, and I challenged it because it would have cost us possession of the ball that I knew we’d earned.
” He shrugged. “The other officials confirmed I was right. Stuff like this happens all the time.”
Levi had been on both the winning and losing end of challenging a call.
That was just how it went. It wasn’t supposed to get personal, and even if it did, he wasn’t supposed to react.
“The clock ran out,” he continued, “and we broke for halftime, which should have been the end of it. But as we were heading off the field, that particular referee said something ugly about the player in question, so I decked him.” He cleared his throat.
“The referee…just in case there was any confusion.”
This earned him a few sympathetic nods, a couple of soft laughs, but no one said a word, so Levi continued.
“Here’s the thing…” Levi cleared his throat as his chest squeezed.
“Doesn’t matter how many times I tell myself I did it to protect my player.
I wasn’t doing anyone any favors by laying that guy out.
And then social media made a spectacle of the whole thing, my arrest included.
” Levi let out a bitter laugh. “I’m really just a selfish prick, right?
And according to a judge and a court-appointed psychologist, an angry, supposedly grieving selfish prick at that. ”
He was wearing basketball shorts and a purple Muskies T-shirt, and when he pressed his hands to his knees, Haddie caught a glimpse of the thin pink line that ran from an inch below his kneecap to an inch above it, a forever reminder of the night she knew—thanks to knowing Emma and Matteo’s history—Levi and Matteo had lost their mom.
Was the judge right? Had Levi never processed that grief like he should have?
But also, what the hell was should have?
How could someone put rules around an impossibly painful emotion?
Levi’s jaw clenched as he continued. “That is the only time I’ve ever raised a hand to someone else. I am not a violent man, and I don’t condone violence as a means to any sort of end. It just…happened.”
“No,” Hope said.
Levi’s eyes darted toward her. “No? What do you mean, no?”
“I mean no,” she replied matter-of-factly.
“You made a choice. It might have been a split-second choice, and in your head, you might have made yourself believe that choice came with noble intent, but it didn’t just happen.
” Hope leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees as she pinned Levi with her gaze.
“Why did the judge think you were grieving, Levi?”
“You already know the answer. You’ve seen the paperwork from my lawyer.”
Hope nodded sagely. “Why don’t you tell the group?”
He gritted his teeth. “I’m not the only one here, right? Why don’t you give someone else a turn?”
“Hope!” Haddie blurted out, literally launching herself out of her seat. “Come on. Give him a break.”
Levi didn’t look at Haddie, though. This time he kept his eyes trained on the woman who seemed to be holding him emotionally captive.
“Because it was the ten-year anniversary of my mother’s death, okay?
” he relented. “And instead of being here with my father and brother to honor or celebrate her life, I was on the football field worried about a stupid play. Surprise. I’m just as much of a selfish piece of shit now as I was then.
On the field when she died and on the field again ten years after.
” He huffed out a breath. “This was a mistake.” Then he rose, stepped around his seat, and strode toward the door.
“It doesn’t count as a session if you don’t stay for the full hour!” Hope called after him, but Levi didn’t pause, didn’t look back, didn’t do a thing except keep on walking until he was out of sight.
Haddie chewed on her bottom lip, but she was already standing, so the next move was to go after him, right?
She had no clue what she would say when she caught up to him.
If she caught up to him. She hadn’t seen his truck outside, but maybe he’d parked around a corner.
Maybe he was already on the road heading who knew where.
All Haddie knew was that she’d set the ball in motion for Hope to goad him into sharing before he was ready.
“I should…” She winced, glancing at the rest of the group who’d barely gotten started thanks to her and Levi. “I’m sorry for eavesdropping and leaving, but I just want to make sure he’s okay.”
Hope smiled at her, as did Tilly Higginson, and a few others nodded.
As Haddie crossed toward the other side of the circle, Hope gently grabbed her wrist before Haddie made it across the perimeter.
“Yeah?” Haddie asked nervously. “I’m so sorry. Am I supposed to pay you or something?”
Hope laughed. “Last time I checked, free was still free. Just…tell Levi that if he comes back next week and stays, I’ll put this session back on the log.”
“Oh!” Haddie replied. “That is really nice of you. Thank you.” Then she hesitated for a second. “But maybe next time, not so much tough love?”
Hope shrugged. “He shared, though, didn’t he?”
The woman wasn’t wrong. Haddie learned more about Levi in the past ten minutes than she had in the past two weeks.
“Right,” Haddie admitted. “Again…thanks.”
In that moment, Haddie realized that Hope wasn’t only nice but also really pretty. And even though she knew, logically, that Hope could or should only have a professional interest in Levi, she was shocked by a wave of jealousy at the possibility of her interest being otherwise.
Which was ridiculous, of course. Because Haddie and Levi were friends.
Only friends. Although they’d been attracted to each other that night in the hotel, they’d both agreed nothing like should ever happen again between them.
Yet it somehow only occurred to Haddie now that eventually—likely sooner rather than later—Levi would be attracted to someone else.
The thought dropped like a stone in her gut, and she did not like the feeling.
“You’re welcome,” Hope replied, jolting Haddie back to the moment. She let go of Haddie’s wrist, freeing her to run after Levi and say…what? She’d simply have to figure it out when she got there.
Grateful she was dressed for a run, she jogged up the stairs and out the door, ready to break into a sprint but instead having to pull the brakes the second she reached the bottom of the town hall steps, lest she plow face-first into what she knew was a solid wall of muscle. Levi muscle.
She pinwheeled her arms, trying to keep from pitching forward, when he caught her by both wrists.
“Whoa,” he said softly, his big hands absorbing her body’s momentum and sending a shock of electricity straight to her toes.
She wriggled free as soon as she found her footing, and Levi took a step back, palms up in surrender.
“Sorry,” he added. “Was just trying to help.”
Haddie threw her arms in the air. “What kind of a person makes a dramatic exit like that only to—I don’t know—stop and take in the sights?”
Why was she angry? Or was she exasperated? Frustrated? What was she?
Instead of answering her with words, he nodded toward something above Haddie’s head, so she turned around to see whatever it was he was seeing.
“Oh,” she said softly, glancing up at the town hall’s painted pillars.
Its yellow-and-black candy-cane-striped pillars to be exact, the tops punctuated by overlapping hubcaps painted pink, yellow, and orange to look like the wispy foliage of the trees from Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax, though Haddie always thought they looked more like troll doll hair.
“I was here last summer when those popped up. I kind of forget they’re new for some people. ”
Levi crossed his arms and kept his gaze trained on the art installation Mayor Green had once called vandalism. Now he called it what it really was—a lucrative tourist attraction, thanks to the still-unnamed artist everyone knew only as the Gardener.
“I thought I was going to be late this morning, so I just kind of rushed inside without taking the time to let it sink in. Is it true no one knows who it really is? I mean, no one believes it was Old Man Wilton, right?” he asked, referring to the mayor’s insistence that the so-called vandal come forward after he and the Gardener struck a deal via social media.
The old farmer stepped forward claiming it was him, but all someone had to do was look to the top of the town hall columns to know there was zero chance the man had climbed so far as the building’s roof to finish the job.
Haddie squinted, the fiery eye of the sun making the colors dance in her vision.
“It’s like walking around in a—”
“Tim Burton movie,” Levi interrupted.
Haddie gave him an approving grin. “And here I thought all you knew was Pixar.”
This earned her a laugh. “Hey. Don’t knock where your namesake comes from, Dash.”
The nickname he’d used as an accusation the morning after their meeting now felt like a cozy, warm hug even though Haddie was so not a hugger.
“I’m sorry about what happened in there,” she told him, nodding toward the building. “And I’m sorry about your mom.”
“I’m sorry about your grandma,” he countered, but she waved him off.
“I’m out here to check on you,” she told him.
Levi blew out a breath. “It was more than a decade ago. I should be over it by now, right?”
Haddie shook her head, and without thinking about what she was doing—because apparently she just acted these days and threw thinking out the window—she pressed a palm to the left side of his chest.
Levi’s eyes grew wide as he glanced down at her hand where she could feel his heart thump faster against her palm.
“What are you doing?” he asked, tilting his incredulous gaze back up to meet hers.
“Wow. Your heart is going a mile a minute,” she told him. “I knew I was right.”
“Right about what?”
He took a step back, but Haddie just followed, taking a step forward.
“You, sir, have feelings.”
He scoffed, and this time he wrapped a gentle hand around her wrist and lowered it to her side. “I never claimed to be a robot, Haddie.”
No, she thought. That’s me. Because Haddie did rattle off her grandmother’s death like it was just this thing that happened a couple of weeks ago.
But this moment was about Levi, wasn’t it?
If she could get him to open up, then wasn’t it a win for feeling your feelings no matter who was feeling them? That was totally sound logic.
“And I never claimed you were a robot,” she told him.
“You know, I didn’t like Hope pushing you like that…
” She paused for a moment. “Even if I kind of gave her the opening to do so…” Another pause as she grimaced and waited for Levi to let her have it because hadn’t she so easily seized an opportunity to deflect attention from her onto someone else?
But he didn’t let her have it. Instead, he crossed his arms over his chest and the beating heart she’d just felt with her own hand and calmly waited for her to finish.
“She was only trying to get you to admit what it looks like a judge already knew.”
“Which is what?” he asked, the sudden hoarseness in his voice making Haddie’s chest feel like it was squeezed so tightly that her own heart might pop right through her rib cage and onto the sun-drenched sidewalk, which—by the way—would totally kill the moment.
“That there is no expiration date on grief.” She grabbed his forearms, and good god they were as solid as his chest. Did his muscles have muscles?
Levi could have fought her. In fact, Haddie was pretty sure she could have kicked both feet up off the ground and hung from those very solid, muscles-with-muscles forearms, but he must have sensed her silent threat to do so because he dropped his arms a second after she gave them a soft tug toward the ground.
And then she grabbed his hand and pulled him down the sidewalk that was not, thankfully, strewn with her exploding heart.
“Where are we going?” he asked, confusion knitting his brow.
Haddie swore that palm to palm, skin to skin, she felt her pulse mingle with his.
Except hers was racing, as if it was trying to outrun his, and she found herself so invested in whether or not he—or his pulse—would catch up, that she hadn’t realized her non-answer until Levi asked the question again.
“Where are we going? Or are you kidnapping me?” The corner of his mouth twitched into an almost grin. “Because I’m not sure if you know, but I’m kind of a big deal in this town. If I go missing, the people of Summertown will leave no stone unturned until they find my captor and exact revenge.”
She paused briefly and gave him a practical, definitive single nod of her chin. “We need ice cream.”