Chapter 13 #2
Levi nodded and drained the rest of his beer.
“I don’t know if there’s anything we can do to change Coach Crawford’s mind,” he admitted.
“But I guess it doesn’t hurt to try, right?
” Plus, he told himself, it would look great on his résumé of look-at-all-the-great-things-I’ve-done-to-make-me-worthy-of-reinstatement, which wouldn’t be such a terrible by-product of helping out the program, right?
Haddie set her beer on the end table and launched herself at him, wrapping her arms around his neck as he tried not to drop the empty bottle still in his hand.
“Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” she exclaimed, her breath warm on his neck.
He coughed out a response, and she flew back, her cheeks flushed and a nervous smile on her face. “Sorry!” she cried. “I should have given you some warning before crushing your lungs like that.”
“It’s okay,” he told her, his voice strained as he pushed himself further into the corner and willed himself to stop reacting to her warm, soft curves having just been pressed against him.
Aunt Lorna’s hairy mole. Aunt Lorna’s hairy mole, he chanted silently in his head, remembering the great aunt whose upper-lip mole always bristled against his and Matteo’s childhood cheeks when she greeted them with a hug.
Slowly his below-the-belt reaction receded, and Levi let out a relieved breath.
“I swear I’m not a hugger,” she continued. “Though I know recent evidence does not support this assessment.”
He laughed nervously, praying her eyes stayed trained on his and didn’t dip any lower until… Okay. He sighed. Crisis fully averted. “Guess I…uh…just bring it out in you.”
She shrugged, blissfully unaware that Levi had unexpectedly and immediately hardened at her touch. “It’s weird, you know?” she continued. “The only person I’ve ever shown physical affection to in, like, the past decade…is Emma. Guess that means you’re entering the inner circle,” she teased.
“Inner…circle?” he asked, lowering his empty bottle so it casually rested against his zipper just in case anything she said reawakened his…stirrings.
Haddie nodded. “Of friends I trust.”
A stone landed with a thud in the center of his gut.
“Emma is the only person you trust?” he asked, wanting to ask if that was still the case when her grandmother was alive.
But Haddie hadn’t mentioned anything that had gone down in the grief group since their reconciliation last week, and Levi hadn’t wanted to pry.
Haddie smiled at him but shook her head. “Not anymore, Levi Rourke. Welcome to the inner circle.”
Haddie Martin’s inner circle hadn’t even existed for him three weeks ago, and now he found himself making a silent promise to never do anything that would get him kicked out of such a place.
He grinned. “Thank you,” he told her. “It’s an honor to be here.” And he meant it. “Does…um…this mean that you forgive me?” he dared to ask, and Haddie’s brows knit together.
“For what? I thought we were past all the before-the-ice-cream stuff,” she said, but then her eyes widened as the elephant in the room revealed itself to her. “Ooh,” she added. “Right. The ice cream.”
Levi couldn’t read her expression. “Because I would like to officially—on the record—apologize for the stupid, inconsiderate, selfish thing I texted you that night that has basically put an end to our little nighttime texting thing that I sort of enjoyed and maybe—if I’m being honest—sort of miss.”
Haddie nodded sagely and then tapped a finger against her pursed lips. “I guess,” she began, “that I’ve just been wondering how to respond and whether or not, in this circumstance, honesty was, in fact, better than pretending you never sent that text at all.”
“Yes!” Levi blurted out. “Please. Honesty. Tell me I’m an asshole and then let me off the hook so I can get out of my head and we can get back to the way things were.”
But instead of responding to him verbally, Haddie grabbed her phone from the end table, and a couple seconds later, Levi’s phone buzzed in his pocket.
Birthday Girl: Salted-caramel pretzel crunch is the second-best thing to ever touch my tongue too. But we can’t do anything about that. So you’re off the hook, can get out of your head, and we can go back to the way things were.
Levi finished reading the text and then glanced up so his eyes met hers. Haddie pressed her lips into a resigned smile and shrugged as if to say, Sorry, Champ. It’s just not in the cards for us.
She was right. Of course she was right. They’d both be jeopardizing their careers for something that already had an expiration date. So he did the only thing left to do and fired off a text of his own.
Levi: Great. Glad we’re on the same page. Sorry for the momentary loss of sanity. Glad for things to get back to normal.
Except, despite them parting ways soon after and disappearing into the safety of their rooms, he couldn’t help but wonder what it might be like if one day, something—or someone—mattered just a bit more than his career.
And that was how Levi Rourke set himself up for another sleepless night, getting tangled in his own meandering brain. But this time he played by the rules and kept his thoughts squarely to himself.