Chapter 30 #2
I was quiet for a moment, listening to the sounds of the park settling around us.
“I keep thinking about Aggie,” I said. “Eleven years of running this place, building it into something real after Uncle Harold died, knowing everyone by name, knowing their kids, knowing who’s struggling and who’s finally doing okay.
And to the person who made this decision, she’s just an obstacle. ”
“Yeah.” His arm tightened slightly around me, a small involuntary thing. “She is. And that’s exactly the kind of thing that needed saying out loud by someone who could make people feel it, not just report it.”
“I wanted people to understand that these are actual lives,” I said. “Not a zoning issue. Not an affordability statistic. Lives. This place is just home. The way anything is home. I wanted to make that real for people who’ve never had to think about it.”
“You did.” He said it simply, no performance in it. “I was sitting here listening, and I already know these people, and you still made me feel it.”
I thought about what I’d said into the microphone.
My actual voice. My actual name, more or less—anyone who’d wanted to find me had probably always been able to, the filter had never been quite the fortress I’d told myself it was—but this was different.
This was a deliberate choice, eyes open, no pretending otherwise.
This was saying that I’m here. I live here. You can find me if you want to.
I had spent a year making myself hard to find, and somewhere along the way, it had stopped feeling like protection and started feeling like just another thing I did without examining why.
“I’ve spent so long keeping everyone at arm’s length,” I said quietly.
“It started because I needed to, and then it just became the way I moved through the world. And I think somewhere along the way I stopped questioning it. Told myself it was just who I was now.” I paused, turned my ring around on my finger the way I did when I was thinking.
“You make me want to examine that. You make me think maybe it was never actually who I was—just what I thought I had to be.”
He was quiet for a moment. I felt the slow rise and fall of his chest beneath my cheek.
“I think you’ve been protecting yourself so well and for so long that you forgot you were ever allowed to stop,” he said.
“That it was optional. That there were people worth the risk.” His hand moved to my hair, a gentle thing, almost absent.
“I’m not asking you to stop being careful.
I’d never ask you that. I just want to be someone you don’t have to be careful around. ”
I lifted my head to look at him. He was looking back at me with that direct, unhurried gaze that I had spent weeks trying to deflect and had finally started learning to receive.
“I’m proud of you,” he said. “For tonight, and for everything else that made tonight possible. And I’m honored that you let me be here for it.”
“Thank you,” I breathed as I took in his words.
“Thank you for letting me in.”
And something about the way he said it—quiet and warm and entirely without condition—undid the last careful knot I’d been keeping tied somewhere in my chest since I hit record.
Not the fear, exactly. Not the adrenaline.
Something older than that. The part of me that had been braced for so long it had forgotten how to stop.
I kissed him. Not urgently—just reaching for him the way you reach for something you’ve finally stopped pretending you didn’t need.
My hand found his jaw, and I felt him exhale at the contact, slow and quiet, and he kissed me back with the warmth of a man who had been waiting for exactly this, who had understood from the beginning of the evening that this was where the night was going and had been content to let it arrive in its own time.
We kissed for a while on the small couch in the low lamp light, unhurried at first, then deeper, hungrier, the kind of kissing that built slowly until the air between us felt charged and necessary.
His hands in my hair. My fingers at the back of his neck, then sliding under his Henley to feel the heat of his skin.
The river outside and the faint sound of the campground settling into its late-night quiet around us.
Then he pulled back slightly, just enough to look at me, his thumb tracing the line of my cheekbone, eyes dark and steady.
“Becca,” he said softly.
I smiled, small and real. “I’m here.”
He searched my face for another long moment, then asked quietly, “This still what you want?”
I nodded, throat tight with how much I meant it. “More than anything.”
Whatever he saw in my expression satisfied him completely, because the careful part of him fell away. What was underneath was warmer and more certain and considerably more focused, and the combination sent heat pooling low in my belly.
He stood and held out his hand.
I took it.
He walked me the four steps to my bedroom like he had all the time in the world, which he did, because we had established that—all the time we want—and I was finally, completely, starting to believe it.
The lamp from the other room threw just enough light through the open door. The river was audible through the cracked window, steady and unhurried.
I stood in the middle of my small bedroom, looking at Levi Barrett, and thought of the years I’d wasted keeping myself away from him.
He reached up and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, a gesture that had been undoing me since we got started. His hand stayed at my jaw, his thumb tracing my cheekbone, and he looked at me like I was worth looking at carefully, like he had no intention of rushing past any of this.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said. Low and certain.
Something in my chest cracked open in the best possible way.
I reached for the hem of his Henley and pushed it up; he reached behind his head and pulled it off in one smooth motion and dropped it to the floor.
I stood there for a moment just looking—because Levi Barrett was, objectively and specifically, a lot to see.
Broad shoulders built by real work, the lean strength of someone who hauled gear and climbed ladders and carried people out of burning buildings.
A pale scar along his left ribs, a story I would ask for later.
The steady rise and fall of his chest in the low light, the dark trail of hair disappearing beneath his waistband.
I put my hands on him—palms flat against the warm planes of his chest—and felt him go very still at the contact, not tension but fierce attention, like a man receiving something they’ve wanted for a very long time. His breath caught, just barely.
Then his hands found the hem of my sweater.
His eyes asked, and I lifted my arms in answer.
The sweater came off, then my bra, and the cool air hit my skin for only a second before his hands were there—warm, sure, sliding up my ribs to cup my breasts with reverent care.
His thumbs brushed my nipples, and I gasped, the sound sharp in the quiet room.
He groaned low in his throat, the first unguarded sound he’d made all night, and the raw want in it made my knees weak.
He kissed me again—slower at first, then deeper, hungrier, tongues sliding together as his hands roamed my back, my waist, learning every inch like he was memorizing me.
I pressed myself closer, feeling the hard length of him against my stomach through his jeans, and he made that low sound again, almost a growl.
We fell together onto the bed—careful, coordinated, laughing softly against each other’s mouths when the mattress creaked in protest. He settled over me, weight braced on his forearms so he could look at me, really look, and the way he did—open, adoring, a little wild—made my throat tight.
I pushed at his shoulders gently until he rolled onto his back.
He let me, watching with that steady, patient gaze as I kissed down his chest, tracing the scar with my tongue, feeling the way his muscles jumped under my mouth.
When I reached the waistband of his jeans, I looked up at him.
His eyes were dark, pupils blown, chest rising and falling faster.
I undid the button, slowly slid the zipper down, and tugged everything off. He was thick and hard and beautiful, and the way he watched me—reverent, almost disbelieving—made heat flood through me.
I wrapped my hand around him first, stroking slow and firm, learning the weight of him, the way he pulsed under my touch.
Then I leaned down and took him into my mouth, slow at first, savoring the low, broken sound he made when my tongue swirled around the head.
His hand came to my hair—not pushing me down, just threading gently through the strands, trembling slightly.
“Becca,” he breathed, voice rough. “God. Please.”
I took him deeper, hollowing my cheeks, moving with the same unhurried care he gave me.
His hips lifted once, involuntarily, then stilled as he fought to let me set the pace.
I felt him thicken, felt the way his thighs tensed, heard the way his breathing turned ragged.
When I looked up, his head was tipped back, throat working, completely falling apart in a way I’d never seen.
I pulled off slowly, kissed the tip, then crawled back up his body. He met me halfway, kissing me hard, tasting himself on my tongue, and groaning into my mouth like it was the best thing he’d ever experienced.
He rolled us so I was beneath him again, settled between my thighs. He stripped the rest of my clothes away, then paused, looking at me like I was everything before finding a condom in my bedside table and rolling it on.
“I’m falling for you,” he said quietly, the words rough and honest. “Hard. And I’ve been falling for a long time.”
My eyes stung. I reached up, cupped his face. “I know. Me too.”