Chapter 30 #3
He pushed inside me slowly, inch by inch, giving me time to adjust to the stretch, the fullness, the perfect way we fit. When he was seated deep, he stilled, forehead pressed to mine, breathing hard.
“You feel—” He swallowed. “You feel like home.”
We moved together then—slow at first, savoring every slide, every gasp, then faster as the need built.
His hands gripped my hips, and I wrapped my legs around him, pulling him deeper.
I met every thrust, nails digging into his shoulders, whispering his name like a prayer.
He kissed me through it all—messy, desperate, loving—until we were both trembling on the edge.
“Come with me,” he murmured against my mouth. “Please.”
I did—shattering around him with a broken cry—and he followed seconds later, burying his face in my neck, hips slamming into mine as he came with a low, wrecked groan of my name.
When he finally eased out and disposed of the condom, he came right back, pulling me against his chest, arms tight around me like he never wanted to let go.
When we finally stilled, the room was dark and warm and quiet. His breathing was slow and even. My heart was still doing something that could charitably be described as a lot.
It was the kind of quiet that only existed when two people were spent and completely satisfied. The sort where the whole world felt smaller and closer and somehow safer. I was tracing absent patterns on his arm, not really thinking about anything, when it suddenly hit me.
“I don’t know your middle name.”
He made a sleepy sound. “Mm?”
“Your middle name. I don’t know it.” I pushed up onto my elbow, suddenly unreasonably bothered by this.
“Levi, we have known each other since we were little kids. I have seen you throw up on a roller coaster. I was there when you got your head stuck in a folding chair at your cousin’s wedding.
I know that you cried at The Lion King until you were twelve—”
“We agreed never to talk about that—”
“And I do not know your middle name.” I stared at him in the dark. “How is that possible? What kind of friendship were we running? And look at us now. In bed together. Naked. You were just in me. I should know your middle name.”
He was quiet for a moment. I could just make out the curve of his mouth. “James,” he finally answered.
“James,” I repeated. I lay back down, settling against him, turning it over. “Levi James Barrett.”
“That’s the one.”
“That’s such a serious name.”
“Thank you.”
“I don’t mean it as a compliment. That’s like... a name for someone who signs important documents. A name for someone who owns a mahogany desk.”
“I do want a mahogany desk.”
“Levi.” I propped myself back up again. “Who gave you that name? Which one of your parents looked at a newborn baby—at you, specifically—and thought, yes, James, very dignified, very statesman-like—”
He laughed, low and quiet, his chest moving under my hand. “It was my grandfather’s name.”
“Oh.” That softened me a little. “The one with the timing problem?”
He went still. “Gram told you about that?”
“She texted me, actually.”
“She texted you? ”
“Yeah. Completely out of nowhere. After that morning at Aggie’s.” I paused. “She also sent a GIF. I didn’t fully understand it, but I think the sentiment was clear.”
He made a sound that was somewhere between a groan and a laugh and buried it in my hair. “I’m going to have to have a conversation with her.”
“She loves you,” I said. “She just has opinions about your timeline.”
“Former timeline problem,” he said. “For the record, I don’t think I have a timing problem anymore. I mean, I was just in you, wasn’t I? You said it yourself.”
I considered this, looking up at the ceiling, at the faint shapes the streetlight made through the curtains.
“No,” I agreed. “I don’t think you do either. Whatever timing problem we had is over.”
He pressed his lips to my temple. Held them there for a moment, warm and unhurried. “Rebecca Lynn Hartford,” he murmured.
I pulled back. “What. How do you know my middle name?”
“Harper told me,” he said simply. “Seventh grade. I asked her, I don’t remember why. She told me, and I thought—”
“You thought what?”
He pulled me closer. “I thought it suited you. Pretty, just like you.”
I stared at him in the dark. “You have known my middle name for this long, and you never said anything?”
“It never came up.”
“It never—” I sat up fully. “Levi. I just had a minor crisis because I didn’t know yours, and you’ve been sitting on mine since the seventh grade?”
“I wasn’t sitting on it—”
“You absolutely were. You were hoarding knowledge.” I pointed at him. “That is the single most quietly unhinged thing about you, and I want you to know I am adding it to the list.”
“There’s a list?”
“There’s been a list for years. Good things. Funny things. Things that could either be annoying or not, depending on my mood. There’s nothing bad, though. You’re too good to be real, and you always have been.”
He reached up and pulled me back down and tucked me against his side as if I’d always belonged there. He was smiling. I could feel it. “Go to sleep, Rebecca Lynn.”
“Don’t push it,” I said. But I was smiling too.
I put my head back down on his chest. Outside, the river kept moving.
The campground was quiet and dark, and somewhere in Sweetbriar, my podcast episode was doing whatever it was doing with my real voice attached to my real name, and tomorrow things would start to matter in the way Levi had said they would. But that was tomorrow.