Chapter 13
The blinds on the glass window separating the office and garage were open.
Levi should have probably closed them so he could’ve gotten some actual work done over the past—he glanced over at the wall clock—three hours.
Instead, he’d been peering through the horizontal slats, observing Little Creek’s circulation librarian.
Watching her over the span of the morning had solidified the first impressions formed in his mind about her.
She smiled easily and was friendly with all.
Warmth exuded from her with every word and every glance, putting people at ease and making them feel welcomed and important.
She thrived on interacting with each person who approached the bookmobile, seeming to glow brighter as she bid adieu to another new library patron with a stack of books tucked under their arm.
He understood why everyone seemed drawn to her. Why they lingered outside the van’s side door to speak with her for just a few more minutes. What he didn’t comprehend, however, was the pull he felt toward her.
Because he had never felt any sort of desire to spend time with another person before in his life.
Ever.
As a child, school had been torturous. Too many kids in too small of a classroom.
Nobody followed the no talking rule, some whispering to seatmates while others would shout across the room to their friends on the other side.
Which, of course, only made the teacher have to raise her own voice to be heard above the din.
Levi was slightly ashamed to admit, but he’d been a bit of a nightmare for his teachers.
He’d learned that if he misbehaved, he’d be sent out to the hall or to the office—both places that were quiet and still enough that it didn’t make his skin feel too tight, his heart race, or his head explode like someone had placed a stick of dynamite between his ears.
And church? Well, let’s just say he had never experienced a peace that surpassed understanding beneath a steeple. The suit his mom made him wear itched, the PA system had a constant high-pitched hum, and the perfume the ladies wore gave him an instant headache.
Home wasn’t much better. His sisters always bickered or had some sort of drama going on. They’d play music too loud or use too much body spray. There was no such thing as peace and definitely no such thing as quiet.
One day, he’d found some pieces of plywood in the garage and asked his dad if he could have them.
Then he’d climbed a big oak tree in the backyard and nailed the plywood to a couple of thick branches.
Not exactly a treehouse, but that platform in the treetop became his escape.
Only his mom had ever been allowed up there with him.
They would sit side by side, each reading their own book, neither saying a word.
There, he could simply be. Guard down with no fear of being attacked by the world around him.
Why, then, did he have this unquenchable craving to simply be near Hayley?
After hours of watching her from a distance, the build-up inside him could no longer be denied. It was a need deep in his soul that he didn’t understand. How could he, when he’d never felt this way about anyone ever before?
But so much in life didn’t make sense. He’d given up trying to untangle the mysteries of existence a long time ago.
All he knew was that he wanted to be near her, hear her voice, watch expressions waltz across her upturned face.
Feel her smile. If only for a little while.
Because a little while was probably all he could handle before things became too much for him.
Everything always eventually became too much for him. Even the good things.
He glanced again at the clock. Lunchtime.
He hurried up to the house and threw together a few sandwiches, grabbing a bag of potato chips from the pantry and a couple of apples from the fruit bowl on the counter.
He didn’t have a picnic basket to carry everything in, but he did have a backpack he used while hiking, so he placed the food in that, then beat a path back down the hill again.
When he stepped into the garage portion of the service station, there weren’t any other people around. Shuffling noises came from inside the bookmobile. Hayley straightening books and rearranging things, no doubt.
Levi would take advantage of the lull. He lifted his hand and knocked on the open door.
Hayley spun, a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird clutched to her chest. “Goodness gracious, Levi, you about gave me a heart attack. How can a man of your size make so little noise?”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.”
She pushed back a strand of hair from her face. “That’s all right. Did you want to come in and look around?”
Her voice was so inviting that Levi couldn’t tell her no. Besides, he was actually a little curious. This van was another piece of her, and he was greedy enough to want to collect as many pieces of Hayley as he could.
He folded his body, ducking down and turning himself at an angle so that he could fit through the doorway.
It was a bit of a squeeze, but he managed to accordion himself in such a way that he made it through.
Although now that he was in, the small, enclosed space seemed to shrink even more.
His shoulders knocked into the shelves on both sides of him and he had to hunch down so as not to hit his head.
“Oh dear.” Hayley covered her mouth, but her eyes belied her smile. “You’re a bit like Alice after she eats the cake and grows so big that she doesn’t fit inside the house anymore.”
He gave her a wry look. “I’m glad my size amuses you.”
“Not exactly the word I’d use,” she said under her breath, but not so low that Levi couldn’t hear.
Curiosity piqued, he wondered what word she would use to describe him.
Hero.
Yeah, he still wasn’t believing that one.
Maybe he was a bit of a masochist after all.
A good portion of his body was being touched by something—his arms by the shelves, his head and neck by the ceiling—and instead of squeezing back out the door so he could stand up straight, take in a deep breath, and shake off the sensations crawling along his skin, he lowered himself to his knees and pulled his elbows in tight to his ribs, making himself as small as possible to try and keep himself from rubbing against any parts of the bookmobile’s insides.
“Cozy?” Hayley asked, amusement still written across her face.
On his knees, he and Hayley were about eye-level. She met his gaze, not breaking away to peer over his shoulder or even using the book in her hand as an excuse to look away to reshelve the title. She studied him much the same way he’d been studying her through the blinds all morning.
Whatever skittishness he’d caused her when they’d first met seemed to have vanished, even with the outrageous way he’d behaved toward her.
Speaking of behavior . . . “I’m sorry. For last night.”
She shook her head lightly. “You don’t have to apologize. I think I understand now.”
Understood what? Him? There probably was something about him that needed understanding, and he hated that. Why couldn’t he just be like every other guy in the world?
Case in point, every other guy would be reveling in this moment.
Tight quarters with a beautiful woman who was paying them undivided attention?
A perfect opportunity to flirt and be charming.
Every other guy would be breathing in the scent of her.
The scent of him on her. Of them. Mingled.
That base, primitive, biological part of their brain triggered by the mixing of pheromones and the headiness of some sort of scented claim.
But the inside of Levi’s head had begun to look like Chernobyl right before the nuclear reactors exploded. Warning bells blasting, pressure building. He needed to get out of the bookmobile. Quick.
“Not cozy,” Hayley amended, sensing the change in him without him having to say a word. As if she could read him as easily as any one of the books on the shelves surrounding them. “Confining.”
He wasn’t sure how she did it, but one minute he was kneeling in front of her and the next she’d shoved him out the door.
He gulped in a couple deep pockets of air, his haywire nerves sparking less and less with each swallow of oxygen. “Thanks,” he said. “And sorry again. About that.” He waved his hand weakly at the open door.
He remembered when he was somewhere around the age of eight or nine, he’d asked his mom what was wrong with him.
No one else seemed to have the same kind of trouble he did merely existing in the world around them, so obviously something must have been wrong with him.
She’d gathered him on her lap and banded her arms around him like a boa constrictor—Mom gave the best kind of hugs, tight and heavy—and told him in a firm voice that there wasn’t anything wrong.
He was like a superhero—like Spiderman and his spidey senses.
Levi had forced a smile to try and erase the worry he saw in her eyes, but in his heart, he knew she was just making that up to try to make him feel better.
He wasn’t special. He was defective.
“Don’t apologize about that.” Hayley focused a stern look on him, appearing every inch a caricature of an exacting librarian, sans bifocals perched on her nose and hair tied back in a severe bun. Bossy. Authoritarian.
Levi kind of liked it. He kind of like it a lot.
“Never apologize for that,” she stressed.
He nodded, wanting to change the subject, then lifted the backpack off the ground. “I brought lunch.”
She brightened, and just like that, the embarrassment of his reaction was washed away as if it had never happened. “Thank you. I’m starving.”
He looked around. There had to be something better than the oil-stained cement ground to offer her as a seat.
He spotted the rolling mechanic creeper he used when he had to position himself under a vehicle’s chassis.
Not exactly a chair, but it was cushioned and would be more comfortable than the cold, hard ground.
With a push of his foot, he sent the swivel wheels spinning toward Hayley.
She stopped the creeper’s movement with her own foot, then lowered herself down on one side, patting the other.
Levi eyed where her hand made a tapping motion.
“There’s enough room for both of us.”
He hesitated. What if his body betrayed him again?
What if the anomaly of her—or his reaction to her, rather—was just that?
An aberration that was here for but a blessed moment but had already vanished?
Right then, in the in-between, he still had the small sliver of hope that Hayley was different.
That he’d finally met someone who didn’t make him feel .
. . what? Too much? Wasn’t that what most people searched for?
Someone who made them feel more? More alive? More sparks? More of everything?
Yet another tally mark under the column that made him know something wasn’t quite right with him. That he wasn’t like other guys.
He wasn’t standing there, hoping that if he sat next to Hayley that he’d feel more. That fireworks would shoot off or internal chemistry would ignite a fire between them. He wanted to sit next to her and feel, well, not less, exactly. Just . . .
He shook his head. He didn’t know what. He just knew he didn’t want and probably couldn’t handle more.
Hayley’s brow furrowed. “You’re not going to sit?”
Levi moved to the side. The creeper was long enough for both of them, but barely.
He didn’t want to accidentally crush her, so he lowered himself slowly until he was perched in the padded bench, his knees almost up to his chin.
He unfolded his legs and let them shoot out straight ahead of him, his heels digging into the cement floor.
“See? Plenty of room.” Hayley smirked over the curve of her shoulder at him and then did a little shimmy to emphasize her point.
A shimmy he felt up and down his bicep as the sides of their bodies were lined up against each other, touching all the way from her shoulder against his arm, to her hip against his thigh, and her ankle against his calf.
He waited for the assault to come. For his skin to overreact, the hairs on his arms to rise like hackles on a dog, the snarling an uncomfortable sensation at each point where they touched.
It wasn’t that he didn’t like physical contact.
He did, actually. It was just that he only liked certain types of touches.
The other kinds . . . well, unfortunately, the other types were how most people touched one another.
Lightly. Softly. Carefully. Caresses and gentle strokes.
Touches like those made him want to crawl out of his body and flay off his skin.
Except with his family, Levi had never told anyone how he liked to be touched. One didn’t go around commanding people to only touch him with firm, deep pressure; the harder the better. They’d have looked at Levi like he was some kind of twisted human with dark, depraved tastes.
Even though their bodies were pressed together, instead of scuttling away, Hayley scooted herself in his direction, pushing firmly into him and instantly settling his fired-up nerve endings.
“Sorry,” she said. “I was about to fall off the edge.”
“It’s—” He cleared his throat. “It’s fine.”
More than fine. His body hummed with contentment instead of buzzing frantically. He sank farther into the seat. A satisfied calm came to rest between each one of his ribs, and he took in a deep, relaxed breath of air.
It hadn’t been an anomaly. He’d never thought it would happen, but Levi had finally found someone he could stand to be around. Someone who quieted his spirit and calmed the chaos inside him.
He’d finally found her, and if the DOT timeline stayed the same, he was going to have to let her go in less than two weeks.