Chapter 19
Dakota
"Are you going to be okay doing this?" Molly asks me.
She came over after breakfast yesterday and hasn't left yet. We made good use of our time together, and I'm feeling it from the burn in my thighs. Last night I took her from behind with her hair wrapped around my fist, and my legs are sore as fuck.
"Yeah," I confirm, dropping a kiss to her lips. "Your brother deserves to hear this from me, and I want to make sure he gets it. I don't want to blindside him any more than I want to blindside your dad."
I texted Levi last night and asked him if he wanted to go fishing today.
He agreed quickly, and I'm going to meet him in the next hour.
My stomach is nervous, but I know I have to do this.
If Molly and I want to live a happy life, then we need to come clean with all the people we've been keeping this secret from.
"if you need help, you can call me. I know how to handle my brother," she teases.
I do too, but I have a feeling by the end of this day, I'm going to have a black eye, or a split lip. "Trust me Pretty Girl, I got this."
She snorts, and gets out of bed. My eyes follow her bare ass as she walks to the bathroom. "Tell me that again after you tell him."
The closer I get to our fishing spot, the more I'm thinking about maybe I should've allowed Molly to come with me. I've disappointed Levi before in our friendship, but I've never outright lied to him, and I've been doing that now for months.
I'm worried that this will change our friendship in ways we won't be able to get back, and although we haven't worked together lately, I'm worried about him being my partner too.
Because that's the thing about Levi and me that most people don't fully understand.
We're not just best friends. He’s my brother.
He stood up for me in school when nobody else would.
He didn't have to do that for me. He chose to do it, and he kept choosing it, and there is a version of my life without that choice that I am genuinely grateful I've never had to live.
Which is exactly why I'm doing this in what I hope is the right way. He deserves it.
The fishing spot is about four miles outside of town, down a gravel road that I've been driving since I was old enough to follow Levi and his dad out here on Saturday mornings.
The river comes through a bend at the bottom of a gentle slope, and there's a flat stretch of bank where the water slows way down and the fish gather, especially when it’s cold.
We've spent more hours here than either of us could probably count, and I think part of why I suggested this place specifically is because whatever happens today, it'll happen somewhere that has a long history of the two of us working things out.
He's already there when I pull up, sitting on the tailgate of his truck with his gear laid out beside him, and he raises a hand when he sees me. He looks relaxed, and that makes my chest feel worse, because he doesn't know yet that this isn't just a fishing trip.
"You're almost late," he says, when I get close enough.
"I'm on time." I drop my gear onto the bank and start setting up. "You're just early."
"You know it’s fucking habit." He hops off the tailgate and picks up his rod. "Water looks good this morning."
It does. The river is running clear, and the light is coming down through the trees at an angle. If I didn't have what I have to say sitting on my chest, this would be a genuinely good day.
We fish quietly at first. Neither one of us feel obligated to fill the silence, and that’s what I love about our friendship.
I let this time before I blow it all up calm me as much as it can.
I watch my line and I listen to the water and I think about every version of this conversation I've run through my head since Molly and I started this, and none of them have landed, which tells me the only option is to just say it straight and take whatever comes next.
I reel in and look over at him. "I need to talk to you."
He doesn't look at me right away, just watches his line for a moment. "That's never a good opening."
"No, it's not."
He reels in too, slowly, like he’s taking his time to try and figure out what it is I’m wanting to tell him. He turns and looks at me. It’s the same eyes I’ve known since I was twelve years old, but they’re looking at me with suspicion. "Okay."
I take a breath. "Molly and I have been seeing each other. For a few months now. I should've told you sooner, and I didn't, and I'm not going to pretend that was the right call because it wasn't."
The silence that follows is long enough that I can hear the river clearly and the sound of a bird somewhere up in the tree line, and it’s fucking uncomfortable. I don't try to fill it because he's earned the right to take as long as he needs.
Then he laughs. It's short and humorless, and he shakes his head and looks down at the ground between us. "You’re not telling me you’re dating my sister. I know you’re not.”
"I am," I say again, because it seems like he didn’t hear me the first time.
He looks up, and what I see on his face is not the blank shock of someone who had no idea.
It's the sharp-edged look of someone who has known something was wrong and has been waiting, for the people involved to stop treating him like he was too stupid to notice.
"I knew," he says, and his voice has an edge to it now.
"I could tell something was going on between the two of you.
I kept waiting for one of you to be an adult and tell me, and instead you both just kept letting me…
" He trails off, jaw tight. "How long did you say? "
"Little over six months."
"Over six months." He sets his rod down on the bank, and I recognize what that means, and I set mine down too because I'm not going to be holding anything in my hands for what comes next.
"We worked side by side on that room. I showed you the goddamn ring, Dakota. And the entire time, you were fucking my sister?”
"I know."
"Don't tell me you know." His voice goes harder. "You let me stand there and talk to you about Magnolia, about my life, about trusting you with the most important thing I've got going, and the whole time you were keeping this from me."
"Yes," I say, and I don't argue with it, because every single thing he just said is correct and I knew it when I was standing in that room with him and I made the choice to wait anyway, and that was mine to make and mine to answer for. "I'm not going to tell you that was right. It wasn't."
He crosses the distance between us faster than I expect, and the punch lands on my jaw and snaps my head to the side, and I let it.
I don't step back and I don't raise my hands, because I decided before I drove out here that if it came to this, I was going to stand here and take it, because it is not the worst thing I’ve ever had coming to me and I know the difference between someone hitting you out of anger and someone hitting you because you gave them a reason to.
I straighten back up and look at him, and my jaw is ringing and I can taste copper at the corner of my mouth, and he's breathing hard and his hands are still fisted at his sides.
"Hit me again if you need to," I tell him, and I mean it.
"But it's not going to change anything, Levi.
I love her. I've loved her for a long time, longer than these past couple of months, and I'm not walking away from her, and she's not walking away from me.
You can be pissed at me about how I handled telling you, and you'd be right to be, but the fact of it isn't going to change. "
He stares at me for long minutes.
"I love her," I say again, because I want to make sure he hears it twice.
"And I know what she is to you. I know better than almost anyone what she means to you and what it costs you to trust someone with your sister, and I'm not asking you to do that because she's some girl I've been seeing for over six months.
I'm asking you to do it because you've known me since I was a kid, and you know who I am, and you know what I'm capable of when it comes to the people I love. "
The fight goes out of him. I watch it happen the way I've watched it happen before over the years, a sequence where the anger peaks and then the person underneath the anger starts to come back through, and with Levi it's always been faster than it looks like it's going to be because he's never been someone who holds onto things out of stubbornness. He's too honest for that.
He drags a hand through his hair and looks away from me, out toward the river, and for a while neither of us says anything.
"If I had to trust someone with her," he finally says, and his voice is rough and quiet, "it would be you." He pauses. "That doesn't mean I'm not pissed."
"I know."
"You should've told me,” he drags the words out of a wrecked throat.
"I should have," I agree. "I'm telling you now."
He looks back at me, and he takes in my face, the way my jaw is already starting to swell, and something moves across his expression that is not quite regret. "You didn't even try to block it."
"No."
He shakes his head slowly, a smile spreading across his face. "You're an idiot."
"Probably."
"If you hurt her," he starts.
"I won't."
"Dakota." His voice drops, and what I hear under it is not a threat, it's a plea, the real thing, the one that has nothing to do with anger and everything to do with how much he loves his sister and what it would cost him to watch someone he trusted do damage to her. "Don't hurt her."
"I won't," I tell him again, and I hold his eyes when I say it. "I promise you that."
He exhales long and slow through his nose, and then he bends down and picks his rod back up off the bank and looks out at the water. "Pick your rod up."
I pick my rod up.
We fish in silence for a few minutes, and my jaw aches and my mouth still tastes like copper, and the river keeps doing what it does. I told my best friend I’m in love with his sister, and the world is still turning.
"You're going to have to tell Dad," Levi says finally.
"I know,” I laugh ruefully, shaking my head.
"He's going to be worse than me."
"I know that too."
He glances over at me, and there's the ghost of something at the corner of his mouth that isn't quite a smile, more like a smirk. "I'd tell you I want to be there for it, but I think I'll let you have that one on your own."
"Thanks," I say dryly.
"That's what you get for waiting for months to be honest with me." He reels in and casts again, clean and easy. "You're still an idiot."
"Yeah," I agree, and I mean it, and somewhere underneath the aching jaw and the taste of blood and the adrenaline that's going to work it’s away out of my system, I feel the relief of having done one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.
We stay for another two hours.
It's the best fishing we've had all year.