He stood fast, and I exhaled a rough breath, a hand coming up to my chest. Yup, my heart was still there.
"Call me when you're ready to talk, okay?" he asked.
I nodded.
Then he leaned down and pressed a quick kiss to the top of my head, which had me tightening the hand on my chest. Before he left, he opened the slider for Nero, who bounded over to me and burrowed his head on my lap.
I risked a glance at Levi, and on his face was a sad little smile.
"I told you that you look beautiful, right?" he said.
Another tear slid down my cheek unchecked, and I nodded. He was turning to go when I found my voice again, just enough to give him something. Something other than my fears.
"I promise I'll call soon," I told him.
He paused with his hand on the door, and I saw his shoulders relax.
When the door closed behind him, I wrapped my arms around my dog's neck, unleashed my sobs, and soaked his fur down to the skin because nobody was there to see it.
Chapter 18
Jocelyn
"Joss, honey, how long has it been since you've done … well … anything to your hair?"
The frosting spatula didn't so much as waver while I spread lemon buttercream over the four-layer raspberry cake as I turned it on the lazy Susan.
"Are you trying to tell me something, Joy?"
She cleared her throat, and I kept my eyes straight ahead.
Oh, I'd been a real peach the past four days. When I did talk, it came out like a snarl. Because if I tried to sound pleasant, or like I was okay, I'd probably lose my shit.
"No, no," she hurried to say, "just curious. If it's a new trend, I always like to know. Maybe … maybe unkempt is the new thing, you know? If anyone can pull it off, it's you. You look really wild. Kinda like you were raised by wolves or …"
Now I lifted my eyes to her. Her skin was pale.
"Wolves?"
Joy's face fell. "N-no! I just …" She licked her lips, darting her eyes around the kitchen like someone might rescue her. Mikey held his hands up and ran back out to the register. One of the other part-timers watched us like we were the Real Housewives of Green Valley. I almost offered to make her popcorn. "I just want to make sure you're okay," Joy finished softly.
Carefully, I set the spatula down and took a deep breath. Four days was the longest I'd ever gone without talking to Levi in five years. Even when he was in the middle of midterms or finals or anything, we texted every single day and saw each other at least four days a week.
For five years.
And now I'd thrown myself, quite voluntarily, into the middle of Levi detox. Withdrawals were not fun. Symptoms ranged from snappish answers, scrolling through text history searching for clues that I'd missed, eating massive amounts of ice cream and then hating myself, to pulling up his contact info, only to set my phone down again.
And baking. Lots and lots of baking. The freezer at home was full of banana bread and zucchini bread and about seventeen kinds of cookies.
Looking in the mirror was even less fun than all those things. "Hot mess" did not even begin to cover the way I looked. I hadn't been sleeping well as my appetite pretty firmly trained onto the sugar part of the food pyramid. Thank goodness my mom was in the midst of a busy week at the hospital because it meant I didn't have to lie to her about what my frickin' problem was.
Heaven forbid we have the kind of relationship where I could confide in her.
The woman I did have that relationship with was the mother of the man who kissed the hell out of me. The thought of facing her, of facing his entire family, was daunting for the first time ever. I'd never had to worry about what they thought of me because their acceptance was so instant, so genuine. Did they know? Had he confided in them all these years? It was a toss-up whether I wanted that to be the case or not.
Worrying about it, whether they knew about his feelings, would only serve to drive me insane. If Mrs. B knew, it would only take one look, and I'd have my answer.
"I'm fine, Joy," I told her, giving the cake my full attention again. The pale yellow buttercream smelled bright and tangy, and it made my mouth water as I spread the crumb coat.
Jennifer walked through the back door, giving us a sunny smile. "How's it going, ladies?"
Joy gave her a quick shake of the head, then jerked her chin in my direction.
Proceed with caution. Approach at your own risk.
I rolled my eyes. "Everything's good. We need more buttermilk, though. We only have one carton left."
"Really? I thought there were two full ones in there." She opened up the massive fridge next to her and cocked her head to the side. "Huh. How much pound cake did you guys sell this morning? Or was it the scones?"
"Mikey spilled one," Joy explained.
Jennifer looked over her shoulder. "Oh. What happened?"
I pursed my lips and absolutely refused to answer. Joy cleared her throat and nudged my shoulder.
With a sigh, I set down the spatula again and briefly met Jennifer's eyes. "I may have … scared him. And he dropped it."
Her forehead wrinkled. "How'd you scare him?"
The embarrassment had my cheeks burning as she took in the state of my hair with wide eyes.
"He didn't know I was behind him. He backed up into me, and I, umm, I yelled at him. Just a little bit. I'm sorry, Jennifer," I said on a rush. "I'm having a crappy week, which is no excuse. I already apologized to him, and I helped him clean it up."
She rolled her lips between her teeth, seemingly trying not to smile at the crazy looking woman who was clearly in a delicate mental state.
"Okay," she said after a second. "We'll get more buttermilk."
When she came up behind me and laid a gentle hand on my shoulder, I felt my chin wobble, so I clenched my teeth tight and breathed through that bullshit. No crying. There was no crying in the bakery.
"Whatever it is, Jocelyn," she said quietly, "it'll be all right. I promise."
What would happen if I just opened my mouth and let the words tumble out? If I tried to explain to them how off-kilter everything was now that I knew? How precarious it made me feel?
On two wheels, I was steady. Very little made me feel like I would fall or stumble. I knew now that I treated my chair like a security blanket. I was the proverbial little kid who held it with a death grip and refused to admit that anything else might replace it.
Walking was scary because I wasn't good at it. No matter the way I felt when I stood up straight and saw the world from a different height, it was still scary as hell because one wrong foot placement and kaboom, down I'd go. Changing the way I viewed Levi was scary in the same sense because it held such big, big consequences.
The thought of dating Levi—let me repeat that out loud because even the words paired together felt really freaking weird, dating LEVI—was just as precarious to me as trying to take off at a dead run.
So many things could go wrong, so many things could mess me up or mess him up in the future, and at the end, the thought of not having him in my life at all was simply awful.
But the other side of the cookie was just as impossible to ignore. I couldn't pretend I didn't know. I couldn't pretend I didn't know what it was like to be kissed. Not just by anyone. Lips and tongues, hands and fingers weren't interchangeable, I had to imagine, so what was even bigger was that I knew what it felt like to be kissed by Levi. Those moments in his arms were the closest I'd felt to flying in my entire life.
Joy shifted to the side and seemed to be watching my face very carefully. "Do you … do you want to talk about it?"
Jennifer squeezed my shoulder when my head dropped down to my chest. "I'll be back in my office if you guys need me, okay?"
I nodded, and Joy smiled as our boss—our really, really great boss—gave us some privacy. While I started the lazy Susan again, smoothing out the rest of the crumb coat before I'd lay the thin sheet of fondant on top, I took a deep breath.
Joy, the person I
'd written off as silly and about as substantial as a good meringue, stood next to me, patient as a saint.
"I kissed Levi." It seemed like the most logical place to start. "Or he kissed me. I don't really remember who initiated it."
"Oh." She exhaled meaningfully.
"Yeah."
She twisted her lips to the side when I didn't say anything else. "Was it like, bad? Or weird?"
My eyes fell shut so I could remember for the millionth time how his firm, soft lips felt moving over mine. How surprisingly slick his tongue was but not in a bad way. How the scrape of his teeth along my bottom lip was the thing that snapped me violently out of the moment because it made my breasts tingle and my thighs press together desperately.
"Not bad." I glanced at her. "Definitely not weird."
"Was it good?" she asked, eyes sly and cheeks pink.
If her cheeks were pink, then mine must have turned fuchsia. Joy giggled.
"So"—she waved a hand at my hair and face—"why is allll this happening?"
I smiled a bit, amazed how one little curl of my lips and the shift of my muscles on my face could feel so good after such a shitty week. Sometimes you didn't realize how little you'd smiled until it finally happened again.
I set the spatula down and spun the lazy Susan once more to make sure everything looked even. Then I snagged a clean spoon and scooped it through the buttercream. Rolling it over my tongue, I thought about what to say without unloading five years of history onto an unsuspecting Joy.
"He's been, I don't know, wanting this to happen between us. For a long time."
"That's so roman—"
"Do not even say it," I interrupted. "You can think it all day long, but don't say it to my face right now."
She frowned. "Why not? I can think it's romantic without it changing your opinion."
Shit. "Well if you're going to be logical about it," I mumbled. My tongue swiped the last of the frosting off the spoon, and I leaned over to toss it into the sink. "It doesn't feel romantic because it feels like our friendship has been a lie."
Joy hummed, reaching forward for a spoon of her own to dip in the bowl. "That's delicious, by the way."
"Thanks."
She ate the small bite of frosting slowly before speaking again. "A lie sounds malicious, doesn't it? Purposely deceitful. I don't know Levi well. I knew him in high school, everyone did, but he's nice. He was nice to everyone." She shrugged. "If someone asked me what kind of friend he'd be, I'd never think words like deceitful or malicious."
"No, he's neither." I missed him. Talking about him, even for a minute, made me miss him so damn much. "So maybe it's a lie by omission, but he's had this thing in his head for years, and I didn't know. And that thing, about me and us and some future relationship he was hoping for, wasn't something I was aware of. Not even a little. It feels like someone's had me on a stage this whole time, only I didn't realize it. Was he dissecting things I said or did, or I don't know."
Joy picked up the cake off the turntable and walked it to the large fridge for me.
"Thanks," I told her. I could've done it, but trying to set it on my lap without it tipping sounded like a bit too much responsibility for me in my current unkempt state. I couldn't even manage to brush my hair, for crying out loud.
"So if Levi had told you, say … three years ago, that he wanted to date you. What would you have said?"
I looked down at my lap. "I probably would've laughed at him. Not like, in a bitchy way, but it was just so far off my radar at that point still."
She nodded. "And he probably knew that."
"Probably," I hedged.
"What about two years ago? Or one? Is it the same thing?" She held my gaze even though my eyes were narrowing as her point sank in. "Clearly, your friendship is more important than anything else he might have felt or might have wanted for him to wait for you to have dating on your radar. If he'd pushed at the wrong time?"
"I would've run," I whispered. Joy's mouth popped open, and I rolled my eyes. "Figuratively speaking."
She laid her hand on my shoulder. "I think it's okay if you're not ready to see the romance of it. And maybe you never will. But if kissing him was good enough that your face matched the raspberry coulis you made yesterday, then you just might need a few days to get used to the idea."
I nodded, shifting uncomfortably in my chair. "Thank you, Joy. I don't—I don't have many people to talk to. He was kind of it, you know?"
Her face transformed into a beaming smile. "Well, now you have two people."
I laughed under my breath. "I guess I do."
Chapter 19
Levi
I never thought I'd be as thankful for my big brother as I was after the past five days. There was no way for me to know that the day after I left Jocelyn's, ready to punch my fist through a wall, that I'd get a call from the Washington Wolves organization, saying they wanted to fly me out to Seattle for the next round of interviews.
It was the first time in five years that she wasn't the first person I called with the news. The first time in five years I'd flown across the country without her knowing. I spent three days in Seattle, trying not to gape at Pike's Place Market, the mountains stretched behind the sound, and the smells and sights and all the people.
As soon as my mom's car cleared the outskirts of Knoxville, the roads and the views all seemed changed somehow, just from three days of seeing something new.
"So you liked Seattle?" she asked.
"I loved it," I told her honestly. "The sights and the food, the culture, all of it. Hunter made me try seafood I've never even heard of, but it's so fresh. Like they snatched it from the ocean straight to your plate."
"That's wonderful." Her voice, because I knew it so well, sounded a little strained.
"They haven't offered me the job yet," I said gently.
She smacked my leg. "I'm just asking some questions. Now what about the team? The buildings and stuff? You'd like it there if they did?"
I sank my head back and stared out the windshield. "Mom, it was … it would be a dream come true."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." I shook my head, thinking back on what I saw and the people I met—the athletes I'd followed for years. "I know the people who work there get used to seeing each other, the players, the coaches, just walking the halls like normal people, but I think my mouth hung open from the moment I walked in until the moment I walked out."
"That's wonderful, honey." She clucked her tongue. "And I'm sure you didn't gape like a fish the entire time."
I laughed. "Not the whole time."
"What was the best part of the interview?"
"Oh, man." I rubbed my palms over the tops of my thighs and grinned. I couldn't help myself. "We were in the training room. He was asking me about some of my favorite cases in school and in walks Jared Conway."
"No." She gasped. "Did you tell him you had his Vols jersey all through high school? Wore it every Saturday?"
"Hell no, I didn't tell him," I answered. "I acted like a professional and tried not to shit myself that my favorite player from Tennessee had just limped through the damn door."
"So what happened?"
I shrugged. "He asked me to assess Jared and tell him what to do."
Her smile was so full of pride, it looked like she might burst wide open. I still wanted to grab my phone, scream my story to Joss, and hear her freak the hell out that I'd met one of my football idols.
"And did you?"
"Yeah." I laughed. "Got him up on a table, and we did some stretches, I checked out his quad. There were no tears or sprains, so I showed him what I'd do, we talked for a few minutes, and then he was just … gone."
"You'll give your dad a heart attack when you tell him that story."
"I promise to wait until he's sitting down."
"And your brother? How's he doing? How was Samantha? Did she … was she welcoming?"
I smiled at her not-so-subtle dig at my sister-in-law, who'd been an ade
quate hostess though not by southern standards. Adequate in the way that I have a roof over my head, a place to sleep, and a bathroom to use. Any whispered statements she made to my brother about the hassle of having a guest underfoot weren't meant for me to hear, but I'd heard them nonetheless.
"Hunter seemed good," I told her. "Quiet, but you know him, he always is."
She cut me a side-eye, not at all missing the fact that I didn't answer her about Samantha.
"Levi William Buchanan, don't think I'm slow just because I'm getting old. I asked you a question."
"What do you want me to say? She's wasn't all that friendly, and I'm still just as confused about why he married her as I was the day he did it?"
Her face got sad for the first time since she met me at the airport curb. "I don't know, honey. It makes me hurt for my son. When you have kids, you'll understand. From the time they start walking, and even before that, all you want is for them to be happy and healthy and loved. Who they choose to spend their life with is such a big part of that."
"Funny, I didn't think we got to do much choosing, thanks to the Buchanan curse."
Did I sound bitter? Maybe. But five days of silence would do that to a guy. And I wasn't pissed at Joss, not really. I knew her well enough to know that facing something that scared the shit out of her would pull out the stubborn in her faster than just about anything.
"Oh Levi, the curse doesn't mean you don't get a choice," she chided gently.
I looked over at her. "I don't feel like I have one right now."
"Uncle Glenn married the wrong one," she said. "He and your aunt, I know you don't know her because she moved as soon as they got divorced, but they were never suited. It's why your cousins think we're crazy for believing in all this. But you do have a choice, son."
She was quiet for a second, waiting for a semi to pass so she could make the last turn toward Green Valley. The stretch of road ahead of us was empty. The Smoky Mountains and a town where I knew everyone were in front of us. At our backs, with one turn of the car, I could no longer see the possible future that I'd spend days pondering.
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