Chapter Sixteen

I wake up smiling. I wake up with my forehead pressed into Levi's shoulder, my nose grazing his collarbone, my ankles hooked between his feet. I wake up with Levi's chin resting on my head and the low, hoarse sound of him saying, "Good morning."

I breathe in deep, peeling my eyes open. Even then, the whole scene feels like something out of a dream. But there's no denying the sweetness of this reality—of the warmth of Levi wrapped around me, the sweet ache of last night still thrumming in my core. Flashes of his lips on mine and all over me, of his breath hot against my skin, of our bodies moving in tandem. Moments too bright, too visceral, for even an imagination as vivid as mine to make up.

Levi shifts and I tilt my head up to look at him. His eyes are all sleepy on the edges but bright in the early morning sun gleaming in through the window. I've always loved waking up with the sun on my face. I love waking up with it on Levi's even more. The way it's catching in his hair right now has turned every mussed tendril golden brown.

He kisses my forehead, and something about that simple gesture—the familiarity, the ease of it—pulses a current of absolute giddiness through me. The kind of moment where you realize you've gotten something you've wanted, and it's all you thought it would be and then some. I muffle a laugh, burying my head in his chest.

"Oh, now we're being shy?" he teases.

I can't help it. The smile I woke up with is now a full-on grin, the kind that's threatening to split open my face. I lift my head and aim that grin at him in full force, and he smiles back with that same slow smile from last night.

"I've had a lot—and I mean a lot ," I emphasize, pressing myself closer to him, "of time to think about how good that would feel. And I didn't even come close."

Levi nods. "I'm pretty sure you broke my brain. I haven't slept in past six thirty in my entire life."

I glance at the clock on my nightstand, relieved to see it's only around eight. I have one of our full-timers open the shop on Fridays, so I don't need to be there for a few hours. When I look back over at Levi, my eye catches something that makes me entirely too smug.

"I gave you the biggest hickey," I tell him, tracing the red mark on his neck with my finger.

"Boy, do I have some news for you about the state of your own neck right now," he says, brushing the tangle of my loose hair off it to take a look at his handiwork.

"We're going to need a whole lot of foundation," I tell him. "Do you think we can get the Revenge Exes sponsored by CoverGirl?"

"We can have Sana look into it, right after…" He settles a knuckle under my chin, tilting my head up to kiss me. We're warm and morning-stale and everything about it is slow and easy and perfect. I pull away from him, basking in the simplicity of this, in the seamless way we've transitioned from the people we were to the ones we are right now.

I already feel the heat of last night coiling in me, the anticipation of another round of it. I pull away from him to ask if he has anywhere to be, and then something distracts me—Levi's phone screen lighting up on the nightstand behind him, flashing Kelly's name.

My stomach lurches. Somehow, conveniently, I'd forgotten she existed. Forgotten everything that led up to last night, all the tangled roads that led us here.

Levi follows my gaze to the phone. He shifts just far enough to flip it over, screen down.

"You're sure you don't need to get that?" I ask cautiously.

He leans in and kisses me again. "I'm sure. But I should charge it in case my dad wants a hand in the shop today. You mind?" he asks, holding up my cable.

For the first time, I actually regret taking over Tea Tide, because the idea of blowing everything off to sip iced tea and watch Levi fixing up a car in faded denim and a T-shirt is more appealing than anything else my brain can conjure.

"Go for it," I tell him.

He connects his phone, presses a kiss to my forehead, and says, "I'll be right back."

Even with the phone turned over on the nightstand, I can see it glowing again almost as soon as he closes my bathroom door. I watch it, transfixed. I can't help myself. It's the part of me that's been waiting for the other shoe to drop since Levi got to town, the part of me that wants to protect itself even now. I flip the phone back over.

Sixteen missed calls. Sixteen missed calls. All of them from Kelly.

His phone is on silent, so he must not have realized when we were tangled in each other, his back turned. Shit. It could be an actual emergency. My hands are shaking when I set the phone back down and call, "Hey, Levi?"

He can't hear me over the sound of the sink. I reach for my own phone and impulsively google Kelly's name, and boom. There's the headline. Not All Cinderella Stories Have Happy Endings—Inside Roman Steele and Kelly Carter's Split.

I click the link. It's an interview exclusive with Kelly. "He's just the loveliest man, through and through. Exactly what you hope he'd be," she's quoted as saying. "But I know my heart, and it belongs with someone else."

The electricity of last night starts to numb. I stare at that quote for so long that it brands itself into my eyes. Even after I skim to the bottom, see the photos of Kelly the publication embedded from her Instagram, see the other quotes she gave them about the charity work of Roman's she's going to continue with, all I see are those words. I know my heart, and it belongs with someone else.

That someone else walks out of the bathroom and sees me sitting on the bed with my knees hiked to my chest, staring with wide eyes at my phone, and immediately says, "What's wrong?"

I open my mouth. Nothing , I almost say, like I can sweep an entire interview from a nationally renowned publication under my bed, and all sixteen of Kelly's calls along with it. But he's crossed the distance between the bathroom door and my bed in an instant, and I'm handing him my phone, watching him scroll. Watching the concern furrowed in his brow lift to surprise, to bewilderment.

Before he can finish and look over at me, I say, "Kelly's been calling all morning."

As if on cue, his phone lights up on the nightstand again. Levi blinks at it. I press my forehead into my knees, bracing myself.

"I can deal with it later," he says.

And my heart cinches. Something in me is already starting to crack. I lift my head and say, "It's a lot of calls."

Only after this one ends and the 17 missed calls notification appears does he see what I mean. I don't know Kelly, but from what I've heard, she's a levelheaded, calm person. Someone like Levi. Someone who appreciates order and routines and a plan. Someone who doesn't call enough times to make a phone combust.

The phone rings with the eighteenth call right on its heels, but Levi doesn't look at the phone. He looks at me. Like I'm the one who has to make this decision, not him.

And for a split second, I feel it—a white-hot sliver of anger. The unfairness of this being put on me when I don't know this woman, don't know his history with her, and suddenly have no idea where I fit into any of it.

But I swallow it down, quick and brutal. Because if the bottom falls out from under us right now, well—we didn't make any promises to each other. We didn't stake any claims. We're in a limbo where the Revenge Exes technically never ended, and June and Levi technically never began.

And even if all of that weren't true, I don't want to be one more person in Levi's life who sets the terms for him. He followed Annie's plans. He followed Kelly's. I'm not going to try to tilt this in my favor by making one of my own.

So I give him a quick nod. He nods back. And then he picks up the phone.

"Hey, what's—"

She must start talking immediately, because Levi goes quiet. There's an intense focus in his eyes, which he aims at the floor, deliberately avoiding my gaze. Then his brow furrows, so sharp and so quick I feel my stomach drop.

"You're—you're coming here ?" he asks.

I want to sink so far into the mattress that it swallows me whole. Levi's eyes flit to mine, half apology and half shock.

"Yeah, of course I know where—I can meet you there. But you should have called before you left," he says, abruptly turning his back to me. "No, I don't want to—okay. That's… fine. Text me when you're close."

She says something else into the phone, words I can't hear but recognize the rhythm of. Words I've ached to say to him, that I wish I had the courage to say even now.

But louder than any courage I can summon is the common sense. The reminder that Levi has a whole world he's built outside of me, outside this town. That I am one night in a sea of thousands of nights he spent with her. That I am a few weeks of fun against years of him building the foundation of an entire life that I'm not a part of, that I'll never fully understand.

He hangs up the phone and presses it down to the nightstand, keeping his hand on it.

"She's on the bus right now," he says.

I know exactly which bus he's talking about. In high school, we used to call it the Drunk Bus. The direct line between Benson Beach and New York, where underage high school and college kids would go back and forth in the hour and a half from the city.

The one time we took it together, Levi, me, Dylan, and Annie, we went to see a Broadway show. We stuffed our faces with dollar slices and snuck two six-packs onto the bus, chugging them before we got home. I rested my head on Levi's shoulder for the back half of the drive, already knowing he'd let me do it, a moment that felt stolen and earned at the same time.

And now I'm still stuck in between those feelings, unsure of where we stand. Unsure of what happens for us next.

"All right," I manage. "Well—good luck."

His brow furrows again, his eyes searching my face. "I don't want her to be here any more than you do."

"It's fine," I say tightly, and I try to make myself mean it. "You were with her for years. You and I were—last night was just a night."

Levi's mouth parts, and for a moment he doesn't make a sound. For a moment, we're both suspended in time, Levi stunned by my words and me determined to hold on to them, like they're the only armor I've got.

"It wasn't ‘just' anything to me. You know that." Levi's tone can't settle, torn between insistence and hurt.

I stay very still, trying not to let it seep in. "I also know we said we were taking everything off the table. I just want you to know you can—do whatever it is you need to do."

"Whatever it is I need to do," he says, his voice dull. Prompting me to elaborate.

"We both said a lot of things last night is all," I say, my throat thick. "I don't want you to think I'm holding you to them."

"Well, that's just—" Levi lets out a strained laugh, running a hand through his hair, shaking his head against his fingers. "What do you want, June?"

It's close to the same question he asked me last night, one that I had an immediate answer for. One that I should have one for now. I want Levi. Of course I want Levi. But wanting Levi last night was simple; wanting Levi now that Kelly is back in the game comes with a risk I don't know if I can take.

"I want you to be happy," I say, which is the truth. But the truth under that is that if he's going to be happy with Kelly, I want to know now. I want it done. I want a clean break. And if pushing him toward Kelly is going to make the inevitable happen faster, it's better for us both.

His eyes soften then, like he's seeing it all play out on my face. "Being with you makes me happy," he says. "Tell me to just stay here, and I'll do it."

I can't. I'm not going to be the reason Levi makes his choice about Kelly. Whatever he decides to do, I want him to have full rein to decide it.

I tilt my head at the door and manage a small smile. "It's fine. She came all this way," I say, without any edge in it. "But it's up to you."

Levi considers me for a moment. Then he leans into the mattress, cupping the back of my neck with his hand, and pulls me in to kiss me on the forehead. We stay like that for a few long moments, Levi rooting his fingers into my hair, me leaning into the warmth of his lips.

"I'll meet her so we can talk. Let me know when you're finished up at Tea Tide," he says as he pulls away. "We still have to measure out our spot on the beach for the wedding chair rental company."

I nod. I'm only half-present when Levi pulls his clothes back on, when he slides his phone into his back pocket, when he leans in and says, "I'll see you later tonight." He's out the door and I'm still sitting on my mattress, the sheets bunched around me, feeling so much at once that I wish it could cancel itself out and let me feel nothing at all.

Instead, I throw on my clothes and wander to the building across the street from mine, then up another spiral staircase. I knock on Sana's apartment door. She's red-eyed, exhausted, but wide-awake when she opens it, her laptop propped against her hip. She takes one look at me and says, "Oh, shit. I hate saying I told you so. Don't you dare make me say I told you so."

I hold myself together just enough to say, "Fine. Then I'll say it. You told me so."

Sana drops the laptop on the table by the door and pulls me in for a hug so tight that it feels like she's keeping the pieces of me together.

"If it helps," she says into the crook of my neck, "I'm, like, sixty percent sure everything's going to work out just fine."

I bleat a laugh and she holds me tighter. The swell of gratitude for her is enough to bowl me over, but even then, I can't help the thought that comes unbidden, the one that will be on the edge of everything as long as I'm alive: I wish Annie were here. I wish she were here to tell me to buck up. To remind me who I am. To set me right in that fierce, uncompromisable way she always did.

Maybe that's the scariest thing about losing Annie. Moments like this, when I realize I may not have her anymore, but I still have what I need. Moments like this, when life goes on without her because there are other people I can depend on, other people who depend on me. Moments that I ache for both my sake and hers, because I never wanted to imagine a future where we weren't each other's first lines of defense.

"Come inside," says Sana, patting my head. "I have Pringles and Red Bull and Aiden's ‘hardcore work jams' playlist to keep us company."

I pull away from her with a watery smile and a nod, letting her tug me inside. Maybe everything is, for lack of a better word, as unsettled as it can be. But at least there is a soft, over-caffeinated place to land.