Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-one

When I was younger, I had a very aggressive tree-climbing phase. There was one thick tree smack-dab in the middle of our woods with a tangle of branches that went up and up and up, so high that once you reached the top, you could see to the edges of our whole town—the little nucleus of Benson Beach's main square that led out to the boardwalk, which wove into the narrow streets full of mismatched homes beyond it. The strip of the beach against the bright, staggering blue of the ocean spanning the bluer sky. I'd get to the top and feel the wind on my face, flooded with both a strange kind of terror and thrill—the fear of the height I'd climbed, but the satisfaction of having climbed it. The fear of the world being so much bigger than I thought it was, and the anticipation of everything it had in store. The fear of knowing I'd have to climb back down, and the comfort of knowing no matter how long it took, Levi would always be waiting patiently for me at the bottom.

I've thought about that tree-climbing phase a lot over the years. I'd use it to justify a lot of the reckless things Griffin talked me into. I used to do things that scared me all the time , I'd think to myself. I climbed that tree even when it terrified me. How is this any different?

I understand now just why it was different. It was my choice. My tree to climb, my fear to decide to feel, my limits to test the edges of without anyone pushing or pulling them.

I'm thinking of that tree when the sun comes up the morning after the interview and I open the door to my apartment to catch Levi already sitting eagle-eyed on his porch, clearly waiting for me to come down.

He meets me halfway between Tea Tide and the condo, eyes red from lack of sleep, looking every bit as spent as I feel. His expression is another shade of the one he made before the taxi pulled away—streaked with a sincere regret and a restlessness just under it, soft in his eyes but tight in his jaw.

I wonder what I must look like to him. Guarded, probably. Exhausted. Confused.

But more than anything, relieved that he's here. That when we're close enough to see everything brewing in each other's eyes, for a moment, we see down to the bottom of it. The part that's just us without the noise of the rest of the world. I lean into him, pressing my head into his shoulder, and his arms wrap around me so steadily that I close my eyes, tempted to stand here forever. To pretend that yesterday didn't happen, that I'm not already worried about what comes after today.

"I'm sorry, June," he says, his voice low in my ear. "If I had any idea Kelly would say anything, I never would have told her."

Then why did you?

I know I have to ask, but I can't make myself do it. Not yet. I shake my head against his chest, raising my own arms to press my hands into his back, to sink further into the steadiness of him. I just want this right now. I don't want the storm on the horizon. I want to stay here, right in the eye of it, for as long as we can.

"It doesn't matter," I say. "At least not in the grand scheme of things."

Levi pulls back from me, keeping his hands settled on my waist. "Of course it matters. It's my fault Griffin sprung that on you."

I shake my head. "It was my fault for being there in the first place. I thought I was one step ahead of him, but it turns out he'd taken one hell of a leap."

I try for a slight smile, but Levi doesn't return it. "I wanted to talk to you after, but you just… took off," he says.

I take a slow step back, prying us apart. As far as shutting this conversation down goes, so far, I am not doing a very good job. "Sorry. I just had to get out of there."

"You know I would've gone with you," he insists.

I nod. I knew it then, but I especially know it now—he must have taken the late bus in last night, the one that lived up to the Drunk Bus name. "It's really okay, Levi. We're okay," I tell him, because maybe it's best if we don't examine this too closely. If I don't ask him why he told her, then he doesn't have to give me a reason that might shake us.

He doesn't acknowledge it with a nod or a follow-up. He just takes a breath like he's steeling himself and says, "What are you up to right now?"

I look down at my sneakers, barely even remembering that I must have laced them up. I woke up so tangled in texts and calls and links to articles about us that it was the only move left that made sense.

"I was going to go for a run," I say.

He nods. "All right." And then he starts following me down to the beach without so much as putting on his shoes.

As we reach the part where the loose sand gives way to the damp, hard sand under our feet, I can tell he's working his way into breaking the silence. I break it before he can.

"How about this," I say. "We race to the next pier. And if I win, we never talk about what happened yesterday again."

I try for another smile, my eyes glancing at his bare feet. Even at full speed, there's no way he'll beat me without sneakers. I dig my toes into the sand gamely, feeling the relief of the run before it even starts. The relief of this conversation being over before it even has to begin.

But then Levi reaches out and settles his hand around my wrist, gentle but firm. "I want to talk about what happened."

I keep the smile as intact on my face as I can. "And I'm saying there's nothing to talk about," I say lightly.

Levi doesn't let me go. Just traces the pad of his thumb on the soft skin of my inner wrist, stepping in closer. "We've been running away from a lot of things, June. I don't want to run anymore."

He's right. Even if I can't accept it in my heart, I feel it in my body. I'm exhausted in a way that goes deeper than muscle, deeper than bone. I've been running from my feelings since this whole thing began. Literally running any time Levi and I had a conversation that felt like it went too deep, that gave away too much—challenging Levi to a race when a conversation got too real has been in the June playbook since we were kids.

I pull my wrist out of his grasp and start walking down the beach slowly until he falls into step beside me. It's quiet this morning, the way it always is toward the end of the summer. A settled kind of heat that's waiting to break.

"What do you want me to say? That I'm embarrassed?" I tilt my head at him. "It already happened to us before. We'll get over it."

Levi is quiet for a few paces. Thoughtful. The wait feels like wobbling that tightrope again, wondering if our next words will tilt me over or set me right.

"At the beginning of this we said the only real rule is that we'd be honest with each other," says Levi. "And that means about everything, June. You're upset. I know you are because you just keep shutting me out. Pushing me away." He shakes his head. "I don't want us to sweep things under the rug. If you're mad, be mad. Talk to me."

I stare at our feet, our mismatched rhythms finding the same pace, and feel it brewing beneath us. The storm I've been avoiding. The one that was on the horizon a whole lot earlier than the interview yesterday; the one that's been gathering speed since Levi came back to town.

I can't avoid it anymore. I come to a stop on the beach and turn to face Levi.

"Why did you tell Kelly about the pact?" I ask.

Levi nods like he was expecting this question, like he's glad that I asked it. "I wanted the chance to talk to her about it. To someone who understood the whole situation, and understood me," he says.

I close my eyes for a moment because it's not the full answer I'm looking for. "But you didn't tell me that you told her. I want us to be honest too, Levi. And I think there's a reason you didn't tell me. I think—part of you still wanted that door with her to stay open."

I'm hoping he'll deny it. I'm hoping he'll get riled and start listing off all the reasons I'm wrong, and even though I won't quite believe it, at least some of the sharpness of the hurt will go away.

Instead, he lets out a resigned breath. "Maybe for a moment," he admits. "I was scared. I didn't know how you felt after that night at your place."

The words feel like a cold current running through me, icing my bones. An armor against the immediate heat of panic, of the words hissing under my skin: You were right.

"I told you how I felt," I say with an eerie calm. "I told you in that parking lot how I felt. It never went away."

"But you still pushed me away the next morning." His tone isn't accusatory, just quiet and a little sad. "The same way you are right now."

I don't deny it. For the first time, I lean all the way into it. I glance up at him, into his tired, aching eyes, and I step off the tightrope.

"I know you had no control over Kelly being here, but when she was, you didn't send me a single text." It doesn't feel like falling yet. My voice is steady, composed—this part, I've had a lot of time to think about. "I had no idea what was going on between you two, or what that silence meant. Then right on the heels of that you tell me you're going back to New York, where you're living with her all over again. And that—we talked about all of that. I know you have things to settle. I get that."

His eyes are pained, like he wants so badly to interject, to explain. But he already gave me explanations. What I need now is for him to understand where they left me and why I can't help but fixate on them now.

"But this whole week we haven't even said a word about anything beyond it," I say, and then I feel it—that swooping pit of dread. The worry that once I say these fears out loud, I'm going to make them true. "Not when you're coming back, or where you'll live, or what you'll do. Not what we're even going to look like. And to me, that's you pulling away. That's you coming to your senses. And if me pushing makes you come to them faster, then it's better for us both."

I feel almost empty without the words locked up in me anymore. Like all this time they've been keeping me balanced, keeping me upright so none of this would be able to knock me down. Without them, I'm hollowed out again, like I've given some part of myself up and Levi can choose to fill the space however he wants.

"You're right," he says, his eyes sweeping to the sand. "I probably have been avoiding talking about the future. I got back to New York, and I just… I kind of shut down. I was overwhelmed. I think it just hit me then—how much time had passed. How quickly things were shifting all at once. That I really have no idea what I'm going to do next, because I haven't had to think about writing anything beyond this manuscript in so long that I don't even know if I have any other ideas. It was easier to try to focus on the day-to-day of wrapping things up than what came next."

"Because you're still not sure," I say, and the words are almost pleading. Like I need him to understand that about himself so I don't have to be the one who is constantly on guard for it.

Levi shakes his head. "I'm just trying to adjust. It's like you said yourself—it's happening fast."

"Exactly," I say, and then I feel it starting to bubble up again—the simmering panic, the heat. The frustration. "I knew that. I still know that. You told me back then you were sure, that it didn't matter how fast it was moving, but clearly it did ."

"It mattered in the sense that—that yeah, there are some things that are going to take time for me to wrap my head around," says Levi. "But that doesn't change what I want, June. What I've known I want, what I still want."

And there it is again, the word want , the double-edged sword. Because wanting something isn't the same as committing to it. To understanding the reality of it. And I'm terrified that Levi still doesn't.

This time, I aim the words not just to push him, but to push him too far. Maybe even to hurt. It's the bottom of everything I've been trying not to peer into, every fear I've been trying to keep from coming to the surface, but now I'm yanking them up by the ugly roots.

"You don't know what you want, Levi," I say, my jaw so tight that it feels like my entire body is aching with it. I gesture outward down the beach with my arm. "You've just lived half your life on everyone else's terms. You started writing that New York manuscript because some college kids made fun of you. You stayed in a relationship for years to stick to Kelly's plan. You let Annie scare you out of looking at me when we were kids. Don't stand there and tell me what you want, because I don't think you have a clue."

Levi's face is so stricken that I know I've hit my mark and then some. I've finally done it, then. I've finally gotten to the core of the hurtful truth that was just going to stay unspoken until it eventually destroyed us. I've hit the self-destruct button, made us into a fast explosion instead of a slow decay.

He looks down for a moment, his throat bobbing. I feel the thick, rotten tension of the words between us, but I don't do anything to pull them back. I wait. I stand in the awful aftermath and wait.

When Levi lifts his head, I still see the hurt streaked through his eyes, the gray flecks stark against blue. But his hurt isn't like mine. It isn't jagged and angry. It's soft and it's sad. I feel myself deflating before he even speaks, before he even hands me a truth of his own.

"I think you're scared, too," he says quietly. "You're scared of things changing. You're scared to do anything different with Tea Tide. You're scared to do things that make you happy now that Annie's gone."

The sound of Annie's name punctures the last of the anger in me, pulling it out of me until it feels like I don't have anything to hold on to. There's just the bare truth of his words. The way I've been able to avoid that truth even when I've worn it like a second skin since the moment I found out Annie was gone. The way Levi knows exactly how to speak it out loud, because he feels it, too. The guilt that isn't just moving on without Annie, but the guilt of outgrowing her. The guilt of being older and having revelations and experiences she'll never be around to have herself.

And now the guilt of so much of it being with Levi, when we both know there was a time she didn't want us to be together. And the hurt of knowing that we'll never be able to tell the version of her who would.

Levi takes a step toward me, just close enough that I could so easily lean my head into his shoulder again, that I could lean the rest of myself with it. But I'm still too at odds with myself to be a part of him. Torn between facing the truth of his words and wanting to run from them.

"You're scared of this. I know I'm partially to blame for that, because you're right—I have a lot of things to figure out. And if I haven't been great about talking about them, if I've made you feel like I'm pulling away—some of that is because I can't work out the past without feeling ashamed of it." He lowers his voice, tilting his head to better meet my eye. "Particularly in how long it took me to fix things with you."

It seems so strange to me now that only a few weeks ago, we were barely on speaking terms. That I managed to live for so long on a few texts back and forth every year when right now he has more of me than I've ever given anyone, than I ever imagined I could. That now I'm here, stuck between this awe of experiencing love in a way I never have before, right alongside the terror of knowing I could lose it.

"But this is more than fixing the past. This is a whole future." I feel the heat of what I'm saying rise in my cheeks, but there's no other way to say it. Levi and I were never going to cross this line halfway. It's part of why it's so overwhelming to cross it. "One day you might change your mind."

"You think I'm not scared that one day you'll wake up and do the same thing?" Levi asks. "That everyone isn't? You and I both know nothing in life is guaranteed." He holds himself up straighter, squaring himself when he says, "And you're right. I have lived my life on other people's terms. And that's what really scares me, June. All of the time that went by scares me. The idea of losing more of it scares me, especially more of it without you."

"And I'm scared you're going to regret this," I blurt. Before he can protest, I add the quiet, selfish fear that's brimming just under it: "And I'm scared of it being my fault."

Levi shakes his head, but there's a patience in it. A steadiness. "Why would it be your fault?"

I take a breath that feels like it shakes all the way up. "The thing is, I lived my life on someone else's terms, too. I only just got closure from that last night," I tell him. "So I know exactly how you're feeling right now. And you're making all these changes so fast that I'm scared I could become like Griffin was to me, or Kelly was to you, and decide things for you."

The worst part is I know I have it in me. I've nudged him toward The Sky Seekers a few times, and I've been supportive of his other manuscript, but I know how easily I could have justified pushing harder. I've asked over and over if he really wants to be here, knowing that if it came down to it, I don't think I could ever move to New York for him. After all these years of compromising too much for Griffin, I hate the idea of Levi compromising too much for me.

But Levi just shakes his head again, and this time he isn't just steady, but firm. "You're not deciding anything for me. I knew before I even got back to New York that I don't belong there anymore. I spent a week trying to write that miserable manuscript anyway, and I still hated every second of it." His eyes burn with a gentle kind of heat, so compelling that I'm drawn closer to them, that I can't look away. "All I wanted was to be home ," he says, his voice almost catching on the word. "I wanted to be running on this beach. I wanted to be close to my parents. And most of all, I wanted to be with you, eating cold pizza on your couch, getting smushed in your car to go on another ridiculous date, working side by side in the back of Tea Tide all day."

My breath feels caught in my throat. It feels like another version of the future I saw for us, the one I only let myself imagine for a few moments before I let it go. But this one is present. A solid foundation. Something that can ground us if we land in the right place.

"I want that, too," I say. "But the way everything's still moving right now—we're not there yet."

He's quiet for a moment, searching my face. I stay very still, watching him take in every part of me, watching a quiet decision settle in him.

"How about this, then," he finally says. "This time we leave everything on the table."

My lip quirks, and I'm on the verge of a breathy, almost exasperated laugh when Levi's hands settle on my waist. There's a firmness, an urgency in his touch. It thrums through my body, settling me like an anchor, pulsing in me like a demand. When my eyes find his, I don't just see the ocean blue of them. I see a small kind of infinity. Like being on the top of that tree all over again, staring out at the endless expanse of blue, awestruck and yearning and scared.

He leans in so our foreheads are pressing together. I'm breathless, my eyes wide open into his, feeling the words before he says them. Like hearing it out loud is just a tidal wave of a current I've felt my whole life.

"I love you, June." He says it plainly, sincerely, but with more depth in his voice than I've ever heard before. Like he's pulling it out from the blood in his veins, the marrow of his bones. Something that is every bit as much a part of him as the pieces that keep him alive. "It's the only thing I'm certain about. The only thing I always will be."

He holds my gaze, and in those words, I see so much beyond these next few weeks, beyond manuscripts and morning rushes and this wedding. I see a life. I see lazy weekend mornings on a porch with mugs clutched between our hands. I see Levi typing in a corner booth at Tea Tide, exchanging quick smiles with me from the register during the lunch rush. I see beach runs and Blue Moons, books and giant cookies pretending to be scones, laughter and hurt and understanding. I see a home with extra rooms that we'll fill one by one, see indistinct shapes of kids with bright eyes and curly hair, part Levi and part me. I see sunrises and sunsets spilling in and out of the same horizon that watched us grow up, only to watch us grow old.

I close my eyes and let it settle in me. It's warmth without a burn. Electricity without the sting. It's a part of me already, too, but now it's waking up and trying to stretch its way into this new reality, trying to breathe on its own when I'm still struggling for air myself.

Levi doesn't wait for me to say it back, not even when I open my eyes again. He leaves one hand on my waist and uses the other to cup my jaw, his thumb grazing my cheek.

"Once I'm finished wrapping things up in the city, I'm staying in Benson Beach," he says. "I will be here, and I will love you, no matter what we are going to be to each other. And if you need time, I can give that to you, June."

Only then do my eyes start to sting. It's the way he is saying exactly what I need to hear. It's the way he understands me so deeply in this moment that it means more than those three words ever could on their own. It's the way I need that time more than anything right now, not to be certain about Levi, but certain in myself. That I'm going to be able to love him the way he loves me, without doubting him, without pushing him away. Without hurting him for the sake of protecting myself.

I nod, and I tilt my head up, pressing a kiss to his jawline. I linger for a moment, soaking in the heat of him, the reassurance of him. He squeezes a little pulse at my waist, against my cheek, and then pulls away, walking back up to the boardwalk the way we came. I glance down the length of the beach, toward the row of piers and out to the woods beyond it. I don't lift my feet to run. I stay right where I am, settling into the sand and tucking my knees to my chest, facing the tide.