“What are you doing?” he asked, tilting his incredulous gaze back up to meet hers.
“Wow. Your heart is going a mile a minute,” she told him. “I knew I was right.”
“Right about what?”
He took a step back, but Haddie just followed, taking a step forward.
“You, sir, have feelings.”
He scoffed, and this time he wrapped a gentle hand around her wrist and lowered it to her side. “I never claimed to be a robot,Haddie.”
No, she thought.That’s me.Because Haddie did rattle off her grandmother’s death like it was just this thing that happened a couple of weeks ago. But this moment was about Levi, wasn’t it? If she could get him to open up, then wasn’t it a win for feeling your feelings no matter who was feeling them? That was totally sound logic.
“And I never claimed you were a robot,” she told him. “You know, I didn’t like Hope pushing you like that…” She paused for a moment. “Even if I kind of gave her the opening to do so…” Another pause as she grimaced and waited for Levi to let her have it because hadn’t she so easily seized an opportunity to deflect attention from her onto someone else? But he didn’t let her have it. Instead, he crossed his arms over his chest and the beating heart she’d just felt with her own hand and calmly waited for her to finish. “She was only trying to get you to admit what it looks like a judge already knew.”
“Which is what?” he asked, the sudden hoarseness in his voice making Haddie’s chest feel like it was squeezed so tightly that her own heart might pop right through her rib cage and onto the sun-drenched sidewalk, which—by the way—would totally kill the moment.
“That there is no expiration date on grief.” She grabbed his forearms, and good god they were as solid as his chest. Did his muscles have muscles?
Levi could have fought her. In fact, Haddie was pretty sure she could have kicked both feet up off the ground and hung from thosevery solid, muscles-with-muscles forearms, but he must have sensed her silent threat to do so because he dropped his arms a second after she gave them a soft tug toward the ground. And then she grabbed his hand and pulled him down the sidewalk that was not, thankfully, strewn with her exploding heart.
“Where are we going?” he asked, confusion knitting his brow.
Haddie swore that palm to palm, skin to skin, she felt her pulse mingle with his. Except hers was racing, as if it was trying to outrun his, and she found herself so invested in whether or not he—or his pulse—would catch up, that she hadn’t realized her non-answer until Levi asked the question again.
“Whereare we going? Or are you kidnapping me?” The corner of his mouth twitched into an almost grin. “Because I’m not sure if you know, but I’m kind of a big deal in this town. If I go missing, the people of Summertown will leave no stone unturned until they find my captor and exact revenge.”
She paused briefly and gave him a practical, definitive single nod of her chin. “We need ice cream.”
Chapter 12
Haddie marched with purpose through the town square, paying noattention to the three giant sunflowers there…made from hubcaps! Levi knew the town had changed in the decade plus since he’d lived here, but part of him felt more like a stranger to the place where he was born and raised than Haddie, a woman who’d only moved to Summertown a couple of weeks ago.
He could have easily kept up with her clipped pace, overtaken her if he wanted. But there was something about her leading him where she wanted to go. There was something about her wanting to provide something he needed, even if he didn’t exactly feel like heneededice cream.
She finally stopped in front of Sweet, the shop that, yes, carried every kind of sweet you could imagine, including ice cream.
Mrs. Pinkney, Sweet’s owner and proprietor since Levi’s birth and likely before, was just flipping the CLOSED sign to OPEN when they approached.
She opened the door, a bell jingling overhead as happened in most—if not all—other stores in town, and greeted them with awarm, ear-to-ear grin.
“Levi Rourke, as I live and breathe!” the older woman said, pulling him unexpectedly into a warm embrace.
For a moment he simply stood there, not knowing how to react. It wasn’t like the folks of Summertown weren’t huggers. On the contrary. Everyone here was like one big family. It was just that Levi hadn’t been hugged in…in… Levi couldn’t remember the last time he’d been hugged.
After a stunned moment while he breathed in Mrs. Pinkney’s telltale scent of sugar, butter, and a hint of cinnamon, he returned the embrace, albeit a bit stiffly and a lot awkwardly.
She pushed him back to arm’s length and took a good look at him. “Still as handsome as ever, aren’t you?”
Levi felt his cheeks grow warm, and he could feel Haddie smiling at him—likely in a laughing way—in his peripheral vision.
“I bet that college-coaches calendar sells out each year just because of your picture!” Mrs. Pinkney continued, motioning for them to enter the shop.
“Coaches calendar?” Haddie cried, and now he could see that she certainly was sporting a laughing smile. “I’m sorry… What?”
Levi rolled his eyes as Mrs. Pinkney led them to a table and then pulled a smartphone out of her pristine white apron. “It’s right here on Amazon,” she told Haddie, and the pride in her voice made Levi blush even more, which only made him roll his eyes harder—at himself. He was a grown-ass adult man, for crying out loud, which meant he was way too old to blush like some lovesick teenager.
Not that he was lovesick. Christ. No. He was just…embarrassed.That was all.
