“See ya,” I call after him.
I work another bearing free and toss it onto the workbench, which lands a little too close to Levi’s laptop.
“Gross,” he mutters, curling a lip at it.
I roll my eyes and step forward to grab it and move it further down the bench.“You know you have a clean, comfy office, right?”
Winston drops his ball at Levi’s feet and taps his leg with his paw. Levi grabs it and throws it again, then smirks at me. “Yeah, well, apparently I have to work out here if I ever want to see my dog again.”
“Seriously, guys,” Dad calls, emerging from Al’s office with Al in tow as they head for the exit. “Get out of here!”
“On it,” Levi calls back with a salute.
Al chuckles as Dad eyes us, clearly aware we won’t be packing up right away. But they leave anyway, and then it’s just me, Levi, and Winston.
And thoughts that start swirling in my head, wondering what it would be like if they all knew about us. If I could just walk over and kiss him, break him from this typing trance, and touch him whenever I wanted… and show my family just how happy I really am.
I like the idea of that.
“We need to go fishing again this weekend,” Levi says, still typing furiously.
“Yeah,” I murmur, easing the last bearing loose. “It’s eating you alive that you haven’t caught one yet this summer, isn’t it?”
“Well, you didn’t either,” he fires back immediately, and I look over my shoulder at him.
His brows draw together as he pauses his typing and turns away from his screen to look at me. “That was a lot… my bad.”
Before I can respond, his phone starts buzzing on the bench next to his laptop. He glances down at it, then smiles as he picks it up. “One of my buddies from Toronto.”
I gesture for him to take it, and he hits answer, puts it on speaker, and sets it next to his laptop as he brings his attention back to the screen.
Of course.
“Hey, Brock, what’s up?” he says easily.
“Dude!” Brock’s voice bursts through the speaker. “How’s it going, man? I haven’t talked to you in so fucking long.”
“Yeah,” Levi says, tapping at the keyboard again, then flicking a glance at me with a smirk. “I’ve been busy.”
I smirk back at him as I grab the callipers from the workbench. We have been quite busy…
“Busy on a potato farm,” Brock says with a laugh. “I still don’t get why you took that job.”
My eyes quickly dart to Levi, and he goes still as his fingers hover over the keyboard and his gaze drops to the phone.
“I told you why,” he says with an edge to his voice. “It was, and is, important to me. That’s all that matters.”
“Ok, ok, chill,” Brock says with an easy chuckle, like he doesn’t actually care about what Levi wants or deserves. “So, you want to come visit in a couple weeks? A bunch of us are going to hit up the Veld Music Festival.”
I try to focus on my work as I measure the housing bores, but I can’t help but glance at Levi again.
His gaze shifts to me as well, and he gives me a soft smile. “Nah, man. I’m going to stay put.”
“Dude, what?” Brock practically whines. “Are you not bored out there? Come on, man. Just come out. It’s summer. We need to do something fun.”
Levi’s jaw ticks, and he shifts on his stool. Winston senses the tension in him and inches closer to lean against his leg, and Levi drops his hand to his fur.
“Far from it,” Levi says tightly. “It’s the best place to be in the summer.”
