I grin. “Yeah, but guessing is fun.”
He shakes his head. “You can be exasperating at times, you know that?”
My grin widens, then I snuggle into his side, my head resting on his shoulder as I pat his chest. “Yeah, but that’s why you love me,” I tease.
But then I hear the words, and I go still. Levi tenses under me. I lift my chin so I can see his face. He’s staring down at me, his golden eyes burning bright.
“I didn’t mean—”
His hand covers mine on his chest, cutting off my retraction. My explanation.I didn’tmean it like that. I was just joking around.
He squeezes my fingers. “I can’t say if that’s what this is yet. I’ve never been in love, so I’m not quite sure what it feels like. But maybe?” He shakes his head. “If this intense, all-consuming emotion inside me isn’t love yet, then it’s only a matter of time until it is. I’m falling, Hayley. I’m falling in love with you.”
30
“What did you just say?” I ask on a breath that barely has enough power to make it out of my lungs. I couldn’t have heard him right. Those words. That declaration. They had to have been an auditory hallucination. A figment of my imagination. My most suppressed desires tied up in my greatest fears.
“I’m falling in love with you,” he says again evenly, simply, as if stating a fact. This conversation isn’t rocking his emotional foundation at all. He isn’t wrestling internally within himself, unsure which side should surrender—head or heart.
I guess that’s just me.
I lick my suddenly dry lips. “You can’t.” My defensive response is weak, and I’m honestly not even sure if I mean he can’t fall in love with me or that he can’t be telling me he is.
Because, as stated, my defense is weak. Already I can feel myself crumbling under his sure and steady gaze. Of the affection and, dare I admit it to myself, love I see shining there.
“I am.”
“But we’ve only known each other a couple of weeks.” I grasp at the first argument like low-hanging fruit and hurtle it his way. The statement is true and easily volleyed. Much easier than grappling with the other problems he’d be adopting if hetethered his life to mine in the type of commitment that love demands.
He shrugs, the maddening man.
“Levi, I...”
I, what?
I don’t know if I cando this right now.
I don’t want to hurtyou.
I’m falling in love with you too.
Idon’t want to lose you.
All true. Every one. Each thought and emotion wrestles with the other to come out on top. To be the one to be voiced into the world.
Levi gives me a soft look. One of understanding and a small degree of sheepishness. “You don’t have to say anything, Hayley. I wasn’t going to tell you yet, but...” He shrugs yet again.
“Levi, I...”
He brings his big palms to the sides of my face and leans down to press his lips to mine. When he pulls back, he looks into my eyes. “I read some of the entries of your notebook.”
I blink. “My notebook?” How have we gone fromI’mfalling in love with youto talking about my notebook?
“I didn’t mean to invade your privacy. I saw my name, and before my brain could tell my eyes to stop, I’d already read the page.”
I wince, imagining what his reaction must have been. Anger? Confusion? Betrayal? “Levi, I hope you don’t think—”
“I don’t.” His hands still cup my face, and his fingers flex into the back of my skull for a moment before they relax again. “Well, maybe for half a second I did. But then I remembered. I know the truth.”
