He looked down at me with something soft moving through his expression, like he was still getting used to being asked. “Old farmhouse on the county road out past Willowmist,” he said. “Been vacant a while, but someone had been staying in it. We got there, and the back half was already gone.”
I felt my stomach turn over. “Was anyone inside?”
“No.” He said it quickly, his hand squeezing mine. “Nobody home. That part we got lucky on.” He paused, looking out toward the river for a moment. “The bigger concern was the tree line. It’s been dry out there, Becca—drier than it should be this time of year. The kind of dry where one bad afternoon could take a lot more than a farmhouse. We got it contained, but it was closer than I’d have liked.”
Something in the way he said it made me look at him more carefully. He wasn’t catastrophizing—Levi didn’t catastrophize—but there was a weight behind the words, a professional’s quiet acknowledgment that the land itself was waiting for something. I filed it away without quite knowing why.
“Those old structures go fast,” he said, turning back to me. “You think you know what you’re walking into, and then the floor’s not where it’s supposed to be. But it went fine,” he said. “It all went fine. We put it out.”
I tightened my hand around his and stepped closer, close enough that my shoulder pressed against his arm. “I hate that,” I said quietly. “I know it’s your job, and I know you’re good at it. I just—I hate imagining you in a building that’s coming apart. The thought of you getting hurt is terrifying.”
He looked down at me then, really looked, and something in the tired lines of his face eased all at once. “I’m here,” he said.
“You’re here,” I said back. “And I’m thankful.”
He lifted our joined hands and pressed his lips to my knuckles, brief and warm, and I felt it all the way up my arm.
We ordered—carnitas for him, a quesadilla for me, because it was always going to be the quesadilla, the cheese alone was reason enough to be alive—and carried the paper trays across to the park that ran along the river, finding a bench that faced the water. The evening light was doing something lovely to its surface, breaking into long, pale shards where the current ran fastest. We ate with our shoulders touching, and I told him about my day. About the people who came to see me. About Harper’s hug. About Elizabeth’s face when the third person in a row came in asking for me.
“She looked like a proud mother hen,” I said. “It was genuinely alarming.”
Levi laughed—a real one, low and warm—and I felt it settle something in me that had been wound tight all day.
“Matt’s proud of you, too,” he said. “You know that.”
“He said so. Apparently twice.” I turned my tray over in my hands. “It still feels strange. Someone being proud of me for doing the thing I actually wanted to do, rather than the safe version that didn’t cost anything.”
“You’re going to have to get used to it,” he said. He reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, fingers brushing my jaw on the way back, light and deliberate. “There’s going to be more of it.”
I looked down at my tray. One triangle of quesadilla left, golden and crisp at the edges, cheese still pulling away in strings when I lifted it. I knew without looking that he’d clocked it. He always did.
“Here,” I said, and held it out to him.
He took it from my fingers without a word, that small private smile on his mouth, and ate it in two bites, and I watched him with a feeling in my chest I didn’t bother trying to describe anymore.
“I’m glad you told me,” I said. “About the fire.” I paused, looking at the water. “I want to know everything about your days. The hard ones, especially. I want to know all of it.”
He was quiet for a moment. When I glanced over, he was looking at me with an expression I felt swirling low in my belly.
“Okay,” he said simply. Like it was a promise. Like it was easy.
We sat there until the light had gone soft and violet over the water and the riverfront had quieted around us, and neither of us suggested moving for a long time.
Chapter 32
Becca
“Welcome toSomebody Said in Sweetbriar. I’ve been thinking about what it means to stand in a room full of people who are afraid of the same thing you are and decide to be afraid together instead of alone. And then do something about it.”
The morning of the meeting at Aggie’s. I woke to Levi’s heartbeat under my ear and the slow, steady rise and fall of his chest.
I didn’t move right away. Just lay there listening to him, feeling the warmth of his skin against mine, the faint scratch of stubble when I shifted my cheek against his collarbone. His palm rested against the small of my back, thumb resting in the dip of my spine. He stirred before I could move. His arm tightened instinctively, pulling me closer. A low sound rumbled in his throat—not quite a word, more acknowledgment that I was still there.
“Hey,” I whispered.
“Hey.” His voice was gravel and sleep, thick with it. He didn’t open his eyes yet. Just nuzzled into my hair, lips brushing my temple. “Sleep good?”
“Yeah.” I traced the line of his collarbone with my fingertip.
