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“Step down here.” I pace on the porch landing and point two steps below where I stand.
“Ah—what?”
I snag hold of Levi’s hand and move him myself. Before I lose all of my courage. “Here,” I tell him, moving him around me and on the one step below me. There. Now he’s closer to eye level.
“Now, I have something to say.” I puff out a breath and stretch out one arm, cupping my hand around Levi’s neck.
“Mer—”
“Shh. I like you, Levi Bailey. And you like me.”
“Meredith,” he groans.
I roll my eyes and exhale in a gust. “Did you or did you not give me your third kolache? Alice told me. You don’t normally buy two. You always buy three.”
His thick brows lift in defeat—although, I’m not sure he knows that he’s defeated yet. He hasn’t grasped what I have.
“I don’t like you because of a list. Or because number five says I get to kiss someone worth kissing.” My hands shake. I take them from around him and pull my cell from my dress pocket. I pop off my case and pull out my list, leaving Levi’s tucked inside. With trembling fingers—I do the unplanned—I rip the thing in half. One clean tear, then drop it to the ground. “I just like you for you. And I amnotafraid of that,” I say.
Then without thought, I wind my arms around his neck and close the gap between us. Shutting up whatever nonsense he may want to say with a kiss.
I press my mouth to his, lips on lips, skin on skin, not caring that air is essential to living. Levi’s mouth freezes. His entire body tenses under my touch. Then with a small moan, he relaxes, wrapping both arms around my back and hugging me flush to his chest. His lips turn from hesitant ice to a heated expert.
He moves his mouth with mine, guiding and teaching, exploring and searching. And I kiss him back as if I’ve been doing it my entire twenty-three years of life. Maybe that’s what I’m supposed to do, maybe that’s what I was made for.
His heart thumps into my chest—or maybe that’s mine, thumping into his.
The closer I hold him, the tighter he hugs me back. The non-existent space between us is still too much. And we won’t rest until it’s extinct.
Who knew that kissing Levi Bailey would put to rest every item I ever thought of adding to the list? Because it can’t get any better than this.
33
Levi
Ikiss Meredith at every stop sign, stop light, and behind every slow-poke granny on the ten-minute drive back to her place. I kiss her in my parked truck, knowing I’m going to open the shop an hour later than planned. I kiss her on the walk up to her front door and outside of her front door for a solid thirty minutes.
I kiss her until Uncle Bob knocks on the window, startling us both from this dream.
Meredith’s lips are officially swollen. Number five is not crossed off her list.
It’s destroyed.
It’s been obliterated from the list altogether. Her arms around my neck don’t loosen, but her forehead presses to my chest and she breathes as if she’s been running sprints the last hour.
I give Bob a short wave and finally—finally loosen my hold about her waist.
I’m not sure what to say to her. I’m not sure what just happened to be honest. Once I started kissing Meredith, once I tasted her sweet lips, I couldn’t stop. They pulled me in. They hypnotized me. They refused to let me go—no, I refused to let myself let go.
Meredith is everything good in the world, and I want all of her. I want her light and joy and goodness all for myself.
It’s a selfish thought when I’m not normally a selfish man. I breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth, and attempt to clear my head.
Remembering the beauty of drowning in Meredith’s touch—but also remembering that she deserves better.
And while I want her—more than I’ve wanted anything.
I also want her to have the best.
