by Liz Isaacson
“She’s making you eggs?”
“She didn’t make them for me,” Levi said. “I was out feeding the animals and I came in, and she had them made.”
“You’re supposed to be taking care of her.”
Levi thought of how he’d held her hand. “I am taking care of her.” He should probably tell Dwayne about his growing attraction to his sister. “Listen, I….” But he didn’t know how to say he’d held Heather’s hand on the way out to the stable.
“Levi,” Dwayne said, drawing his name out dangerously the way his mother did when he was in trouble. “I’ve known you your whole life. What’s goin’ on?”
“I like Heather,” he blurted like he was in eighth grade and they were in their secret, no-girls-allowed tree house on the outskirts of the peach orchard.
“What does that mean?” Dwayne growled.
“Don’t you need to go to church?”
“I’m on my way to your house.”
“No.” Levi stood and peered through the windows as if Dwayne would be there already. “You don’t need to come here. Heather’s asleep.” At least he hoped she was. Maybe he should go check on her. Then he could tell Elle he’d taken proper care of the woman.
“What do you mean, you like Heather? You’ve always liked Heather.”
Levi sighed and sat back down. “I mean, I held her hand when we went to visit Margarita.”
Only silence came through the line, and Levi kept on talking, because that was what he did when Dwayne went mute. “And not because she needed my help, though she did. But because I wanted to hold her hand. And then she asked me out, and I said—”
“Hold your horses,” Dwayne said. “She asked you out?”
Levi let his chin droop to his chest. It was going to be that same incredulous tone for the rest of his life. And he couldn’t believe he even thought that this story would be repeated again. Was he seriously considering a serious relationship with Heather? One where he told her about babies and money?
And more, his mind whispered, but he shut it down pretty fast.
“Levi?” Dwayne asked.
“Yes, okay? She asked me out, and I said yes.”
“Why would you do that? You don’t date.”
“I went out with Capri Calhoun last year.”
“Four times. And you weren’t interested then. Or the seven years before that.” He exhaled, his frustration evident even over the phone. “You promised you wouldn’t hurt her.”
“Wow, Dwayne. What kind of man do you think I am? You think I’m going to hurt her?”
“Are you going to tell her about the money?”
Levi’s throat turned dry and narrow.
“And that’s why I think you’re going to hurt her,” Dwayne said. “If I’d have known last year when she—” He cut off so suddenly, and the organ music was gone, so Levi checked to make sure the call was still connected. It was.
“Dwayne.”
“Levi, I think this has disaster written all over it.”
“Why? Because I’m hesitant to tell her how many zeroes I have in my bank account?”
“It’s not about zeroes, and you know it.”
Dwayne was right, and Levi did know it. Though he did believe that if Heather knew of the quantity of zeroes, the way she looked at him would change. Still, she had to know to some degree. His house wasn’t exactly a shack, and he employed people to make his meals and clean his bathrooms.
“I like her,” he said again. “She makes me feel…something I haven’t felt in a long time.”
“Are you sure that’s not guilt?”
Levi wasn’t sure, so he said nothing.
“Listen.” Dwayne sighed. “Be careful with her. Don’t start something with her unless you’re willing to tell her how you got all those zeroes.”
Levi stared out into the peach trees, wondering if he’d already started something he couldn’t reverse. He’d seen the way Heather looked at him, and she’d harbored feelings for him for a while. And he’d held her hand, gazed into her eyes, said he’d go out with her. If he backed out now, he’d definitely hurt her.
“How long has she liked me?” he asked, his voice barely audible above the breeze rustling through the leaves.
“I don’t know,” Dwayne said.
“Yes, you do.” He felt stuck between a rock and a hard place, with nowhere soft to land. He’d felt like this before, and he’d uprooted himself and returned to the one place where he could be himself—Grape Seed Falls.
Maybe a new version of himself, but at least someone he wasn’t ashamed to look at in the mirror each morning while he shaved.
“A while.” Dwayne sighed and static came through the line.
“So is it so bad that I like her?”
“I don’t think it’s bad, no. I just think…I think you may never have seen her without this accident. And that concerns me.”
“I—”
“I think you like her because you know she likes you.” Dwayne’s words turned sharp and stabbed Levi in the lungs. A slow hiss leaked from his mouth. Could that be true?
Heck, any of it could be true. This conversation wasn’t getting him any closer to understanding why he felt the way he did. Why now? Why Heather? Would he feel this way if someone else had gotten hurt during the open riding lesson?
“I have to go,” he said. “I think I heard her call me.” He hung up before Dwayne could catch him in the lie. A trickle of guilt tugged through him at the fib, but it dissipated quickly.
He got up and went into the house, trekked down the hall, and faced Heather’s door. He’d left it open a crack, and he angled his head so he could see her. The door wasn’t open wide enough, so he nudged it with two fingers and peeked in.
She was definitely asleep, and he practically scampered over to the master wing, his heart beating in the back of his throat.
Because she was absolutely angelic lying under that lavender comforter, her cast arm resting on top.
Later that afternoon, Levi’s phone buzzed on his chest. He lifted it so he could look at it and not have to lift his head from his goosedown pillow. Elle.
Mom’s made a pork roast with potatoes and she’s bringing it over for dinner at four.
To my place? Levi pecked out with one thumb.
Yeah. She said we won’t stay. She’s just bringing the food over.
Heather said we have to go over to the school and get her sub plans ready. We might not be here.
We’ll just leave it then. I know how to get into your garage.
Levi let the phone fall back to his chest, glad there would be his mother’s cooking waiting for them when they returned to the house. If Heather was to be believed, they could be at the school for hours, and in Levi’s opinion, potatoes could fix anything.
His alarm went off at two o’clock, with him staring as the numbers flipped over. He silenced the alarm and pushed himself into a sitting position. Heather hadn’t told him what time to wake her, but she’d slept through lunch and they had work to do before tomorrow morning.
He moved cautiously down the hall, not wanting to startle her. She was still asleep, and she seemingly hadn’t moved. “Heather,” he whispered, hoping she was a light sleeper and would wake immediately.
She didn’t.
He entered the room and went all the way to the end of the bed before putting two fingers on her foot. “Heather?” he said louder.
She flinched but didn’t wake.
He moved to her side and leaned down a bit. “Heather?” He couldn’t help himself; he reached out and touched her face.
Her eyes flew open and her cast arm flew up, smacking Levi right in the nose.
He groaned and grunted at the same time, his hands flying to his face. Blood coated his upper lip, and he tasted it in the back of his throat.
“Sorry,” Heather said, struggling to sit. “Oh, Levi. I’m sorry.”
He couldn’t answer. He just hurried into the bathroom before he dripped blood on the li
ght-colored carpet. Pain, hot and cold, spread through his face, up behind his eyes and along his cheekbones before settling in his ears.
He spit blood into the sink at the same time he turned on the water. Heather appeared in the doorway, and Levi hated that he was weak and bleeding in front of her.
“Let me help you,” she said.
“I’m fine.” He filled his hands with water and splashed it into his face. And wow, that didn’t help the pain at all. He moaned again, feeling carefully along the bridge of his nose. “I don’t think it’s broken.”
“Let me look.” Heather limped toward him, but he reached for a towel and covered his face.
“I’m fine, Heather.” He wiped his face and tilted his head back to get the blood to stop. He didn’t get many bloody noses, so thankfully, this one cleared up pretty fast. He washed his hands and said, “You’ve been asleep for a while, and we have sub plans to do.”
Her whole demeanor changed, and she nodded. “Yeah. Sub plans.” She went back into the bedroom, and Levi wondered if she loved teaching as much as she’d always claimed to. He’d heard her say that prepping to be absent was too much work, and a fresh wave of regret hit him.
“Can’t change anything,” he muttered to himself as he straightened and looked into the mirror. His nose looked red and puffy, but he couldn’t change that either. So he huffed out a sigh, turned, and followed Heather. The sooner they left to do the sub plans, the sooner they’d finish them.
Chapter Eleven
Heather felt a new distance between her and Levi as they drove over to the elementary school. It would only take minutes, but something charged rode in the truck with them. Was he upset she’d slept so long?
Maybe he’s upset because you punched his lights out. She snuck a quick glance at him, but he didn’t even flinch toward her. He drove with one hand loosely on the wheel, the other resting on the doorframe beside him. That blasted cowboy hat bathed his face in shadows—or was he deliberately keeping it tilted away from her?
She focused out her window, determined not to look at him once while they worked. She had generic plans already made on her computer. They’d require a bit of tweaking, and she’d need to make a couple of copies. Levi would need to write on the board. Though it was still early in the school year, Heather trained her students for what to do and how to act when she wasn’t there.
To distract herself and keep that promise she’d made to herself not to look at Levi, she texted her principal and asked him who would be teaching for her.
Barry came back with Rocki Halgrove.
Heather rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t be picky about who took the job. Rocki would do fine. So Heather’s room would be a mess when she got back on Wednesday. The children would all be alive, and they’d probably learn their math too.
Once they’d keyed their way into the building and her classroom, Levi stood a foot inside the doorway and glanced around.
“This looks like you,” he said. No emotion in his voice. No fondness in his expression. It was like he’d gone back to the wooden version of himself she’d been enduring for the past several years.
“Are you okay?” she asked him, looking away quickly when he glanced in her direction. She opened her laptop with two fingers and tapped on the space bar to wake it faster.
“I’m fine,” he said for the third time in the last fifteen minutes. Which meant he wasn’t fine. “What do you need me to do?”
Heather opened the folder where she kept her sub plans and sighed. “So we’re not going to go out.” To her astonishment, she didn’t sound upset, whiny, or like she was about to cry. Her voice simply sounded…hollow. The same way she felt.
“I—”
“I don’t need a long explanation,” Heather said, realizing now what had been hovering between them since he’d awakened her. Nothing. His emotional void. And the last thing Heather needed in her life was an emotionally unavailable man. No sirree. She’d had her quota of such men for her entire lifetime.
“Just yes or no. Do you want to go out with me or not?” She stood, breaking her promise to herself and looking him square in the face.
Indecision stormed there, and Heather was satisfied by it. It was at least something.
“Your brother thinks I like you because you like me,” he finally said, each word tight against his teeth.
Heather blinked, all her hopes and fantasies about Levi falling from cloud nine and crashing into the ground. Oh, and she was going to kill Dwayne. She never should’ve told him about her schoolgirl crush on his best friend.
“Well, is he right?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” Levi spun away from her. “So I’m trying to figure things out.” He paced over to the whiteboard and picked up the eraser. “Can I have a little time to figure it out?”
Heather couldn’t very well say no. She didn’t know what to say. Sitting heavily in her chair, she focused on the computer screen. She wanted Levi to go, but she couldn’t write on the board by herself. She didn’t even know what to have him write. At least not yet.
So while he stood there with a blue whiteboard market in his hand, her foolishness ran through her with the force of gravity. She didn’t know what Dwayne had told him, but Levi knew she liked him.
Of course he does, she thought, pretending to scroll down. You held his hand and asked him on a freaking date!
“I don’t think you like me because I like you,” she said, abandoning her plans for the second time. “You have dozens of women who like you at the boarding stable every Friday. You’ve never done anything about any of them.”
Heather found her spot in the sub plan and started typing. “Change that line from music to art, please.”
Levi complied, and Heather typed a few more things into her plan. “I’ll need you to make three copies.”
“Whatever you need.” He said that so often, it was starting to drive Heather nuts. He was only there out of duty. He’d only taken her back to his place because of his guilt. She gave him a few more instructions for the board and while his masculine handwriting stood out against hers, at least it was legible.
“I’m printing these now,” she said. “They’ll come out of the middle printer in the workroom. Make the copies—thirty of each one—and bring everything back here.”
He nodded and ducked out of the door, her keys in hand. Heather hobbled around the classroom, making sure there were crayons in the bins for the coloring project tomorrow, and that there were enough pencils sharpened. She pulled a DVD out of her cupboard and set it next to the pink folder she used for her sub plans.
She hadn’t done as thorough of a job as she normally would have, but everyone would survive. Her heart flopped fruitlessly inside her chest, so her survival was questionable.
Levi returned and she organized everything in the folder. “All right. That’s everything.”
“This wasn’t so bad. I thought we’d be here for a lot longer.”
Heather couldn’t look at him and admit she hadn’t done half of what she normally would. “I probably made it sound worse than it actually is.” She stutter-stepped toward the door, but Levi blocked it.
He trailed his fingers down the side of her face and under her chin, gently lifting it until she had to look into his eyes. “I like you because I like you.”
Every system in her body started to thump harder. She searched his expression for any hint of teasing, any shred of ingenuity. She couldn’t find any.
“My mom is bringing dinner at four,” he said. “Are you feeling up to eating with them?”
“Sure,” she managed to say without moving her lips very much.
Levi, who’d barely looked at her or touched her since waking her that afternoon, slid his hand down her arm to her fingers. “I like you because I like you.”
“I heard you the first time.” She nudged him with her shoulder. “What’s your mom bringing for dinner?”
“Roast pork and potatoes.”
“Is this
going to be our first date? A meal with your family?”
“I won’t even be leaving my house,” he said. “I don’t see how that’s a date.”
Heather strolled with him easily, her ankle zinging a little pain but not much. “So if we don't leave the house, it’s not a date, is that it?”
“No, if I don’t leave the house,” he said. “It’s my house. You’re just a guest.”
“Just a guest? Should I remind you who knows where the cups are?”
Levi’s laugh erased the afternoon of awkwardness, and it was loud enough for Heather to push away any thoughts of his emotional availability. So he’d needed some time to get her brother’s words out of his head. Didn’t mean he wasn’t interested, wasn’t ready for a relationship, couldn’t express himself when he needed to.
He pressed his lips to her temple, and Heather almost fell down. She felt like she’d somehow gotten on an emotional roller coaster and she was going up, down, and around. At least she had Levi’s hand in hers while on the ride.
The following morning, Heather woke with sunlight streaming through the windows. Outside, a goat bleated as if he alone was responsible for alerting the town of Grape Seed Falls that a tornado was approaching.
She moved to the window, her ankle barely noticing that she was walking. Curiosity had her drawing the gauzy curtain back and looking for the animal. A smile formed on her face when she saw Levi faced off with an enormous black and white goat. He took a step and the goat bleated at him, a clear warning not to come any closer.
He did anyway, a dog she hadn’t seen on the farm yesterday darting between him and the goat. Heather’s heart leapt around in her chest. What was Levi thinking? Didn’t he see the sharp horns on the animal that stood almost as tall as him?
She lifted her fist to knock, as if that would help. Spinning away from the window, she used her good hand to flatten her hair as she hurried out of the bedroom and down the hall. Ridiculous that she cared how she looked first thing in the morning when Levi’s life was on the line, but she did.