Page 68 of The Break-Up Pact

“You’re scared of this. I know I’m partially to blame for that, because you’re right—I have a lot of things to figure out. And if I haven’t been great about talking about them, if I’ve made you feel like I’m pulling away—some of that is because I can’t work out the past without feeling ashamed of it.” He lowers his voice, tilting his head to better meet my eye. “Particularly in how long it took me to fix things with you.”

It seems so strange to me now that only a few weeks ago, we were barely on speaking terms. That I managed to live for so long on a few texts back and forth every year when right now he has more of me than I’ve ever given anyone, than I ever imagined I could. That now I’m here, stuck between this awe of experiencing love in a way I never have before, right alongside the terror of knowing I could lose it.

“But this is more than fixing the past. This is a whole future.” I feel the heat of what I’m saying rise in my cheeks, but there’s no other way to say it. Levi and I were never going to cross this line halfway. It’s part of why it’s so overwhelming to cross it. “One day you might change your mind.”

“You think I’m not scared that one day you’ll wake up and do the same thing?” Levi asks. “That everyone isn’t? You and I both know nothing in life is guaranteed.” He holds himself up straighter, squaring himself when he says, “And you’re right. I have lived my life on other people’s terms. And that’s what really scares me, June. All of the time that went by scares me. The idea of losing more of it scares me, especially more of it without you.”

“And I’m scared you’re going to regret this,” I blurt. Before he can protest, I add the quiet, selfish fear that’s brimming just under it: “And I’m scared of it being my fault.”

Levi shakes his head, but there’s a patience in it. A steadiness. “Why would it be your fault?”

I take a breath that feels like it shakes all the way up. “The thing is, I lived my life on someone else’s terms, too. I only just got closure from that last night,” I tell him. “So I know exactly how you’re feeling right now. And you’re making all these changes so fast that I’m scared I could become like Griffin was to me, or Kelly was to you, and decide things for you.”

The worst part is I know I have it in me. I’ve nudged him toward The Sky Seekers a few times, and I’ve been supportive of his other manuscript, but I know how easily I could have justified pushing harder. I’ve asked over and over if he really wants to be here, knowing that if it came down to it, I don’t think I could ever move to New York for him. After all these years of compromising too much for Griffin, I hate the idea of Levi compromising too much for me.

But Levi just shakes his head again, and this time he isn’t just steady, but firm. “You’re not deciding anything for me. I knew before I even got back to New York that I don’t belong there anymore. I spent a week trying to write that miserable manuscript anyway, and I still hated every second of it.” His eyes burn with a gentle kind of heat, so compelling that I’m drawn closer to them, that I can’t look away. “All I wanted was to be home,” he says, his voice almost catching on the word. “I wanted to be running on this beach. I wanted to be close to my parents. And most of all, I wanted to be with you, eating cold pizza on your couch, getting smushed in your car to go on another ridiculous date, working side by side in the back of Tea Tide all day.”

My breath feels caught in my throat. It feels like another version of the future I saw for us, the one I only let myself imagine for a few moments before I let it go. But this one is present. A solid foundation. Something that can ground us if we land in the right place.

“I want that, too,” I say. “But the way everything’s still moving right now—we’re not there yet.”

He’s quiet for a moment, searching my face. I stay very still, watching him take in every part of me, watching a quiet decision settle in him.

“How about this, then,” he finally says. “This time we leave everything on the table.”

My lip quirks, and I’m on the verge of a breathy, almost exasperated laugh when Levi’s hands settle on my waist. There’s a firmness, an urgency in his touch. It thrums through my body, settling me like an anchor, pulsing in me like a demand. When my eyes find his, I don’t just see the ocean blue of them. I see a small kind of infinity. Like being on the top of that tree all over again, staring out at the endless expanse of blue, awestruck and yearning and scared.

He leans in so our foreheads are pressing together. I’m breathless, my eyes wide open into his, feeling the words before he says them. Like hearing it out loud is just a tidal wave of a current I’ve felt my whole life.

“I love you, June.” He says it plainly, sincerely, but with more depth in his voice than I’ve ever heard before. Like he’s pulling it out from the blood in his veins, the marrow of his bones. Something that is every bit as much a part of him as the pieces that keep him alive. “It’s the only thing I’m certain about. The only thing I always will be.”

He holds my gaze, and in those words, I see so much beyond these next few weeks, beyond manuscripts and morning rushes and this wedding. I see a life. I see lazy weekend mornings on a porch with mugs clutched between our hands. I see Levi typing in a corner booth at Tea Tide, exchanging quick smiles with me from the register during the lunch rush. I see beach runs and Blue Moons, books and giant cookies pretending to be scones, laughter and hurt and understanding. I see a home with extra rooms that we’ll fill one by one, see indistinct shapes of kids with bright eyes and curly hair, part Levi and part me. I see sunrises and sunsets spilling in and out of the same horizon that watched us grow up, only to watch us grow old.

I close my eyes and let it settle in me. It’s warmth without a burn. Electricity without the sting. It’s a part of me already, too, but now it’s waking up and trying to stretch its way into this new reality, trying to breathe on its own when I’m still struggling for air myself.

Levi doesn’t wait for me to say it back, not even when I open my eyes again. He leaves one hand on my waist and uses the other to cup my jaw, his thumb grazing my cheek.

“Once I’m finished wrapping things up in the city, I’m staying in Benson Beach,” he says. “I will be here, and I will love you, no matter what we are going to be to each other. And if you need time, I can give that to you, June.”

Only then do my eyes start to sting. It’s the way he is saying exactly what I need to hear. It’s the way he understands me so deeply in this moment that it means more than those three words ever could on their own. It’s the way I need that time more than anything right now, not to be certain about Levi, but certain in myself. That I’m going to be able to love him the way he loves me, without doubting him, without pushing him away. Without hurting him for the sake of protecting myself.

I nod, and I tilt my head up, pressing a kiss to his jawline. I linger for a moment, soaking in the heat of him, the reassurance of him. He squeezes a little pulse at my waist, against my cheek, and then pulls away, walking back up to the boardwalk the way we came. I glance down the length of the beach, toward the row of piers and out to the woods beyond it. I don’t lift my feet to run. I stay right where I am, settling into the sand and tucking my knees to my chest, facing the tide.

Chapter Twenty-two

I may be having one of the most tumultuous twenty-four-hour spans of my life, but the internet is having a damn field day. Yesterday the Revenge Exes were social media darlings, and now we’re getting unceremoniously tossed into the meme fire to burn.

There’s now a Twitter trend indicating I’m no longer Crying Girl, but newly dubbed Lying Girl. A TikTok from the same body language expert from before, pointing out all the “evidence” that Levi and I secretly hate each other, one of which was him scratching his nose. An article with a menacing headline—What Else Are the Revenge Exes Hiding? People from Their Past Reveal All!—that actually doesn’t have much to it, considering nobody in Benson Beach would actually shit talk either of us beyond one quote saying Levi seemed “standoffish” in high school and that my “scones tasted dry.” (Honestly, more offensive than whoever commented what’s all the fuss over this dumb bitch about anyway??? by far.)

I know it’s a whole lot worse than that, but I’d only been back from the beach for a few minutes before Sana essentially busted down my door and took my phone and computer away from me before I could get any further.

“I can take it,” I say, burrowing into the couch. “I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not.” She jerks her thumb back toward her own apartment. “I have a lovely ocean view from my window, you know. With free front seats to whatever break-up show you and Levi were putting on by the shore this morning.”

I wince. “We’re not broken up.”

“Oh. Well, that was one hell of an emotional display for two people talking about the weather.”

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