Page 74 of The Break-Up Pact

I feel another kind of trust right then. A trust Levi has in me not just to know what I need right now, but to tell him the truth. And the respect he’ll have for that decision either way.

I press the phone closer to my ear. “I know,” I say quietly.

He must sense that I have to go, because he says, “Good luck.”

“You too,” I say. “And by the way—I don’t care what hideous painting you hang over your bed. You still get a pass from me.”

A lot of things are about to change, but the satisfaction I get from making Levi laugh will never get old.

I start searching through the dusty metal cabinets in the back of the office then, digging in deep for the first time since I took over. Somewhere in one of these drawers I know Annie kept a big binder full of all the recipes she created for the scone ideas I’d sent her. I still want to make new ones, but now that we’re starting fresh—now that we’re starting on my terms—I don’t feel the same ache I felt at the idea of bringing back the old ones. I want to infuse the past with the future. A mix of what it was and what it will be.

The binder only takes a few minutes to find. Underneath it is a whole mess of loose papers that I’m planning on ignoring, except I recognize that neat, tidy handwriting, and my eyes catch and don’t let go.

It’s Levi’s. I pull the papers out, all beaten up and creased at the edges, and skim them. It’s a slew of ideas for stories. Some of them just a few words, some of them fleshed out with several paragraphs. Some with character names and settings, some just with a feeling. The kind of thing he probably did in a class one day and passed over to Annie to see if anything stuck out to her.

Maybe none of the story ideas will be helpful to Levi down the line, but the reminder will be. He was brimming with story ideas once. If he opens himself up to them, he could be again. And if he wants someone to talk them out with, the way he did when we were kids, I’m here to soak in every word.

I tuck the pages into the binder, his old magic with mine. Then I flip the pages and start looking through the scone recipes one by one, each more ridiculous than the last. I pluck a few of them out to start, the ones closest to my heart—the rosewater-flavored Oopsy, Not A Daisy scone inspired by the time I picked flowers surrounded by poison ivy and ended up itching a rash the whole time I was visiting Annie at Stanford. The ham, egg, and gruyère cheese Wakey Fakey scone from the time I ate a croque madame after taking a red-eye flight to Paris and apparently had an entire, deeply expensive conversation with Annie about it that I still can’t remember to this day. The pretzel and peanut butter Flight Risk scone from when Annie joined me on a trip to Amsterdam and we had to sprint through the airport like we were in an action movie. A map of places we’ve been and memories we scored into our hearts. A roundabout way of coming home again.

I soak them in, only balking for a moment when I realize how much work Annie put into all these concoctions I made up. But as soon as I think it, I hear her words clear as day, like she was waiting for this moment when I was already steady on my own two feet to say them: Just try not to fuck up.

Chapter Twenty-five

Over the course of the past few weeks, I’ve discovered that there are very few scenarios where I can look at Levi without my thoughts straying in a less-than-PG direction. But even that does nothing to prepare me for what might be the sexiest thing my eyes have ever beheld: Levi Shaw kneading scone dough, his sleeves rolled up to his forearms, his hands and shirt covered in flour, so deep in concentration that his teeth are grazing his lower lip.

I’ve been anticipating seeing Levi again for two weeks, imagining what we might say or do when the moment came. But I wasn’t expecting to find him here, and suddenly all the imagining is out the window, replaced by a firm mental reminder that there are probably laws against doing most things I want to do to Levi right now in a shared commercial kitchen space.

“Hi,” I say.

Levi looks up, flour streaked on his nose, his eyes bright in the early morning sun starting to slip in through the windows. “Hey, you,” he says, matching a smile I realize has already bloomed on my face.

I cross the room slowly, feeling that pull between us grow taut with demand. “How did you get here?” I ask.

The phone call I made to him about Tea Tide seemed to break some invisible barrier that had kept us only texting since our conversation on the beach. Since then, we’ve been talking on the phone with each other every night, keeping each other company as we packed and baked and got ourselves in order. Last night he said he’d meet me at the food truck once his bus got in, so the last thing I’m expecting to see is Levi here, a mere fraction away from producing his own soft-core scone porn.

“I took the early morning bus. Dylan said you guys were taking the day to catch up on making the dough, so.” He gestures at the open recipe binder, which now has a rotating scone calendar attached to the front. “I figured I’d give us a head start.”

I walk over, staring at the perfectly portioned scone dough ready for baking or freezing for later this week.

“Where on earth did you learn to do this?”

“I was in the back of Tea Tide pretending to write for weeks. I picked up a few tricks.” His cheeks tinge pink. “Or maybe I just liked watching you bake.”

I continue to stare up at him, torn between a tenderness and a sudden, demanding heat pooling low in me. Before I can decide what to do with it, Levi pulls me in and holds me tight to him. I breathe in warmth and brown sugar and Levi and feel a tightness in my chest finally start to loosen even as my heart quickens against my ribs, fluttering so fast that that beat of it spreads all over my body.

“I missed you,” I say into his shoulder.

He presses his fingers into my back. “I’m glad to be home.”

The word home hums under my skin, spreads another, softer warmth through me. I know his things are in storage. That he’s still staying in the rented condo until he finds something more permanent. So he doesn’t mean home like a place; he means the home right here in each other’s arms.

It washes over me then, a calm, cool tide. He came back. I knew he would. But it’s one thing to know it; it’s another one entirely to have him here pressed against me, solid and steady and whole, and understand without another word that he’s here to stay.

We pull apart, our arms still wrapped around each other, and I tilt my head to better look at his face. This face that I’ve memorized every curve and angle of, every smile and twitch and quirk, enough to know the expressions that are for me and me alone. Like the one he’s settled into right now—a deep and solid kind of contentment in the curve of his lips, a steady burn behind his blue eyes. Satisfaction and desire and so much love that I’d be overcome by the magnitude of it if I didn’t feel it myself.

I know we still have a lot to talk about, a lot to work through. But I trust us to figure it out. More importantly, I trust myself to try. If these past few weeks have shown me anything, it’s just how much of my life has opened up now that I’m looking ahead instead of trying to hold on to what I’ve left behind. Now that I’m living for myself and my passion and for the people I love, and not just to get by.

So I don’t worry about the words or the work or what’s next. For a moment, there’s only us—two people who have weathered a storm and come out together on the other side. Two people built to withstand more of them, when they come our way. Two people built to last.

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