The Break-Up Pact

by Emma Lord

It shakes the tension just enough that when I glance over, I catch that new almost-smile on his face. This time, though, I find more of the old version in his eyes—the subtle crinkle, the quiet gleam.

The moment I realize it’s over Griffin, it stops me in my tracks. Levi takes a breath, and some of the tension goes with it. “I’ve never seen you cry like that.”

Then a firm arm wraps around my waist, knocking all those pieces out of order. I feel the heat of Levi’s entire body against my back as he pulls me up from the ground, my legs still pumping, laughing so hard from the shock of it that all the air whooshes out of my lungs.

“You cheated,” I accuse, wheezing out a laugh. Both his arms are still wrapped around my waist, and I can feel the adrenaline pulsing between us where the hard muscle of his arm meets the soft skin of my hips.

Everyone thought you guys were dating in high school.”

“The two of you were inseparable. Any time I came to a cross-country meet, you were sleeping on top of him or vice versa.”

Then Levi opens the door, mug in hand, his hair still mussed from sleep but the blue-gray of his eyes fully awake. His lips just quirk into that almost-smile, as if we planned this. As if he was expecting me.

But Levi manages to hook his hands under my knees and pull me up on his back in a motion so swift that I have to grab his shoulders like a life jacket. I’m settled against him an instant later, so easily that it feels like the shape of me was meant exactly to fit into the shape of him.

Nothing to distract me from the friction of my chest against Levi’s back, or the earthy-sweet smell of him, or the way the muscles of his shoulders ripple against my arms.

I lose my sense of self long enough that I unconsciously lean my forehead into the back of Levi’s head, pressing against the gentle curls, staring down at the tanned slope of his neck. I can feel the precise moment he all but stops breathing. I come back to myself and jerk my head away so fast he stumbles on the top step, grabbing the railing to keep us upright just in time.

I clear my throat and let out a merry “Good morning, cupcake.”

“Oh, absolutely not,” he says. “Stud muffin?” I try.

“I take back what we said about rules. I draw the line at dessert-based nicknames.”

I feel my cheeks warm as I back the car out of the lot. Note to self: I am apparently now so single that the idea of a man remembering my milk chocolate preferences after a decade will make me blush.

“Never a dull moment,” says Levi. And then, after a beat: “I still have nightmares about whatever that cave diving thing is that you did.”

Levi tilts his head so the next words he says are close to my ear. “I was ashamed of how I left things with you, too.”

I tilt my head at him and see the gleam in his eye, and I’m not sure what possesses me. (Scratch that, I do. It’s free cake.) But I bounce onto my tiptoes and plant a quick kiss on his cheek. So fast that I barely feel the heat of him against my lips, so fast that it feels like a drive-by.

And in the heat of the moment, I hadn’t noticed how Levi’s eyelids had lowered, his gaze skimming my face like he was hungry for something else entirely.

Oh my. Levi has just hit a very specific kind of synapse I didn’t know my brain had, one that’s practically humming, it’s so pleased with itself. He’s wearing his usual jeans and a white T-shirt, but over it is a worn-out, dark brown leather jacket that is entirely too hot for late August and possibly entirely too hot for my eyes to behold.

What a deeply inconvenient time to discover that I have a thing for leather jackets. Or more specifically, a thing for Levi in a leather jacket.

His eyes don’t meet mine, preoccupied with skimming the hem of the dress pressed against my upper thigh, the tight waist, the spot where one of the straps meets my collarbone.

“That’s a nice dress,” he says, his voice low in his throat.

“That’s a nice jacket,” I tell him. Levi’s cheeks tinge pink,

Every time I meet his eyes there’s a mischief in them again, the same I’ve seen glimmers of lately, only this time, there’s something just under it. An unmistakable heat burning in them. One that I feel pooling low in my own stomach with every swoop on the dance floor, every time our eyes connect.

We’re pressed so close that I can feel his heartbeat pulsing against my back. That I wonder if I pressed even closer, I might feel something else.

“Being here makes me miss it a little,” he admits. And then, a moment later: “Being around you makes me miss it.”

If I’m not imagining things, Levi’s own eyes linger on my lips, trailing up to my eyes. There’s a moment our eyes meet, and there’s a spark between us that feels like it could light a flame.

No harm done. Like all the years we spent together could be boiled down to those three words and let loose on a breeze. Like making a public spectacle of me in my own home and humiliating me on a global level could be so easily dismissed.

“June,” he says, and hearing him say my name like that, low and urgent, tugs at something deep in my chest. “Of course I did. I asked Annie about you every time we talked. And sometimes it scared the shit out of me, knowing you were out in the world doing things that just seemed—dangerous. I worried all the time.”

For a few moments everything is still—just silence and weightlessness, just our hands anchoring each other against a quiet vacuum. It’s just us. Nobody watching, nobody posting, nobody expecting.

Once the sunglasses are off, Levi searches my eyes, his own gleaming. “I think you’re plenty adventurous,” he says. And right now, I feel it—electricity in my skin, vibrating in my body, humming in every place Levi and I have touched.

Levi raises his eyebrows. “Oh, so this wasn’t you getting revenge. This was the universe avenging you.”

“Hey. Don’t beat yourself up. There’s a lot going on.” Levi puts a hand on my shoulder, and the weight of it is so immediately, ridiculously comforting that I almost forget what he’s talking about altogether. “And at least you didn’t break anyone’s Duolingo streak.”

I lean in and grab his hand, snaking his fingers through mine. “Do you trust me?” “Unfortunately,” says Levi, without missing a beat.

“MY FUCKING KINGDOM FOR A MAN WHO LOOKS AT ME EVEN ONCE THE WAY LEVI SHAW LOOKS AT JUNE HART.”

He’s staring at me with a fondness so unmistakable I feel the impact of every word in that tweet—that I feel a whole lot else on the heels of it, curling in my smile, fluttering just under my ribs.

I tuck the feeling into my heart and step out into the sweet summer air. For the first time in a long time, I don’t dread the mountain of work ahead of me. For the first time in a long time, I see what might be on the other side of it, and love every inch of the view.

“Yeah,” he says. “I wondered that a lot.” The words fill me with a warmth that has nothing to do with the beer.

“Anytime I felt out of place, I would think of you. Something funny you might say. And then I didn’t feel so out of place anymore.”

I’m smiling when I turn to him, but Levi’s own smile has almost faded entirely. I knock my knee into his to bring it back. Then I like the feeling of it so much that I let my leg linger there and feel him shift his own leg to stay close to mine.

The loose strand falls out from behind my ear again. This time Levi is the one who reaches out, the tips of his fingers skimming my forehead, grazing my ear as he tucks the strand back.

I reach out and put my hand over his, weave my fingers through it. His eyes sweep over to mine and I feel the pulse of it then, tight between our fingers, steady between our gazes. The unshakable part of us that somehow endured all these years of barely speaking. The part that always will.

He takes the slice off his glass, his eyes crinkling with mischief before he puts it directly in my mouth. I’m so caught off guard that my tongue accidentally grazes the tips of his fingers,

“Well, shit,” says Pam. I look up to find most of Forty Ways to Funday looking at Levi, like they alternately want to pinch his cheeks and pinch a whole lot of other places. “You two really are cute as a button.”

“Do you want me to kiss you?” he asks, leaning in farther to meet me.

The way he’s looking at me, I feel something warm curl low in my stomach, something equal parts dangerous and irresistible—a feeling that demands to be followed all the way down. It shifts me forward in my seat, never once breaking my gaze.

Levi braces his hand against the back of my neck, warm and steady. We lean into the kiss, and there is nothing slow or searching about it. Nothing close to the way I imagined it, in the times I let my heart get away from me. It is all heat, all impatience, somehow achingly sweet and reckless at the same time.

There is no background noise, no past, no future. It’s singular and undiluted and Levi and June, heady like its own drug.

Nobody is watching as we stare deliriously at each other, breathing like we just finished another ridiculous beach race.

Levi settles a hand on my thigh, squeezing over my jeans. Every muscle in my body quivers under that one touch, and the sound of his voice saying so low that only I can hear it, “Do you want to get out of here?” I’m already halfway off the stool when I breathe out the word “Yes.”