“You’re not yourself. I’m not asking. I’m driving you. Levi, I’ll talk to you later.”
With that, both of them left and Levi nearly collapsed onto the countertop. Looking around the kitchen, he couldn’t tie together the threads of what just happened. Everything had collapsed like a poorly constructed soufflé but there was absolutely no reason for it. What the hell had just happened? His chest and stomach heaved like waves in a storm. He needed to go after her. There were two boats here, weren’t there? Nothing made sense. Grabbing his keys and phone, he hurried out of the lodge, flying through the lobby and out the door. Maybe he could catch them. He couldn’t lose her. Them. This shouldn’t be happening. He ran down to the dock, but stopped just before it, shocked to see his dad tying his boat up there.
“Hey. Gray asked me to come over and look at the dock. I didn’t get a chance the other day and figured a quick boat ride would help me sleep better tonight. What the hell’s wrong with you?” His dad walked toward him.
“You can’t work on the dock,” Levi said. And he couldn’t deal with this right now.
His dad’s chest puffed up. “Didn’t say I was going to. I’m assessing it, and I asked what the hell is wrong with you.”
Levi gripped either side of his head, yanking on his own hair. “Everything. Everything is fucking wrong. Jillian just broke up with me and she gave me reasons but it doesn’t make sense. There’s too much good between us not to work through the hard stuff. I don’t know what to do.”
His dad moved forward more quickly than Levi expected, pulled on one of his arms until Levi dropped both of them, then squeezed his shoulder. “All right. All right. Just breathe now. You’ll figure it out. Come on now. Calm yourself down.”
He hadn’t even realized he was still shaking or that he’d beenyelling. His dad’s surprisingly soothing voice shocked the calm into him.
“Dad. I can’t lose her. I love her. I love her so much.”
His dad nodded. “I know, son. It’s going to be okay.”
Levi shook his head. “You can’t know that. How can you say that?”
His dad stepped closer, put both hands on Levi’s shoulders, and met his gaze. “I know it. You’ll find a way, Levi. You always do. It’ll be okay. Now just take a breath. I’ve never met anyone who went after what they wanted the way that you do. Give her some space and get yourself sorted. It’ll be okay.”
He realized he was copying his dad taking deep breaths like when he was a kid and he’d get too worked up over a sporting event. It was one of those tricky parenting things that had you doing what they wanted with no instruction whatsoever.
Levi closed his eyes and let the pain wash over him. When he opened them, his dad dropped his hands but kept looking at him, his gaze steady and sure.
“It’ll be okay.”
Levi nodded. He didn’t know if he believed it, but he wanted to.
“Come on. Let’s take a look at this dock. I’ll write up an estimate and you can do the work. I’ll send one of my guys out to help you. I can spare one.”
“I took a full-time job at the lodge,” he said, falling into step beside his dad, bracing for his dad’s frustration.
“I know. Your mother told me. Guess you better get things sorted with your girl or that’s going to be awkward,” his dad said.
A bark of laughter burst from Levi painfully. “You’re not wrong.”
He just had no idea how to do that.
Thirty-four
Ollie wouldn’t speak to her. Jillian stood outside of her daughter’s bedroom—this was one way to get her to sleep in her own bed—and considered knocking again. Grayson, Beckett, Presley, and her parents were in the kitchen and Jillian didn’t want to see any of them. She wanted everyone to go away so she could crawl into bed and cry or smash her fists into her pillow. The memory of Levi’s face, the shock and sadness, the hurt and anger, made her feel like she was covered in shards of glass. Every breath felt like her skin was tearing.
Walking up the stairs from the basement, where Ollie had asked to have her room moved earlier that year—which Jillian had said she wouldn’t like but her daughter insisted she would—she snuck past the kitchen and into her own bedroom.
She should have known that her mom wouldn’t just let her hide. Edie Keller sat on the edge of Jilly’s bed. Jillian shut the door, leaned against it, and forced herself to take slow, measured breaths.
“Jilly,” her mom said, so much emotion and love in one word that Jillian broke.
Silently, tears streamed down her face, her body shaking.
“Oh, honey.” Her mom walked over, pulled her into her arms, and Jillian fell into them just as the final blocks fell and her emotions came crashing down around her.
She cried into her mom’s shoulder as her mom whispered, “Shh,” in a rhythmic, melodic tone, holding her so tight it was like she thought she could actually absorb her pain.
But she couldn’t. It was woven into Jillian’s skin. It ran in her blood and had seeped into her bones. It existed in every molecule of her being.
