Chapter 144

Kira

This kiss is fleeting. A tease and a touch that lasts only a fraction of a second, as if his lips hadn’t even been there at all. Was it even a kiss?

At first, I fear it’s regret. That he didn’t mean to. That it was all just the heat of our bodies and the haze of the late night hour and this was all just some type of misunderstanding. There was no kiss, was there? It was just a slip of our faces too close in the dark–

But in that same fraction of a second, I wonder why it matters. Or if there ever was a kiss? Did I want it to be a kiss? Do I care if he regrets it? I don’t, I realize. I don’t want him to regret it. I only want him to do it again. But one second goes by. Then two. Then three. And nothing happens.

We are each frozen in the dark, unmoving and unsure of what to do. He stills beneath me, the faint whisper of his breath on my shoulder the only evidence he’s near. I close my eyes, searching for the willpower it’s going to take to try to accept that it’s not what he wa