She was our Lucy, Aiden’s and mine.

He gently put his palm on my thundering heart. “I need in,” he whispered. “And I need you to let me stay in...

Surprisingly, you’ve been the best kind of heartache, Jason Thorn.” She smiled against my greedy lips and everything was perfect in a way it had never been before.

I’ll hold you up, Lucy. You can trust me. I see who you are. I see who are, and I want you to choose me. I want you to open your eyes and look at me so you can see that I have what it takes, that I can take care of heart for you.

Our first kiss. I wanted it to be good for her, change her world in some way. I wanted it to be her best first kiss of all the first kisses she had experienced. It was my first time touching her heart after all; she needed to remember every second of it.

She was seeing me, and maybe for the first time, I was seeing her too.

Because if I fall in love with him I won’t survive that fall.

Licking is a natural urge. When you think of it, you actually start to learn how to lick properly when you are just kid. All those lollies and ice creams you licked to death?

I kissed the edges of her mouth where she hid those secret smiles, the ones she saved for when she was writing on her laptop, lost in a different world she was creating from the start, brick by brick. I wanted to own those secret smiles just as much I wanted to own her beautiful heart. I wanted to be the reason for their existence.

That’s how the universe works: it gives you the one thing you said you’d never want.