Before I could protest, he pulled out his phone and snapped a photo of me laughing and covering my face with my hands.
"Kyle!" I whispered, but I was laughing too hard to be genuinely annoyed.
I tried to snatch the phone from his hands, causing one of his hair strands to fall loosely over his forehead in the struggle. Without a second thought, I found myself reaching out to smooth his disheveled hair. The movement brought him even closer to me, and suddenly I was hyperaware of every point where our bodies almost touched, his knee brushing against mine, his shoulder mere inches from my chest, the heat radiating between us.
"You know the worst part?" I said softly. "I'm not even mad at you anymore."
He caught my wrist gently as I brushed his hair back, holding my hand against his cheek. The warmth of his skin against my palm sent a flutter through my chest that Itried desperately to ignore. This was dangerous. This was precisely what I'd been trying to avoid. But I couldn't make myself pull away.
"Never feel bad for not holding a grudge in your heart," he said quietly, "not even if I deserve it. Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. It destroys you from the inside out, Lily. It makes you smaller, harder, less like yourself. And you deserve to be soft sometimes. You deserve to let go of the weight you've been carrying."
He pressed a soft kiss to my palm, and I felt something inside me melt completely. When was the last time someone had touched me like this? Like I was something precious? Like I mattered?
Being here with him, in the quiet safety of my room, felt right in a way that terrified and comforted me at the same time. This gentle intimacy, this careful tenderness. It was dangerous territory for someone who'd spent ten years building walls around her heart.
"That says more about your pure heart than you know," he continued, his thumb tracing gentle circles over my knuckles. "The fact that you can still feel compassion for me after everything. That you haven't completely hardened yourself against the world. And believe me, I'm working hard to deserve at least a little of your forgiveness."
"Kyle," I breathed.
"I know I don't deserve another chance," he whispered, his lips so close to mine that I could feel every word. "I know you have every reason not to trust me. But Lily, I swear to you, I will spend the rest of this lifetime, and the next if we get one, proving that I can be the person you needed me to be. That I can be worthy of the faith you once had in me."
I rolled onto my back, needing to break the intensity of themoment before I did something stupid like kiss him. I began to stare at the ceiling, trying to gather my scattered thoughts.
I had spent so much time regretting everything that had happened and blaming everything around me that I hadn't stopped to think that maybe many of these things were out of our hands. Even the things that were my fault were the product of a scared girl who just wanted to protect her brother.
Would I have acted differently at that time if I had known everything that was going to happen? If I had known what my life would be like with all this mess?
Of course not. That's why I was trying to fix things now. Because I didn't want all the bad things to happen again. Even if I had wished for revenge and justice at first, now all I wanted was for everything to turn out right. For there to be peace. For my family to continue being happy.
Sometimes, the hardest person to forgive is yourself. We carry our mistakes like stones in our pockets, weighing us down with every step, forgetting that the very act of recognizing our errors is the first step toward becoming someone better.
"You know," Kyle pulled me out of my thoughts, "as much as I like lying here on the floor with you, I think it would be best if I left so you could rest."
"No," I responded quickly. After he arrived, I stopped overthinking everything; I didn't want to be alone with my thoughts again, or I'd go crazy. "I mean, you don't have to leave if you don't want to. You were right; your company did me good. Although I didn't feel like talking."
"See?" he replied as if he were expecting that response from me. "Even though we think it's best to isolate ourselves when we feel bad, sometimes what we really need is just to know we're not carrying the weight alone."
He took my hand carefully, and I let him. When he was sure I wasn't going to react negatively, he added, "But in that case, please let's use the bed. I think even if I have an eighteen-year-old body, this floor will never be comfortable enough for me to spend the night."
I laughed, and we slowly got up. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, we lay down on my bed. Even though it was a queen-size bed, we both lay right in the middle, me resting my head on his chest and him holding me with one arm underneath. This was a mistake. I knew it was a mistake even as I melted into his embrace because this felt too much like home, too much like the future I'd once imagined for us.
We both closed our eyes, but I knew I wasn't going to sleep. Or at least not now, with my heart racing like that, with every nerve ending hyperaware of where our bodies touched, with the scent of him filling my senses.
After a few minutes of feeling his heartbeat, I slowly opened my eyes and moved my head slightly to look up at him. He was staring at the ceiling, his jaw tense, and I wondered if he was as affected by our proximity as I was.
"Tell me something I don't know about your current life," I told him, sensing he wasn’t in the mood to sleep wither.
"I don't know, I surf now."
“I want to know something that isn't on your social media."
"You've been stalking me?"
"My friends have been stalking you. I just happened to be there."
He smiled, and I couldn't tear my gaze away from his face. He was beautiful. Even in the dim light filtering through my window, I could make out every detail—the sharp line of his jaw, the way his eyelashes cast shadows on his cheeks, the slight upturn of his lips that had always driven me crazy. I'dforgotten how much I used to love just watching him like this, memorizing the contours of his face when he wasn't looking back at me with those intense eyes that seemed to see straight through to my soul.
I tried to imagine his adult self, the man I'd seen in the office kitchen. How he still had all these features, but refined and sharpened by time and experience. And I knew I was in danger. I didn't want to think about him like that again. Not right now. It wasn't right.
