One was a genuinely good kisser.
None of them made me feel anything close to the way Dylan had made me feel with one kiss at my mother’s grave.
That was embarrassing.
I knew it was.
I had been eighteen. Barely. Fresh from trauma. Raw from grief. Dylan had found me in the fire, washed red paint off my hands, called me Beautiful when I felt like a headline written in blood. Of course my brain had turned him into something bigger than he was.
First rescue.
First safe kiss.
First man who wanted me and still stepped back.
I told myself it was imprinting.
A crush.
A first taste of romance sharpened by danger.
Not love.
Never love.
Love took time. Love took knowing someone’s breakfast order and bad habits and how they acted when they were bored on a Tuesday. Love was not a silver cuff and a goodbye under palm leaves. Love was not a man vanishing back to San Diego while leaving his name written in the margins of your life.
So I tried to move on.
I built a life.
Classes. Clinicals. Matcha runs. Cupcake. Concerts. Lily. Christmas at Cal’s. Phone calls with Regan. Short, awkward,softening conversations with Edge. Texts from Tarak that said things like Lock your doors and Eat protein.
I became someone.
A real someone.
Not just Mandy’s daughter.
Not just Edge’s daughter.
Not just the girl from the fire.
Destiny.
That was the point.
That was the story I had promised my mother’s grave I would write.
Then, one Friday night in Santa Monica, the past found me anyway.
Lily and I were out with two girls from our program, celebrating the end of a brutal clinical rotation with overpriced tacos and matcha lattes because apparently caffeine after dinner was how nursing students flirted with disaster. I wore a black dress, boots, my mother’s diamonds, my mother’s turquoise ring, and Dylan’s cuff tucked under the sleeve of my denim jacket where no one could see it but me.
The air smelled like ocean, car exhaust, perfume, and fried food. Street musicians played near the promenade. Girls in tiny dresses laughed outside bars. Tourists drifted in slow clusters. Everything was bright and loud and normal.
I was laughing at something Lily said about Cupcake having “emotional landlord energy” when I heard a voice behind me.
“Well, look who it is.”
