“It’s become one of my favorite things to do. I’m going to miss this when I leave.”
His eyes were on my mouth.
My heart was beating out of my chest.
“I wish you weren’t going,” I confessed to him.
“One day you’ll regret saying that.” Kael’s breath covered my cheeks.
His lips were so close to mine. Was he going to kiss me, here, now, out of the blue, with the dew of orange on his lips?
My mouth begged for his to inch closer, to touch mine. I had never wanted something more than I wanted him to kiss me, there in my kitchen.
Was he going to kiss me?
His lips soon answered my question. He leaned over and put his soft mouth on mine. Everything went quiet then. The traffic on the street outside. The faint sound of the TV. Even the noise in my head went quiet. I had no words. No thoughts. Just him.
He was timid at first, gentle . . . until I pushed my tongue between his lips and tasted him. His fingers cupped the sides of my jaw and down the skin of my neck. He pulled me closer and I sighed, feeling relief from a pain I didn’t know I felt.
The flooding relief was immense but short-lived when Kael gently pulled away, kissing the corner of my mouth while whispering, “I’m so sorry.”
The high I felt was ripped away, replaced with a different kind of pain taking stabs at me. The look on his face wasn’t just surprise, but remorse.
“I’m sorry. I really don’t know what I was thinking,” he continued, wiping his mouth with his fingers. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
I nodded, almost agreeing in silence, but it felt like a rejection. “Yeah, you really shouldn’t have.” My words didn’t match what I was really feeling, but I wasn’t going to let him know that. I stood to leave the kitchen, wanting the safe haven of my room, wanting to curl up into a ball. That was it for me and oranges.