Page 37 of Like First Love, Again

Tori’s attention snagged on the strand of red hair falling over Mia’s cheek. On the curve of her full lips and the unknowable galaxy in her eyes.

“I can always hear you thinking.” Mia’s voice was so soft it sent goosebumps skittering across Tori’s molten skin. And then she ran her fingers through Tori’s hair, pushing it away from her face even though it was already tossed back. “Why did you stop telling me your secrets?”

Mia’s blunt nails against Tori’s scalp made it impossible to think. Impossible to subdue her racing heart or coax her lungs into breathing.

“Why do you want to know everything?” Tori’s response was weak and devoid of conviction. She couldn’t even pretend she had any defenses left.

Mia leaned in closer. Her perfume mixed with the summer night and Tori’s shallow breaths. When Mia moistened her lips, eyes fixed on hers, Tori was lost. She was sixteen again, shivering despite the sticky heat. Frozen in place, she was back to endless want and hopeless desire.

“Because lately I’ve had to learn some pretty critical things about you from other people.” Mia’s fingers found the back ofTori’s neck, her thumb running over Tori’s cheekbone. “Why can’t you talk to me?”

Tori considered the madness of truth. It pushed at her lips, desperate to take an unfettered lungful of air.

“Please?” Mia breathed with her hand in Tori’s hair and her bottom lip trapped between her teeth.

It was Tori’s undoing. The whispered plea would be the end of their friendship. The friendship that had been doomed from the start.

“Because I can’t un-feel this.”

Tori’s confession was a spiked tangle in the back of her throat, but once she started, there was no holding back. The truth had gotten a taste of the light, and it wouldn’t be shoved back into submission. “This constant churning in my chest.” She closed her eyes because looking at Mia was too hard. She didn’t want to see her expression morph into horror. Didn’t want that moment seared into her memory so it could haunt her with precision accuracy.

“This constant hunger. This yearning for something always out of reach.” Tori swallowed hard, but she couldn’t steady herself. Couldn’t stop the emotion stinging the back of her eyes. “Even after all this time. After all these years…”

It was too pathetic to reveal that no one she’d been with had come close to making Tori feel what Mia had. That she couldn’t figure out how to want less. How to stop comparing everyone to an imaginary standard.

Tori saw the keys to her release and clawed at them in the dark. If she couldn’t force herself to stop loving Mia, she could make Mia firebomb the bridge connecting Tori’s heart to hers.

“You coming back here is just a reminder of what my stupid heart wants and I can never have. No matter how hard I try, I can’t?—”

“Says who?” Mia’s voice was barely a whisper, but it sent Tori’s eyes springing open.

Vision blurry and jaw so tight that pain shot down her neck, Tori stared at Mia. Mia with her fair skin visibly flushed in the low light. Mia who was looking at her with a furrowed brow and imploring eyes.

Tori’s confusion left her winded. “What?”

“Who says you can’t have what you want?” Mia asked like that made any more sense than her original question. Like she wasn’t just making a bunch of disjointed sounds. Sounds Tori couldn’t process over her hammering pulse.

“Why do you think I’m here, Tori?” Mia’s question was a wisp of sound while Tori’s mind played tricks on her. While she imagined Mia inching closer, dipping her head lower. “Why do you think I’m on this roof? Why do you think I keep trying…”

Tori’s mind betrayed her like it had in high school. It was showing her what she wanted to see rather than what was really there. “What are you saying?”

“Maybe talking is the wrong thing to do with my mouth,” Mia murmured, erasing the inches between them. She hovered over Tori, breath warm and sweet where it landed on her. “Is this okay?”

Stunned, Tori hardly processed the question. Couldn’t process the way Mia was looking at her with hunger etched on her beautiful lips. Couldn’t believe what was happening.

Her pulse broke the sound barrier when it sped up her throat. It was the only part of Tori’s body that wasn’t paralyzed in disbelief. She’d been so sure for so long that she’d never be here; she had spent years convincing herself that she could survive without Mia. How was she supposed to just…say yes?

Distantly aware that she wasn’t dreaming, Tori nodded. And then Mia’s lips were pressed to hers. Lips that were so much softer than she’d imagined. Soft and full and covering hers socompletely, Tori couldn’t breathe. Mia’s kiss was hesitant but snapped Tori into mind-altering clarity.

When Mia pulled away, eyes wide and searching Tori for a reaction, Tori broke. She reached up for Mia before she could stop herself from doing the thing she’d wanted for half her life.

Burying her fingers in Mia’s hair, Tori pulled her down to kiss her in earnest. The gentle press of lips exploded into something wild and desperate and achingly real. Mia’s mouth opened above hers with a gasp that Tori swallowed with unabashed greed.

Tori’s imagination paled in comparison to the reality of Mia’s tongue parting her lips and deepening their kiss. To the way Mia made a fist in her hair like she was afraid Tori might disappear. To the little whimper that rumbled in her throat when Tori caught her bottom lip between her teeth.

Need roared through Tori’s body, demanding more. In one fluid motion, she rolled Mia onto her back. She pinned Mia beneath her, chasing the heat, chasing the truth, chasing the fall.

The movement broke their kiss for half a heartbeat—just long enough for reality to slam into Tori. She pulled back, intending to check in with Mia. To make sure she wanted this, make sure she was okay.

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