Page 57 of Unbound
I was walking toward him, then running, and his face was changing from surprise to understanding to something soft and urgent. We met in the middle of the stage and I didn't think, didn't hesitate, didn't let the voice in my head form a single word of protest.
I reached up and framed his face with both hands and kissed him.
Hard.
His lips were warm and soft and everything I'd imagined during those late night sessions together. He made a small sound of surprise against my mouth, then his hands came up to grip my shoulders and he was kissing me back, fierce and desperate and real.
The world exploded into sensation. The taste of him, coffee and mint and something uniquely Adrian. The way his mouth moved against mine like he'd been waiting for this as long as I had. The solid warmth of his body pressed against mine. The way my heart was racing so fast I thought it might burst.
This was right. This wasright. Every cell in my body was singing with the absolute rightness of it, the way his lips felt against mine, the way his hands tightened on my shoulders like he was afraid I might disappear.
I'd never felt anything like this in my life. This certainty, this joy, this overwhelming sense of coming home to myself.
Then Adrian's mouth went still against mine.
Reality crashed back like a bucket of ice water. The auditorium. The audience. The cameras.
Oh God. The cameras.
I jerked away from Adrian so fast I nearly stumbled. His eyes were wide, his lips slightly parted, his hands still reaching for me like his body hadn't caught up to what had just happened.
The auditorium was dead silent.
Not the expectant silence of an engaged audience, but the shocked, horrified silence of people witnessing a car crash. Three hundred pairs of eyes staring at us. Phones pointed at us, recording everything. The little red lights of cameras that had been live-streaming the entire event.
My parents.
I turned toward the third row with mechanical, puppet-like movements.
Rebecca was crying, her hand pressed to her mouth, tears streaming down her face. Mother sat frozen, her face a mask of horror and betrayal so complete it made my knees weak.
And Father—
Father was standing, his face purple with rage, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. The look on his face wasn't just anger. It was disgust. Pure, undiluted revulsion at what his son had just become in front of three hundred people.
Our eyes met across the auditorium. In that moment, I watched twenty-one years of love and pride and expectation crumble into something I'd never seen directed at me before: hatred.
The shame hit me like a physical blow. What had I done? What had Idone?
Everything I'd felt moments before—the rightness, the joy, the certainty—twisted into something sick and wrong. The taste of Adrian's mouth on my lips felt like evidence of my corruption. The memory of his hands on my shoulders burned like brands.
I was going to be sick.
"Jesse—" Adrian reached for me, his voice soft and worried and full of something that might have been love.
"Don't!" I jerked away from his touch like it burned. "Don't touch me."
The words came out harsh, cutting, and I watched Adrian flinch like I'd slapped him. But I couldn't take them back.Couldn't do anything but stand there, drowning in shame so thick I could barely breathe.
The auditorium was chaos now. Whispers, gasps, the click of camera phones. Professor Okonkwo was trying to regain control, saying something about taking a brief recess, but his words felt like they were coming from underwater.
Father was already storming toward the exit, his footsteps echoing in the sudden quiet. Mother followed, but not before shooting me one last look—not anger this time, but something worse. Disappointment so deep it might as well have been grief.
Rebecca remained in her seat, crying silently, her pink dress a splash of colour in my peripheral vision.
I couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. The walls of the auditorium felt like they were closing in, and all I could hear was the whispered conversations starting up around me, the words "disgusting" and "tragic" and "fallen" floating through the air like accusations.
Twenty-one years of careful construction, gone in three seconds. Everything I'd built, everything I'd been, everything I'd promised to be—destroyed by one moment of weakness.
