Page 73 of Something Like Fate

I swallow the lump in my throat and blink. “What?”

“Your optimism. Like, you can find the good in anything.” He smiles at me affectionately. “And for the record, I wasn’t upset that night because I missed Sophie.”

“You weren’t?”

His jaw pulses. “We’d actually gotten in a bit of a tiff before I left. She was jealous of you.”

“Jealous? Of me? Because we were dancing?”

“Well, I guess that too. But more than that. She was jealous of you in general. My relationship with you.”

All my interactions with Sophie flit through my mind, and suddenly, it all clicks into place.

It all makes sense.

I always figured she didn’t like me. And sure, I thought it could be that she was uncomfortable with our friendship. But Teller assured me she wasn’t. I tried to look for the evidence, but the signs that I was being paranoid were louder. She was sweet to me. She was one of the first people to like my stuff on social media. She’d always comment with the same three heart emojis, no words.

“She had no reason to be jealous,” I say.Or did she?

“No.” His voice drops, low and husky in a way I’ve never heard before. “No reason at all.”

He holds my gaze for a beat, and the world tilts. Heat radiates from his chest, which is now firmly pressed against mine. His lips hover inches away and I can barely speak, let alone breathe. And for the third time, I can’t help but think about how soft they look, about how they would feel against mine.

So, I do what I always do. I act on impulse.

24

Aunt Mei always says, “The first time is happenstance, the second is coincidence, but the third is a pattern. It’s deliberate.”

It feels deliberate, the way my lips brush against his, featherlight and tentative. Our breath melds, and it takes me a couple seconds to realize he isn’t pulling away.

But he’s also not actively kissing me back either.

Alarm bells sound in my head, and I pull back abruptly. “I’m so sorry,” I blurt over the band’s cover of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” “I shouldn’t have done that.”

His lips twitch ever so slightly, but his expression remains unreadable. I expect his face to contort in that particular grimace; it usually appears when something grosses him out. But it doesn’t. The pads of his fingers brush against my cheek, moving aside a strand of hair. With the precision of a surgeon, he gently tucks it behind my ear. His knuckles ghost the crests of my cheeks, eliciting a shiver.

I don’t know who, but one of us closes the gap. Our lips touch and it’s soft, undemanding, lighting me up like the tiniest pinpricks of static shock. Then we pull away and just look at each other for a moment. I silently count to three. Just after I hit two, his mouth meets mine. His kiss is achingly soft and slow, like he wants to take his time. There is no mistake: Teller Owens is kissing me back.

I wasn’t prepared for what his kiss would feel like. I feel it in every part of my body, all the way to my toes. Our kissing becomes deeper,more urgent, like we’re both desperate to release the tension that’s been brewing all these years. He kisses me like I’m already his, like I’ve always been his. Like we always should have been doing this. And it’s everything.

His tongue swirls against mine, filling me with a deep ache in the core of my stomach. His hands rake through my hair as I breathe in his fresh-cut-grass scent.

I’ve never had a better kiss. Ever.

“Wait a minute ... I didn’t think nice boys kissed like that,” I say when he pulls away.

His brow flicks wickedly. “Oh yes, they fucking do.”

I’m not sure if it’s that he knows the quote fromBridget Jones’s Diary, but I’ve never been so turned on. I tug him back toward me immediately.

We meld together, firmer this time. It takes me by surprise. I expected kissing Teller would be soft, slow, and steady, just like everything he does. But it’s anything but.

In all the commotion, we’ve drifted into the corner of the courtyard, nearing the wall. He pins me against the brick and kisses me like we’re star-crossed lovers reuniting after years of anguished separation. It’s fast and intense, igniting me from the inside out. With each gasp and slide of our tongues, we make clear how much we’ve wanted this. He threads his fingers through my hair, and a low, sensual moan escapes him.

Since when is Teller Owens so unbelievablyhot?

I inhale as he pulls me flush to his chest, absorbing the solid weight of him against me. His fingers trace the soft skin of my hips under my shirt. I rock against him.

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