Page 74 of Revive Me

“Anything,” I breathe out.

My instant answer seems to have an effect on him. He swallows roughly, the movement calling attention to the pulse point in his neck that’s going wild.

“I’ve been thinking about the night we met…” he starts, shifting his body slightly. “About…how it ended.” The memory only makes the air thinner, and my breaths come quicker. “And regardless of what…couldhave happened, my biggest regret is that we weren’t allowed to finish that kiss.” Once more, his gaze drops to my lips, and his voice, impossibly, deepens, setting off flutters in my stomach. “Can we—just for a minute…pretend it’s the night we met and redo the ending?”

I don’t think I’m even breathing anymore. “You want to…pretend?”

He nods and leans closer, our faces now barely a breath apart. “Just pretend, Liliana.” With only a small moment of hesitation, he slowly reaches up to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear, then lets his hand come to rest on the side of my neck in the lightest caress.

I’m already leaning in, eyes on his mouth, moving like my heart is in charge of my body. “Okay,” I breathe, so close now that my lips brush his with that one word. “Just for a second…”

The moment he kisses me, every warning bell in my head winks out, leaving a blissful silence.

I release a breathy sigh as his tongue slides along my bottom lip, opening my mouth to him without hesitation.

When his tongue finally touches mine, the kiss takes on a whole new level of urgency. Going from soft and tentative to desperate.

Imoan,twistingso I can fist my hands in his shirt and his chain to pull him closer. I must not be the only one eager for less space, because Roman immediately tightens his grip in my hair and angles my head to deepen the kiss, consuming me in a way that tingles all the way down to my toes.

The taste of mint and berries on his tongue has flames dancing along my skin. I want to be closer, I want to touch him all over, I want… I wantmore.

But the center console and weird positioning makes it impossible. The only thing I can do is try to memorize every taste, every breath. I want to bottle this moment forever.

In the end, my only option is to either climb into his lap or stop the kiss. When I do finally pull back, we’re both breathing heavily, still holding tightly onto each other. Neither of us speaks, we just sit in the moment.

And I think maybe a little bit of reality slipped into the space between our lips, because I suddenly have enough self-awareness to know this bubble is going to pop as soon as I step out of the car to get Roman’s wheelchair for him.

But…I don’t care. Because just for a few blissful minutes, we weren’t patient and physical therapist.

We were Roman and Liliana, just two people who shared an earth-shattering kiss.

24

ROMAN

There’s a lightness in my movements today.

I feel good.Reallygood. At this point, it’s been weeks since the last hiccup in my therapy, and since then, I’ve been on top of everything: diet, sleep, working out but not overdoing it, all of it. And despite the fear of success that Lily pulled out of me this week, gait training has also been going well.

Somehow, our conversation during Trivia Night made it disappear.

As I enter the clinic for the first time since that night, I tell myself that those are the reasons I’m excited to be here today.

But I don’t think it works very well, because the moment I set eyes on Lily, happiness warms my chest like the morning sunrise.

God,she’s so fucking beautiful. It’s not just her physical appearance, with the shiny blonde hair and easy smile and sparkling blue eyes, it’s…her. It’s the heart she wears on her sleeve.

Not for the first time, it registers that she’s one of the few people to never give up on me. She dealt with all my self-hatred, my constant apathy, and she took my angry barbs on the chin like they were nothing. She withstood all of it and never stopped caring. Never stopped pushing me toward a better life.

She’s the closest thing to an angel on earth I’ve ever seen.

That happiness expands, tangling with such an immense wave of gratitude that my breath catches. And when Lily locks eyes with me, and the brightest smile appears on her face, the tsunami inside of me is overtaken by an entirely new emotion.

“Hey,” she greets cheerfully when she meets me in the middle of the gym. Her smile hasn’t dimmed a watt.

I don’t have a shot in hell of containing mine, either. “Hi, Doc.”

She presses her lips together, trying not to make her delight over the nickname obvious. And I try not to think any more about those lips, and how they felt on mine.

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