Page 106 of Prince of the Northwest Forest
I gape, staring at Kalle. “Wait a minute. My first kiss … was with you?”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
KALLE
I furrow my brows. “I guess you got the wrong one. Our first kiss was in the Fire Realm.”
Justice shakes his head. “Not that kiss, Kalle. That’s ournewfirst kiss. Is it coming back to you yet? My first kiss was years ago, and the memories are telling me it was with you. How can that be?”
A breeze races around my body, making it tingle. I squeeze my eyes shut, and my adrenaline spikes as memories return.
Teenage Justice—smaller, with no tattoos, but still in jeans and a T-shirt and boots. His cheeks were fuller, but his eyes were equally bright.
“My father worked in the castle.” Justice chokes back a sob. “He didn’t abandon me. He was part of my life as I grew up.”
“Horace Laurel. He used to give me cookies.” Justice’s father was a cook, and his mother lived in Princedelphia. He divided his time between our two realms.
“You spent your summers with me,” he says.
“You were my best friend.”
“And you were mine.”
I remember racing with him along wide paths in the forest and lazily floating down rivers on canoes.
“We used to do a slackline that we put up,” I say. “And you used to wear string bracelets, and you gave me one.”
Justice tilts his head. “Yes, I did.”
“I’d completely forgotten. Well, obviously. I was so upset when I wore it out, it fell off, and I couldn’t find it.”
“We used to go for long walks in the forest,” he muses. “We kept our friendship secret from everyone else. We didn’t want them to separate us.”
“I wasn’t supposed to be so close to the cook’s son.”
“And one day you kissed me. I was stunned.”
“I remember now.” I run a thumb over his lower lip. “I’m not sure how I’d label my sexuality, but I think I need a strong connection with someone before I’m into them. And I was so into you.”
He nods. “I always knew I was gay, but I never felt about anyone else the way I do about you.”
Hazel and Martin move away, giving us a moment, and Linus goes with them, a happy smile on his face.
“I felt such a connection to you from the moment I saw you on the trail,” I say. “I didn’t know why it seemed like I already knew you.”
“This must be part of the reason why I wanted to go hiking all the time. Because I was missing doing it with you, talking about nothing and everything.”
More memories flood me. Whenever Justice was around, I was entranced by him. From childhood to our teens to young adulthood. And one summer, when I couldn’t deny my attraction anymore, I decided I was going to tell him.
I’d leaned close, my heart racing, and pressed my lips to his. A fumbling, uncertain kiss, magical because we both wanted it. Magical because it was the first time I’d shown affection to anyone other than my family. Magical because it was him.
My throat is thick. A single tear slides down my cheek. “All this time, it’s been only you.”
Justice nods. “You were my first kiss. My first love.”
I wrap him tightly in my arms. “You were my everything,” I whisper. “How could I forget?”
“The fae took my memory, and they must have taken every memory connected to it, from you and anyone else. So, because growing up with you was such an integral part of my memory, all of that vanished—and everything related to it. We’d kept our relationship secret, so it probably wasn’t that hard for that part of our lives to just disappear.”
