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“Help what?” he asks… his voice cracking

“You to be okay with this,” I reply gently with another squeeze to his hand “I want you to know I’m okay with this I want you to be, too I think we have so, Malik, but we need to talk, okay?”

He ives me a nod with so much emotion written all over his face Fear, doubt and yet… there’s one thing I decide I’ll hold on to… hopeCHAPTER 15MalikI ao to Anna’s apartood twenty ti as to why I should stay away, but fuck if it isn’t that kiss that has ht now

But not just the physicality of the kiss That’s not it

I’ve kissed a lot of woround when I was five to the last wohts before I had shipped out to Syria I’ve kissed them in a lot of different places Ro a wos I’ve tasted it all witho—tipped my world sideways

Scared the shit out of me, actually

Anna alht me to my knees with that soft but insistent display, and I fear what else she ht force ain

I reo when I was fourteen Admittedly, I was a mama’s boy, and I had experienced my first broken heart While I loved my father dearly, I could have never turned to him for solace and advice the way I could her

Mycoach and has a ords I hadn’t cried over the breakup of my very first love, but it didn’t mean my heart wasn’t shredded

I reht now Reet how badly you feel in this moment, for, one day, it will seem silly There will come a day when you s that you onder how you could ever be feeling this badly right now”

She was talking about the proverbial soul mate people of ro to her talk, she made me believe in them, too

But then I grew up And in all the women I had dated or been with, I’d never met one who made my first heartbreak seem silly It doesn’t mean I obsessed about that heartbreak Quite the contrary

I think it goes , and I’ve never met someone who could evoke such a visceral response, pleasant or awful, good or bad

Until Anna