(Michelle Lui's POV)
When someone asks you,
Did he kiss you?
…it isn't the kiss they're asking about.
It's everything the kiss implies.
Everything they fear.
Everything they already convinced themselves is true.
So when Lara's question hung in the air—
sharp, vicious, trembling with bitterness—
my mind didn't think of Steven's lips or fingertips or sunsets or wanting.
It thought of her face.
Her hurt.
Her grief.
Her years of loving him.
Her unraveling.
The professor's voice droned distantly, calling everyone back from break. Chairs scraped. Students returned. Papers shuffled.
But between us?
Silence.
A painful, suffocating silence.
And all I could hear was the echo:
Did he kiss you yet?
I lowered my eyes to the lab sheet, but the words blurred.
My throat tightened painfully.
I wanted to be mature.
I wanted to be thirty.
I wanted to be above this.
But my heart—my stupid, teenage heart, wrapped in my older soul—felt small and raw and trembling.
