Ritual - Palm South University

He let out a long, slow breath, pressing his forehead to mine. My hands wrapped around his wrists where he held me.

“You are spectacular, Jasmine Olsen,” he whispered. “Don’t you ever forget that.”

I nodded, something between a smile and a grimace finding me as two more tears slipped free and fell between us.

Tyler’s thumbs smoothed the skin between my ear and my cheek, his grip tightening at the back of my neck. Through my wet lashes, I watched his lips as he rolled them together, his nose as he let out another long, slow, shaky breath.

Suddenly, the air in his room thickened, heating like the sun itself was inside it.

Another moment stretched between us, and then Tyler slipped his hands farther into my hair, his hands cradling my neck, thumbs still running the length of my jaw. Somewhere in the house, the air conditioning kicked on, the soft hum of it finding my ears but doing nothing to cool the heat in that bedroom. Then, Tyler pulled — just a little, just enough — and my head lifted, our foreheads still touching, but now our noses touched, too.

His hot breath met mine in the center of that space between us, and I blinked several times, eyes still blurry when I found his gaze.

Tyler’s eyes flicked back and forth between mine, then fell to my lips, then slowly crawled back up. He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing hard in his throat, and something sharp and hot and unfamiliar hit me like a lightning bolt, shooting from the point where his hands touched me all the way down between my legs.

I should pull back.

I should pull away.

This is Tyler.

This is my best friend’s brother.

Each thought came faster and more urgent than the first, but I didn’t have time to listen to them, to act on them.

Because in the next breath, Tyler traced my bottom lip with the pad of his thumb, sucking in a breath at the contact.

And then, he tilted my chin, and lowered his own, and he kissed me.

My chest tightened in a completely new way — not from pain, or from abandonment, but from a yearning desire so deep and demanding that it stole my next breath and every other thought I had. I was completely frozen in his grasp, so focused on the way his warm lips caressed mine that I couldn’t concentrate enough to move a single muscle.

He kissed me slowly, surely, as if he hadn’t had a second guess about it before in his life. And when he pulled back, he waited, watching me carefully, asking for permission to do it again.

I answered with my hands sliding up his chest, over his shoulders, and into his hair, slicking my lips before I pulled him into me and kissed him back.

I kissed him back.

His response was instant, his arms full around me, crushing me into him as he deepened the kiss. A throaty moan came from his chest, and I gasped at the way it shook me to the core.

Oh my God.

I’m kissing my best friend’s brother.

I’m kissing Tyler Wagner.

And I never want to stop.

And just like I hadn’t known that a heart could break the way mine did when my mother left, I didn’t know what it felt like to be touched like that by a boy. Sure, James and I had slept together, but it had been quick and clumsy most of the time, and I’d been mostly lost and confused, assuming that was just what it was like for the girl.

But this… this was something else altogether.

I didn’t know what it was to be wanted so desperately that each kiss felt like a fire searing every inch of skin covering my bones. I didn’t know what it was to tremble and shake, to be lowered back into pillows and sheets with hands so careful and confident that every other thought left my head completely. I didn’t know what it was to feel a mixture of extreme passion and somehow familiar safety all at once, to succumb to something so forbidden, and to love it like nothing I’d ever loved before.

We crossed every line that night — and I went from loving my best friend’s brother in secret to wanting nothing more than to love him out loud.

I lost myself inside that moment, inside that room, inside that night with Tyler.

But of course, that was because I didn’t know what tomorrow would bring.

I didn’t know that the next day, Tyler would ignore me completely, avoiding my eyes in his house and ignoring my texts when I left later that evening.

I didn’t know he would call me three days later and tell me it was all a mistake, that we could never tell anyone, that it could never happen again.

I didn’t know that the first time I felt truly wanted, and truly loved, was all a lie.