And I did. I burned and I burned until it was like my body had turned to ash, unbearably light, ready to float away if he didn’t keep me grounded. Against him, against his lips.

This kiss wasn’t pretending. It wasn’t theoretical. He was kissing me because he wanted to. Because he was reaching out to someone who would understand, who had been feeling all the same pain and worry, and it was a way for him to connect.

For us to connect.

As his hands roamed, as he left trails of fire everywhere that he touched me, his kisses turned deeper. Wilder, fiercer, somehow even hotter.

I was in this little world that he had created, floating along in the darkness and the heat, my whole body throbbing with mindless want. He was scorching me from the inside out.

Then it wasn’t just my lips that he planned on claiming. One of his hands moved up into my hair and the sensation of his fingers against my scalp sent shudders through me. He pulled back gently, exposing the line of my throat. Then his mouth moved against that delicate skin, skimming it and pressing intermittent kisses to it, so that I had to grab on to his shoulders just to stay upright.

Then he went for the bottom of my earlobe, onto the spot just behind my ear that drove me wild. Like he’d instinctively known exactly where to touch me to make me fall apart in his arms.

The kisses stopped. He was still holding me, but not kissing me. It was more than my brain could work out, muddled as it was. I blinked several times, trying to figure out what was going on. Then he looked at me. He looked at me with so much intensity, with so much want and need, that it took my breath away all over again.

He looked at me like he loved me.

“Madison?” His tone was low, growly, and sent little shivers through me. “Do you think we should stop?”

That took my brain a beat to process. What? Had his tongue slipped? Did he mean to say, Come here and do that again?

I shook my head. I didn’t want to stop. “No.”

Worried that he didn’t believe me, I grabbed his face and dragged his mouth back to mine. I wanted to show him what I wanted. I also wanted him to feel the way I did, the way he made me feel. I wanted him to lose control, to be trapped under a spell of blazing torment.

And I was succeeding. He was frantic now, taking off his jacket, the strap of his laptop bag. I did my best to help him but my eyes were so unfocused that it was hard to see. This was taking too long and I needed his mouth on mine.

Unwilling to wait for him to start kissing me again, I reached out for his shirt, grabbing fistfuls of it as I pulled him to me.

His phone was ringing. We were both so caught up in what we were doing, what our kisses were creating, that I don’t think we noticed at first. But it rang and it rang, persistent.

“Tyler.” I muttered his name against his lips and he let out a soft groan of despair.

“I know, I hear it, too.”

Then he released me, and it was like stepping into an ice bath. Everything seemed cold and cut off and shivery without him right next to me. I crossed my arms over my chest, trying to ward off the icy feeling. It took a second for my head to clear, my eyes to focus. I tried to calm my shallow breathing.

But the desperate need I had for him? To keep kissing him? That wasn’t going anywhere.

“It’s the driver,” he said, looking upset as he ran his fingers through his hair. “I have to go.”

I knew he did. So I just nodded, keeping myself away from him so that I wouldn’t be tempted to try and change his mind. I had wanted to know what it would be like if he ever really kissed me and it was like . . . some out-of-body experience. Something beyond what I could fully comprehend. Like a roller coaster, jumping from a plane, climbing up a sheer rock face, finding designer shoes for eighty percent off, and Christmas morning, all rolled into one.

He put his coat back on and picked up his laptop bag. “Madison, about what just happened—”

“Don’t,” I said, stopping him. My heart sank in my chest. I wasn’t going to let him ruin this by asking me to forget about it, because there’s no way I could do that. “Don’t ask me to pretend this didn’t happen, because I won’t.”

“No.” He looked surprised. “That’s not what I was going to say.”

Oh. “What were you going to say?”

“I . . .” His voice trailed off and he glanced down, almost like he was gathering up some inner strength before his gaze met mine again. The fire I saw there nearly knocked me off my feet. “I want to be with you. I want us. Together. Dating.”

Now I had to be hallucinating. No way this was actually happening. “What?”

“You and me.” He took a step closer, reaching out with his hand to hold the side of my face. “I want this.” His thumb ran over my lips as he said the words and my lower abdomen tightened hard in response. My knees buckled. “And I want more.”

His voice was growly and seductive. All I could do was stare at him as my pulse throbbed throughout my entire body.

“Do you want that, too?” For the first time he sounded a little unsure and I was struck by an urge to laugh hysterically.

Did I want that, too? More than I wanted my next breath. This was my chance to tell him . . . what? I couldn’t admit that I was in love with him. He was saying he wanted us to get together, not that he had fallen for me. I couldn’t jump us fifty steps ahead. We would just have to go slow.

He waited expectantly, and I had to say something. “I . . . I want . . .” Why couldn’t I talk? It was like his kisses had muddled my brain’s ability to function.

His phone buzzed again, reminding us both that he had a car waiting for him. His jaw tightened. “I have to go. My timing sucks. But please, think about it. Don’t decide anything until I get back tomorrow and we can talk.” Then his tone became serious, almost dark. “When I get back there are . . . some things we need to talk about.”

Without another word or touch he was gone, leaving me to wonder what that meant.

Because . . . things? What kind of things? What had he been keeping from me? People couldn’t just say stuff like that and leave you hanging because then you’d do nothing but stress and freak out when maybe all he wanted to tell me was that chicken parmesan was his favorite dinner.

And he wanted me to think about it?

Trust me, this was all I was going to be thinking about.

I’d brought Pigeon home and she seemed more like her old self, only a little more prone to napping, given her pain medications. I texted Tyler to let him know that everything was going well with her. He responded with a smiling emoji.

Then he said:

It was like those smiling emojis had gone straight to my heart, filling me with absolute joy.

But before I could respond, he added:

That sent thrills of excitement through me to the point that I had to sit on the couch because I felt a little faint.

I didn’t know what to say back. I felt the same, obviously, but I hadn’t told him that yet. It didn’t seem right to do it in a text. He deserved to hear me say it, to tell him how very much I wanted us together.

I did still wonder about what he’d meant by things we need to talk about, because it was killing me not to know. I didn’t ask him, though.

Instead, I did as so many women had before me—I called my girlfriends and discussed it with them.