I could spend every minute of every day with his soft lips pressed to mine.

His hand trailed from my face down my shoulder and slowly grazed around the side of my small breast. Gasping, I pulled away and glanced down at his hand, my breaths shallow and shaky. I watched raptly as his thumb came around to cup the small mound, then slowly swiped over my nipple. Even through my shirt and bra, the sensation stole the breath from my lungs.

“Nico,” I breathed, unsure what I wanted to say.

“I love you, Ladybug. I don’t mean to push you. I just needed one touch, that’s it.” His voice had grown husky, making the warmth in my belly heat further.

“I love you, too, but … I’m not sure…”

His lips quieted me, soothing the stirrings of anxiety that had begun to dance in the back of my mind. His hand returned to my hair, twining his fingers in my long waves. We kissed for several long minutes, making our first official date one of the best nights of my life.

Nico eventually drove me home, although neither of us ever touched our cake. As I lay in bed that night, I replayed the hour we spent together countless times in my head, a broad smile plastered to my face. I pictured future dates and promised intimacies in my dreams that night, unaware that my imagination would be the only place I would experience those things with Nico.

He never showed at school the next day, or the day after.

It wasn’t until four days later that he let me know he was alive.

The same day he shattered my heart.

I’d never been particularly rash. No doubt that was the assumption when people learned I was a boxer, but it wasn’t the case. I’d always prided myself on not being impulsive. My dad was impulsive and undisciplined. He kept our family buried in debt and poised for failure.

I refused to be like my father.

Years ago, when I made the decision to leave Sofia, it wasn’t something I took lightly. I wasn’t given a lot of time to make the decision, but I took each minute I was given. I carefully weighed my options and attempted to decide based on facts and logic without the muddled haze of emotion blurring my thoughts.

Now, I’d come back full circle and had to decide all over again what to do about Sofia. Did I guard her from a distance and allow her to push me away or try to fix things between us and make a go at a real relationship, despite the dangers it entailed? Circumstances had changed since we were kids, but the situation felt just as difficult to navigate. This time around, I wasn’t so convinced it was wise to exclude emotion from the equation. However, if I allowed my feelings to have a vote, it complicated everything. Once you let emotion in the door, it becomes tyrannical and demands full rein of the place. Balance was tricky. I’d gone the route of pure logic before, and it hadn’t ended well for either of us. It made sense to do what I wanted this time, rather than what I thought I should do, but it could go just as poorly, if not worse.