When I break into a smile, she throws her arms around me. Oh, I forgot how this feels. The warmth of her, the feel of her heartbeat against my ribs, the scent of her shampoo as my cheek presses against the top of her head. I clutch on to her like she’s a buoy, and I’ve only just realized I’ve been treading water for far too long.

She digs her fingertips into my back, and rests her head against mine. “Rose,” she whispers, and I don’t know if it’s a statement or a question. Or a warning.

I don’t even know who shifts first. All I know is, all at once, we’re kissing, and there’s nothing hesitant or gentle about it. It’s a desperate, frantic, hungry kiss, and her fingers are in my hair, and my hand is firm against her waist, and my back hits the wall hard before I even register that we’ve moved. With my other hand, I pull her in to deepen the kiss, and she lets out an involuntary moan at the back of her throat that almost causes my knees to buckle. If it weren’t for the support of the wall, I think they might have.

We were barely even together. Like a cherry blossom, we’d bloomed, and dazzled, and died, all in the span of weeks. Although trees don’t truly die once their leaves fall, do they? They simply lie dormant. As, I suppose, did we.

But still, we were so brief. Kissing her shouldn’t feel like this, as though I’ve finally reattached a lost limb, and I’m whole once more. Missing her shouldn’t matter this much. I’ve been missing her for longer than I ever even had her.

But god, she matters. I can’t help it. She matters.

When we pull apart, though, a horrible thought flashes across my mind. Was that our final kiss, then? The denouement?

The crystal-sharp panic of that thought snaps me out of the hazy fog of wanting that had drifted over me. I don’t want this, I realize. Not as it is, anyway.

“Don’t do this to me,” I plead, and Danni blinks up at me, hurt flashing across her hazel eyes.

“What?” she asks.

“You said you didn’t want to be with me, and I completely respect that. But if we can’t be together, then that means we can’t blur the lines. And that’s your responsibility,” I tell her firmly when she opens her mouth to protest, because, in fairness, we simultaneously kissed each other just now. “Because I wanted to be with you, and if I could, I would. It’s you who didn’t want to be with me. So don’t make me say no to you when I don’t even want to.”