I had a kiss thief. Who promised to steal all my firsts. And he’d been slowly collecting them by pulling me into dark rooms.

This was too much of a coincidence. It had to be. I turned to Jacob. “How many times have you heard this story?”

“Way too many,” he said with a laugh.

Jacob was my kiss thief. There was no way it wasn’t him. He’d heard this story and was reenacting it. Right? It had to be him. He was doing some kind of romantic gesture that he’d learned from Uncle Matt. It was the only explanation.

But he didn’t need to kiss me in dark closets anymore.

I didn’t want him to.

I wanted him to kiss me in the light of day.

Jacob cleared his throat and his hand shifted on my thigh.

I looked over at him. I wondered if it was hard for him to hear this story. Because it was missing a very important person...his father.

But I wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to ask how Aunt Brooklyn had met Jacob’s father at the dinner table. All I knew was that he’d been her bodyguard. Lines must have gotten blurred along the way.

Kind of like the line between me and Jacob. We’d always been friends. He’d moved to New York City when I was already obsessed with Axel. I thought I’d had my whole life planned out when I was three. But maybe I’d just needed a kiss thief to open my mind to new possibilities.

I wasn’t sure I would have ever been able to look at Jacob differently if he hadn’t hidden his identity at first. But I didn’t need him to wear a mask. Or hide behind his phone texting me suggestive things. I was ready to take this leap. For real.

I didn’t want to relive Aunt Brooklyn and Uncle Matt’s story. Especially since I knew it had taken them another 16 years to finally tie the knot.

I wanted to live our story.

I wasn’t my mother. I wasn’t going to fall in love with my teacher. I was going to fall in love with one of my best friends. Hell, I think I was already falling. I’d been slowly falling for him since the first day of school. When he noticed me. Really noticed me.

“I love that story,” I said. “A kiss thief. That must have been very exciting.” I knew. Because I had one and it was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me.

Aunt Brooklyn laughed. “Honestly at first I was just really upset about the whole thing.”

“You loved it,” Uncle Matt said.

“You’re infuriating,” she said. But she was smiling so hard.