Free Love and Decay by Rachel Higginson Page A

to fall. The force of emotion that he brought out
of me with this one hungry kiss was embarrassing.
    I couldn’t even process how deeply I had
wanted this.
    And I hadn’t even known it until now.
    In the softness of his lips and the greedy
strength of his embrace, I realized I had been waiting for this
moment for almost my entire life.
    I might have been too young to realize it or
too immature to fathom what it was. But now I knew. Now I knew it
had been Miller. It had always been Miller.
    Santi had been a weak substitute. Just a way
to pass the time and teach me enough basics so that I didn’t
embarrass myself with Miller.
    And yet this was more than a cataclysmic
moment in my life; it was more than an event I had been counting
down to and an inevitable marker of fate. Even though it felt like
all of those things.
    This was also a promise. This was soothing to
my soul. And a future I thought I had lost forever.
    When Miller pulled away I started to lose
hope that I would have him like this. Even when I was too young to
understand what it was that I wanted, I had believed I had lost him
forever. And by losing Miller, I had lost the fate that was mine…
the destiny that belonged to me.
    But I had that now. I’d found him.
    He’d come back to me.
    So I let him kiss me forever… for eternity. I
didn’t know how much time passed as we stood there in each other’s
arms, memorizing every delicious thing about the other. But I did
know that it was bliss.
    Miller and I were created to kiss each
other.
    We were made for each other.
    After a long time, he pulled back and rested
his forehead against mine. I kept my eyes closed, afraid to open
them and face reality again.
    In that moment we weren’t trapped in the
Zombie Apocalypse or on the brink of fighting a deadly war. We
weren’t facing internal demons or external enemies. We were just
us. Just a boy and girl. We were simply stolen kisses and
fluttering tummies and soaring hope. And I could have stayed in
that moment for the rest of my life.
    Miller’s lips pressed against my forehead and
then against my temple. He trailed kisses down my cheek and across
my jaw until he reached my mouth again, where he kissed me once
more. It wasn’t a hot kiss or an enthusiastic one; he didn’t use
all the amazing tricks he had with his tongue or demand anything
more than our lips pressed against each other for a long, endless
moment.
    This kiss was different than all the others
because it wasn’t a promise for the future or tool for the present.
This kiss was a story of everything that had happened between us,
every single thing that had led us to this moment.
    This kiss was our seal.
    Our covenant.
    Our creed.
    He pulled back and for the first time since I
could remember, his face was filled with peace. His eyes had lost
the darkness that always lurked and the stress had left his
forehead and mouth. He was beautiful.
    Breathtaking.
    I scratched at my sensitive skin where his
beard had abraded and pressed my swollen lips together, marks that
Miller had kissed me. I smiled. This had been the most perfect
moment of my life.
    Maybe in all of humanity.
    “You’re so beautiful,” he whispered to me,
his voice catching. “I have never seen anything more beautiful than
you.”
    My smile faltered and hot tears filled my
eyes again. I wanted to hide my face from him, but he wouldn’t let
me. His strong hand cupped my jaw again and held me there so he
could look at me for as long as he wanted.
    “Page!” Equal expressions of disappointment
crossed our faces as Hendrix yelled at us. “Page, are you out
there?”
    Taking a steadying breath and giving Miller a
wobbly smile, I let the last remnants of magic disappear as I
yelled back, “I’m here!”
    Miller took my hand and led me back inside
the house. I knew Hendrix would want to have a chat about what had
happened earlier tonight and what was going to happen. I had to
face the reality of tomorrow and the war I had begged to