I had a fresh outlook on my life, the true destiny I was meant to follow. My life was with Liam, first lady to Arcadia. “Have a good day at school,” Mom said as she kissed me goodbye and left for work. For the first time in a long while, I relaxed and took up my morning routine with the same excitement I always had prior to my dismal Life’s Plan. Things were back on track and I felt confident my new Life’s Plan would be what I had always dreamed it would be. I cleared the morning dishes from the table and brought them to the sink to be washed. I thought little of the sound of the front doorknob turning and clicking. Mom was forever forgetting something when she left for work. But when I came to the living room, prepared to fetch her keys, scarf, sunglasses or whatever else she’d forgotten, the coffee mug in my hand fell to the floor and I gasped. “What are you doing here?” In the seconds it took to ask the question, Torrid had stopped the mug from falling and closed the space between us, his arms quickly encircling me and his lips taking hold of mine.
