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heaven.
    “They scare me, too.” How could they not?
    “Mitchell,” she hesitated before touching my lips with her fingertips, “I’m in love with you, and I can’t seem to stop falling more each moment I see you.”
    My heart swelled. “Corey, I love you, too.” There was no hesitation, no conflict in these words; they were the truth straight from my soul.
    I didn’t know when I had fallen, maybe the first moment we saw each other, or maybe the first time we had coffee. It didn’t matter. All I knew was that I loved this woman more than I had ever loved another woman, including Beth.
    That thought sobered me slightly. Beth, my wife, the one to whom I had made a vow. I looked away. I had no right to tell Corey I loved her, not when I wasn’t free to do anything more about it. Guilt crashed over me like an angry wave.
    “It’s alright, Mitch, I know.” Her soft voice reached me, and I embraced her tightly. When she pulled away, I let her go, but it felt like she took another piece of my humanity when she did.
    She sat up and we took a few minutes to dwell on our own thoughts.
    “I’m so sorry I have put you in this position. I had no right,” she whispered, her arms resting on her bent knees.
    I reached over and pushed a soft lock of her hair away from her face, desperate to see her features.
    “Don’t be sorry, Corey. Who would have ever thought that we could have this kind of connection, and so quickly? I know I never saw it coming.”
    The sound of her laugh warmed my heart. “I know.” She shook her head, “It blindsided us, didn’t it?”
    “Yeah, it did.” A few minutes later we got up and started heading back to the car. Our walk was peaceful but tense as we were both lost in our minds.
    Before she unlocked the door to her car, she stopped next to me. Her flushed face revealed unbridled passion that ignited heat inside my body.
    She stepped into my arms, and I pushed her back against the car, our bodies lining up so perfectly together. She pulled away from the kiss, lifting our entwined hands to study them.
    “We fit so perfect together. Even our hands fit like puzzle pieces meant to be interlocking.”
    I couldn’t argue with her words, so I did the only thing I could, I leaned in and kissed her one last time.
    The ride was quiet on the way back to where I had parked, the music playing around us on the Bose stereo inside the cabin of her car.
    Was it ironic that the song that played was one that talked about needing someone so badly, but not being able to have them?
     
    ~ Corey ~
    The kiss sent shivers down my spine and brought tingles to parts of my body I never would have thought could tingle. Emotions roared through me that I could not control.
    How was it possible to feel so much for a person so quickly? How was it possible to feel like our spirits were twisted together as if we were one being?
    I wanted Mitch so much that I was tempted to offer myself to him right there on the rock with the stream rushing past us like the blood in our veins. There was no thought to anything, except for the single word that rotated through my confused mind: Beth.
    Like dashing cold water on a roaring flame, it dampened the heat without taking the fire away. I pulled away from Mitch’s hold only to be overtaken with emotions again by the heated expression in his summer-sky eyes—not just passion, but a yearning I had never seen before.
    I wanted him to love me. I wanted him to know that those words flowed within my heart even though I fought against them. Had I fought hard enough? Of course not! If I had, I would not have been wrapped in his arms, lying on the rocks under a sunbeam sent straight from heaven.
    I knew he felt the same. I sensed it just like I sensed the same need in him to kiss me and hold me.
    The kiss we had while standing next to my car was almost like a goodbye—bittersweet.
    As I drove back to his motorcycle, reality broke in, and the depths of my feelings and the passionate words