First kiss.

It was screaming through my head. Two words. 

First kiss.

First kiss.

First kiss.

The words clanged so loud that they drowned out all other thoughts. Leaving me shocked, soft and pliable when Beau's teasing tongue swept a tentative taste across my bottom lip. 

A bolt shot through me, raising the hairs on my scalp and making my toes curl in my shoes. Sudden and slick and all-consuming, and it felt so good that terror froze my blood. It seemed fitting that at that moment the sun slipped behind a cloud, sending the room into hazy darkness. 

I pushed him back and stepped away. My hand fluttered up to my cheek and I expected my skin to be ice cold in fear. 

The heat - my heat - almost burned me. 

Beau's hazel eyes were still closed, but they fluttered open now and the second they fixed on me I had to fight the urge to run. Just run as far and as fast as my legs could carry me. The softness drained from his face as he watched me, eyes darting all over me, heating my skin. If you flicked water on me, I was certain it would sizzle upon contact. "Are you okay?" Beau asked. 

Mutely, I stared at him but inside I was screaming. What was that?!? my brain shouted. What was that feeling? What did you DO to me?

Shame dumped hot leaden guilt into my veins, making my limbs heavy and sluggish. But even as it coursed through me, a little spark burned hot and eager inside of my breast. 

Whatever you did to me, it whispered, could you do it again?

Hurriedly, I shook my head. "No," I breathed, and then made to turn into the kitchen, nonsensically fixed on grabbing my loaf pan before I bolted from the house. 

And nearly ran straight into Finn King.

"Oops," he drawled, reaching out to steady me, but the feel of his hand on my arm was too much, I swerved to the side like a cornered bull and stopped dead when I saw Claire King. 

The Kings' house was huge. The living room itself was larger than some houses in the Chosen compound. Houses shared by a family of thirteen or more. This house was a palace in comparison, so big that Beau and I should have gone completely unnoticed, but here were his brother and sister right in the doorway. Finn smirking, Claire smiling. 

They had seen, what had they seen? 

Merciful heavens, what had they seen?

In a flash, I was twelve years old again, squirming in my seat during fellowship, looking down at my thick-soled shoes, because if I looked up, I ran the risk of making eye contact with the girl - my friend - who was now crying in the center of the room. Her skirts were raised, fisted in her shaking hands as she tried to hold back her yelps of pain. I couldn't see the angry red lashes that crisscrossed the backs of Ruthie's thighs, but I could hear every harsh whack of the switch, and I could hear the curt monotone of the Elder who was dispassionately counting out each stroke. Twelve lashes. That was the punishment for contact outside of marriage. Ruth Wall had been caught kissing Zeke Clemstead - and Zeke was standing in the middle of the circle with his head bowed in red-faced agony as he awaited his turn - and the price for being welcomed back into the fold after the sin of fornication was twelve public lashes and a month of hard labor. 

"Was that you singing?" Claire gasped, clutching her hands to her heart and bringing me sharply back to the present.

"It sure wasn't Beau," Finn reminded her, as I tried to still my shaking and remember that I lived in the secular world now. That getting caught in a kiss wasn't something that brought condemnation and shame. I wasn't Chosen anymore. 

"That was her," Beau said from behind me. 

I winced as Claire shook her head. "No way, Rachel. You are fucking amazing."

"Claire," Beau rumbled under his breath and I knew he was correcting his sister for cursing near me, but I was too preoccupied with what this meant. 

"You... you heard me?" There was some small part of me that wanted to turn a cartwheel at the news of this, but it was drowned out by the voice of the Elders in my head. Vanity, they intoned. Pride is a terrible sin. The sin of vanity was not lash worthy. No. Vanity meant having your head shaved and your face scarred. Vanity meant having your possessions stripped and "returned" to the community. Vanity was the accusation you shouted in fellowship if you were jealous of your neighbor's tidy house and happy children. Vanity was something you had to be ever vigilant against, lest your children find themselves waking up in a strange house and being asked to call someone else mother. All Chosen steered cleared of anything resembling pride or vanity, of calling attention to themselves and giving themselves glory.

Vanity was the worst sin there was.

The Kings were chattering on easily around me, unaware of the storm that was raging inside of me. 

"You have the voice of an angel," Beau was saying as Claire nodded, but his voice was little more than static in my head. I hugged my arms around my body, but my skin was still buzzing from that bolt from Beau's lips. The mere brush of my fingers over my own skin was enough to make me feel feverish. 

"Is that what you all are doing down there in that cult of yours?" Finn piped up. "Singing hymns like a freaking gospel choir and shit?"

"Finn!" both Beau and Claire hissed. 

I lifted my chin. This was more familiar territory, one I was used to navigating. "The Chosen are not a cult," I corrected him. "The word cult implies that we aren't free to leave when we want to. I think I'm proof that's not the case."

It was a practiced speech, and Finn seemed to hear the rehearsed nature of it because he just rolled his eyes and hefted himself up off the doorframe. "Sure," he said. 

I looked from Finn back to his brother. They looked so alike, but the difference between them seemed to be down at the soul level. I'd been drawn to Beau from the first time I saw him, but Finn almost repelled me.

"Whatever, it doesn't matter," Claire jumped in. Beau's sister reached out and grabbed my hand, giving it a squeeze. "You've never taken lessons though, right? Like, please don't take this the wrong way because you've got natural talent falling out of your ass, oops!" She clapped her hand over her mouth and I grinned, deciding that I liked Beau's sister way more than I did his brother. "Sorry! I use cuss words like commas."

"It's fine," I said. It really was. Cursing no longer sounded foreign to my ears. After all, I wasn't Chosen anymore. I had left. 

I'd left willingly, and I'd also willingly come to Beau's home for...

For what?

My fingers went to my lips again. That kiss was lingering there, haunting me like a ghost. "It's fine," I repeated. 

"You sure?" Claire exhaled, eyes wide. "It's fine if it's not, like I don't want to offend you and everything, I know it's like against your religion to cuss and whatever." She leaned in, a keenly interested light now shining in her eyes. "You're like, out-out, right? Like fully and completely not in it anymore?"

"Yes." 

She stepped back a little at my curt, one-word response, but then brushed it off. "Okay, well yeah, duh, obviously, because you're here. I just wanted to make sure because like..." She trailed off and gestured to my head. "You've still got the, the..."

I reached back and touched the heavy braid that hung like a rope down the center of my back. "Yes," I repeated and for some reason, I glanced at Beau. He was watching his sister carefully, not saying anything to halt her litany of questions. Not that I would have expected him to, except. 

Except I couldn't help but notice the way he had shifted his body weight. He'd unobtrusively, but very deliberately, placed himself half in front of me. Shielding me if not from her questions, then at least from her gaze.

I shifted my balance to my other foot. Beau's broad, muscled back now formed a wall between me and his siblings and for some reason this made it easier to speak. "It's symbolic," I said. "I mean, to me anyway."

"What does it symbolize?" Claire's voice floated up from the other side of Beau. 

I lifted the rope of my braid and let it fall back down, feeling the reassuring weight on my scalp. When I was a kid, I thought of the long braids of the Chosen women as tethers. A way to keep us anchored to the community. 

It still did that now. "When I left," I said, softly, haltingly. "It was not because... it was not because I really wanted to. It was because... because I had to."

Beau shifted a little and turned to look at me. A quick flick of his eyes had me nodding that yes, I was okay, even though I had no idea how I knew that was what he was asking. 

Claire caught the pain in my voice. "Why's that?" 

The words seized in my chest and only came out on the heels of a strangled cry. "There was no place for me," I whispered. 

And in that moment, I missed my family so intensely I could barely breathe. I could only stand there, rooted to the spot, watching as if on the other side of a glass wall while Beau herded his siblings away from me. Claire's apologies were a jumbled mess in my head, but Beau's words were loud and clear. "Get out of here," he rumbled. "Give her some fucking space, Jesus, she's not a goddamn zoo animal!"

"I'm sorry," he said when he turned back to me. His strong hands gripped my upper arms, squeezing me. I found I liked the contact, liked the pressure. Without it, I might shatter into a million pieces. "Claire means well. The second she meets someone she likes, she wants to know everything about them. I'm sure she's practically ready to adopt you at this point." He squeezed a little tighter. "But you don't need that right? You're doing just fine. Come on, let me take you back home."

The tightness in my chest released enough that I was able to gulp a swift breath. "Yes. Thank you." 

He quickly turned on his heel and disappeared into the kitchen, returning with my loaf pan. I looked down in surprise. "This is what you were heading for, right?" he teased me gently. "When you were trying to run away from me?"

My chest loosened by another degree and I was able to look up at him again. "Yes, it was," I said, taking it from him and clutching it possessively to my chest. He hummed out an amused sound and then gestured for me to follow him.

I fell into step behind him so automatically that it took a second for my brain to catch up and realize what I was doing and when it finally did, I stumbled forward in a clumsy stutter step. Beau had a hand out in a moment, and once again the natural reaction of my body to rely on him, to lean on him, to follow him made me widen my eyes in disbelief. 

This wasn't okay. Me being here. Me letting him kiss me. Me catching his arm and brushing my fingers against his warm skin. None of this was okay. 

But it felt that way. It felt intensely...

Right. 

It felt right to sit in companionable silence as he drove me the few miles back to my house that I could have easily walked. It felt right to brush against him as I shifted in my seat, and the crisp hairs of his forearm lightly tickling mine felt more right than anything ever had before. I had to work to conjure the disapproving voices of the Elders and when I finally did, their voices were far fainter than the one whispering "stay."

Stay. 

Stay with me. 

He pulled into the rutted gravel drive in front of my shabby cottage and put the car in park. When he shifted in his seat to look at me, there was a momentary flash of something in his eyes that had me ready to run away and hide, but it was followed quickly by the warm glow of something that made me desperately want to stay here with him in this car forever. 

"Sorry again about my sister," he said. "I hope she didn't scare you so much you'll never come over again."

"She didn't scare me," I said, although the quaver in my voice made me sound like a liar.

He leaned in a little, close enough so that the warmth of his breath hit the shell of my ear. "Did I?" he murmured. 

I swallowed. What was the right thing to do here? Was it to lie and say no? Or tell the truth and say yes, he terrified me, but I wanted him to do it again?

"I'm not scared of you," I finally said. 

He pulled back from my ear and gazed at me a moment. I was close enough to see the ring of dark emerald around the iris of his eye. "What are you scared of?" he asked and before I could answer he went on, "Is it how I make you feel?"

I opened my mouth to tell him the truth, but my words were swallowed by the brush of his lips. It was the barest hint of a kiss, nothing like the soul-devouring one in his living room. But I could feel his restraint, the effort he was making to hold back and that...

"Yes," I breathed against his mouth. And I didn't pull away.