More Than This (More Than, #1)

by Jay McLean

“To not letting bad people dictate whether you have a good time.”

If she needs me, I’ll be there for her.

“Jake makes things hurt a little less. He’s home for me now. If being around him takes the pain away just a tiny bit, then it doesn’t matter how or why he’s here with me.

“Why does he get to call you Kayla, and everyone else calls you Micky?” I shrug. “Because my family called me Kayla.”

To have to be around the person you love, and not be able to love them, is the hardest thing to do.

The love that’s so instant and intense and easy, it feels like all the world’s forces collided and fate gave you a push, and you’re there, in front of the person who’s now a part of you. The world spins and your heart explodes, and you want nothing else at all in the entire universe as long as you can be with that one person all the time. When you’re not, you think about him until your mind is consumed, and it’s almost like you’re suffocating and drowning . . . But in a good way, because your love is all around you.

“Jake saw you at your worst. He was there when your life changed and your heart shattered. He was there to help you piece some of it back together. He’s seen it all, Micky. He’s seen you at your worst, and he still fell in love with you—like, truly the forever kind of love with you. And I’m sorry, because I think you’re making a mistake. Maybe you don’t need to be a complete person, or maybe you do. But maybe he’s it—maybe he’s the other half of you.”

He didn’t need to kiss me to make me his. I was his the moment he asked me to move here with him and the moment he held my hand at the funeral. I was his when I had nowhere else to go, and he took me into his home. I was his the moment he held me while I cried in the back of that ambulance. He was my strength when I had none. I knew it when he cleared his throat, and I looked up at him with tears in my eyes in that tiny hallway by the restrooms at Bistro’s. And I knew I was his when I fixed his tie at Walmart. That instant, intense feeling was the exact second I knew I was standing in front of my forever.

“Your very first kiss with your prince will change your life. When your lips touch for the first time, the earth will feel like it has stopped moving, but at the same time the world around you spins. It’ll feel like fireworks in the night sky—a bright light in the darkness.

you’ll know in that moment from that kiss that you’ve just let someone own a piece of your heart, and you’ll live happily ever after.”