“Thanks,” I whispered, then trained my eyes back on the facility. Lights were on in the building, but no vehicles came or went, and no one seemed to step foot outside. I tried not to notice the warmth coming from Dylan’s body, or how every once in a while one of his sneakers nudged mine.

“I’m luckier than you are,” Dylan said unexpectedly.

“How do you figure that?” I asked, looking at him in the dark.

“I know you’re torn up about Fang,” he said. I cringed. “I don’t blame you. And now I’m here, and everyone’s pushing me at you, including me.”

My cheeks burned. This was exactly the kind of horrible, embarrassing, emotional stuff that I try really hard to avoid. Maybe if I talked about how to skin a desert rat, it would kill the romantic mood…

“But for me, there’s only been you,” he continued, looking off into the distance. “I don’t have to make any decisions. I don’t have to figure things out. You’re the only choice I have, the only one I want. For me, it’s really simple.”

I swallowed, feeling like there was a large brick in my suddenly dry throat.

“You don’t know me,” Dylan said. “You and Fang—you kind of talk the same, figure things out the same, know a lot of the same stuff, have a lot of shared history. You and I are more… combustible,” he said softly.

I couldn’t look at him. I felt as if looking at him would somehow break down every barrier I’d put up between us. I knew without a doubt that I loved Fang. But Dylan had hit the nail on the head—he and I were combustible. If I were mad at Fang, it was more like stubborn opposition, irritation. If I were mad at Dylan, it was fury, white hot.

I’m a girl who has been tamping down her emotions and keeping them tightly guarded her whole life. And that works really well for me. But that approach didn’t seem possible with Dylan. He provoked me; he got under my skin. And now I felt like my shell had a dangerous crack in it. Without much more effort on his part, it would split wide open, and my enormous river of emotions would gush out—the bad and the good.

It was pretty much the scariest thing I’d ever thought of.

I rested my head on my arms and closed my eyes, unable to say a word. It had been a long, hard day. I tensed when I felt Dylan’s fingers smooth my hair, then slowly trace a line down my back. When I didn’t say anything, he lay next to me quietly and put his arm around my shoulders.