I laugh again, miserably, and then the weeping starts—I knew it would. I try to turn my face away. “I’m sorry, Baz. I’m never going to get this right.”

“Shut up,” he says. “We’ve only just started trying.”

I close my eyes. Now is when I’d leave. Normally. Now is when I can’t leave. I need to ride this out. I need to keep riding this out.

He rubs my cheeks with his thumbs. “I like your flat,” he says.

I laugh. It’s ridiculous. He keeps wiping away my tears.

I’m breathing. The pressure is fading in my head. The heat is leaving my eyes. I’m breathing. I’m tired. “What if it never gets better?” I say. “What if I never get better at any of this?”

Baz runs his thumb from the bridge of my nose to my temple and back. “What if every kiss leads us here?”

My eyes burn again. “Yeah.”

“Okay,” he says.

I open my eyes. “Okay?”

He shrugs. “I’ll take it.”

“Don’t fuck with me.”

He wraps one hand around the back of my neck. “I’m not fucking with you! I’ll take it. I’m a traumatized vampire. I never thought I’d have a normal relationship. I thought I was going to marry some girl, and sneak out at night to sleep with strangers and drink their pets.”

I roll my eyes. “When did you think that?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “Pretty much from age thirteen to … however old I was the night you kissed me.”

“Fuck, Baz. You deserve better.”

He shrugs again, then squeezes my neck. “I’ll take it. I’ll take you.” He kisses my mouth quickly, and I let him shift our bodies closer.

I wind an arm around him.

(I’m breathing. I’m still breathing. And I’m still here. So is he.)

“I never thought I’d have a normal relationship, either,” I say.

Baz snorts. “Because you were going to have a royal wedding. There were going to be commemorative tea towels when you and Agatha tied the knot.”

His shirt is hitched up to his chest. His jacket is long gone. I rub his stomach with my free hand. “Nah. I mean—I always figured something would get its teeth in me before I’d ever get to settle down.”

“Something like the Humdrum?”

“Maybe. Whatever ended up being the Greatest Threat to Magic. That’s what the job was—to go down fighting.”

“Huh.” Baz is playing with the curls at the top of my head. “I wonder if anyone has told Smith-Richards.”

He’s being too gentle. I shudder and shake my head, pulling away.

Baz lowers an eyebrow, watching. He waits for me to relax next to him again, then puts his hand right back in my hair. He rubs his fingertips into my scalp. It’s better. It’s good.