“Em, the scars on your arms are barely visible. You could wear shirts without sleeves. No one would notice, and you… well, no one would pay attention to the scars.”

I still wanted to jump up and grab my sweater, but I forced myself to stay put.

“How does it feel?”

“What?” I stared straight ahead, focusing on the darkness.

“To die.”

Dying wasn’t easy to put into words. “Nothingit feels like nothing. One minute, there was pain, and then there was nothing. Just empty blackness and you’re kind of aware of everything, but not. You kinda feel it here.” I placed a hand over my stomach. “When you die you feel it empty and leave you.”

“Feel what?”

I snuck a quick peek at him. He was watching me intently, his face soft. Before I lost my nerve or thought better of it, I reached out and placed my hand on his lower stomach. Even though he wore a sweater, I could feel the heat his skin was throwing off.

“Your soul,” I said quietly. I knew I had told him I didn’t want to talk about it, but here I was with a mad case of verbal diarrhea again. “You feel it burn itself out. Like a candle.”

Hayden inhaled roughly. “You really think you don’t have a soul?”

I pulled back and shrugged again.

“All because of your touch?” Hayden shifted and leaned on one arm. His breath danced over my shoulder.

I shivered. “Well, yes. That, and the fact that I felt it go poof.”

“Em, you have a soul.”

“How can you be so sure of that, Hayden? How many people die and come back?”

“No one dies and comes back. You did because of your sister, and you have a gift. Maybe that played a role in your coming back, but you have a soul. You aren’t evil. There’s nothing you can say that will make me think that.”

I looked up and our gazes locked. “And there’s nothing you can say to make me feel differently.”

He lowered his eyes. Thick lashes fanned his cheeks. “I know you do, because I wouldn’t want to… to kiss you if you didn’t have a soul.”

I froze. “You… you want to kiss me?”

His gaze lifted as he leaned in, placing his mouth an inch from mine. The air was sucked right out of the room, and I felt dizzy again. “Ever since I first saw you.” He moved so that his mouth was angled with mine. “And right now I want to so badly it hurts. You have no idea, Em, but I don’t want to hurt you.”

My gaze dropped to his parted lips. What would it be like to feel them against my own? Unable to stop myself, I brought my mouth within a hair’s breadth of his. “I want to kiss you, too.”