No, he wasn’t. He left my hair alone, only to circle his arms around my waist and tug me back against him. I let my head fall back against his chest and tried to focus on my plan. “Can I ask you something?”

He made some sort of affirmative sound. His breath stirred the hair at my temple.

“Do you mind if I drive to school tomorrow?” I held my breath.

“No.” His arms tightened. I warmed in a lot of places.

“I thought I could drive myself, you know? I haven’t in a long time and I thought it would nice to do it… by myself.”

Hayden turned me around in his arms in about a nanosecond. I put my hands on his shoulders to steady myself. He looked incredibly serious. Oh no, this didn’t look good. “What?” I asked, a bit transfixed by how the different colors from the TV swayed over his face.

“If you want to drive yourself to school, Em, you don’t have to ask for my permission,” he said, tucking a curl behind my ear. “You can do whatever you want.”

“I know. I didn’t ask for that reason.” I felt terrible for lying. Terrible for what I planned to do tomorrow. Terrible that everything could change if I found something.

“Okay.” His dark gaze searched my face. I felt my stomach drop. “Em, do you like this? I mean, we haven’t really talked about this.” A faint blush stained his cheeks. “You know, about what we’re doing.”

Relief swamped me, but then I realized this was also a serious conversation. Like, the conversation. Were we moving to “title” territory? Somehow that seemed just as important as the files in Cromwell’s office.

I sat back. “What are we doing?”

Hayden ran a hand over his head, and then dropped his arm to his knee. “I really don’t know how to put what we’re doing into words.”

“Me, neither.”

“You know I… like you?”

“Like” was such a lame word. “Yeah.”

“For awhile now, and well, I don’t want how I feel about you to influence how you feel about me.”

I frowned. “Uh…”

A tiny grin appeared. “What I mean isI don’t know what I mean.” He laughed self-consciously and shook his head. “I’m not very good at this. I guess what I’m trying to say is, I don’t know if what we have between us is because you can touch me, or something else.”

I’d never really looked at it that way, but I could see how he would. My options were painfully limited. “Hayden, are you asking me if I only like you because you’re the only guy I can touch?”

His gaze flicked off my face. “Yeah, I guess that’s what I’m asking.”

I scooted closer. “I like you because I can touch you.”