A plant holocaust later, Hayden called it quits. “We’ll try again tomorrow. You’re doing really well.”

From my slumped position, I raised my brows. “Oh, really?”

He smiled back at me, nodding. “You look tired.”

Tired? More like exhausted, and I still had homework to do. Letting my head fall back, I closed my eyes. Minutes went by like this, and I only knew Hayden was still there because his legs pressed against mine. Maybe that’s why I wasn’t jumping to do homework.

“I really did try, you know?” I said.

“I know.”

“I’m one giant fail. Maybe there isn’t anything you can do. This is just how I’m gonna be, like, a ‘you break, you buy’ kind of thing.”

Hayden’s laugh rumbled all the way through me. “What?”

I opened my eyes and tipped my head forward. His smile was a big one—the one that reached his eyes, warming them into pools of liquid chocolate. Suddenly, it was like waking up or just realizing something huge.

But I had no idea what I’d realized.

He leaned forward and propped his elbows on his knees. Several locks of hair fell forward as he rested his chin in his hands. “You have to explain that one to me.”

“You know how you go into stores and they have those signs that say ‘If you break it, you buy it’? I kinda live by that. If I touch someone, I kill them. So it’s kind of the same thing.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “You think the strangest things.”

“You think so?” Out of curiosity, I mimicked his earlier movements. Our faces were merely inches apart. Anyone in their right mind would move.

Hayden didn’t.

“What is it with you?” I asked. “You don’t seem afraid to get close to me. Even people who don’t know what I can do—outsiders—are afraid to be close to me. Like they can somehow sense I’m Death.” I paused. “Or maybe it’s my eyes. They freak people out.”

The smile faded from his lips. “Why would I be afraid? I know you aren’t going to hurt me, and if you did touch me, I could always stop it.”

I made a face. “You said you wouldn’t do that again.”

He inched closer. “Yeah, I did say that.”

“So you wouldn’t flip it on me if I touched you right now?”

“No.”

“For real?”

“Yup.”

I moved one hand and brought it to his cheek. I didn’t touch him, because seriously, I wasn’t psycho or anything. I wanted to call his bluff. Any second now he’d jerk back, but for just a moment, I got to see his eyes do the color thing, and then he closed them. His face impossibly relaxed.

“Are you going to do it or not?” he asked me.

Dumbfounded, I dropped my hand. “You’re nuts.”

He opened one eye. “No. It would hurt eventually, if you held on. But you wouldn’t hold on.”

“You don’t know that. Look at what happened to—”

“That wasn’t your fault.” Hayden shifted forward, wrapping his hands around my arms. “You know, I could say the same thing about you.”