Right now I was thinking about how nice his eyes looked, but I’d shave my head before I admitted that. “I don’t know. Nothing’s running in the background.”

Hayden placed the plant on the floor. His knee slipped from mine and ended up against my thigh. Fine shivers coursed down my legs.

“Try to concentrate, Ember. There is always a thought to every action. Like something on repeat.”

I really didn’t want to share the thought I had on repeat right now. My cheeks felt on fire. I don’t even know what was wrong with me, why I continued to think about him.

Hayden straightened, his knee sliding back. His eyes caught mine and sparked. “Let’s do this again.”

“Sure,” I stuttered.

We went on like this for a while. I’d kill another innocent plant. Hayden would ask what I was thinking. His leg would flirt with mine. I’d tell him I wasn’t thinking anything, and he would say something impossibly motivational.

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 onethe 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.