“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 dooutsidersare 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.”

My gaze dropped to his hands. The brief moments that his skin had touched mine were too easy to recall, and now, his hands were so close to my bare wrists. “How so?”

“My gift will knock you off your feet, but I don’t see you running for the door.” His hands moved to cup my elbows. “You’re not afraid of me.”

“But… you wouldn’t do that to me.”

A small grin tugged his lips. “Ember, you don’t know me as well as I know you.” His hands drifted up to my shoulders before sliding back down to the cuffs of my sweater, as if he was trying to warm me up.

He was.

His touch, even though it wasn’t against my skin, was doing strange things to meaffecting me in a way that created a warm flush all over my body. I struggled to find something intelligent to say. I came up with zilch. So I settled on a question that had been bugging me. “Why did you keep coming back to see me, Hayden?”

“You interested me.”

“That’s all? You traveled how many hours because I interested you?”

His lips pursed. “Because I knew what it’s like to be an outcast. There was a long time when I was… alone. So I know how it feels.”

To be lonely, I guessed. Something we had in common.