“And look, my crappy vision isn’t even an issue right now. You’re going to stay perpetually young and buff, and I’m going to get old and my hips are going to break. Then I’ll have to become this better person who discovers if you love someone you set them free. And I’ll have to tell you to go and live your life, find someone young—”

“Stop.” Zayne did laugh then, catching my arms and lifting me off his shoulder. His eyes met mine—eyes that would never dull or become rheumy with age. “That’s not what’s going to happen.”

“You’re right.” I glared at him. “I am so not going to be that person. I think ‘if you love someone, set them free’ is one of the stupidest sayings out there. I’m way too jealous and selfish. I don’t care if I’m ninety, I will still cut a—”

“I don’t want you to be a better person. I like you being jealous and selfish.” He grinned at me like I was being silly, and of course he could think that since he was a freaking fallen angel. “There won’t be another person for me. Not now. Not even when you’re ninety.”

“Easy for you to say when you’ll look like this forever.” Eventually people would think I was a cougar when they saw me with Zayne, and there would be a future where that happened, because I refused to believe that we wouldn’t defeat Gabriel.

“It’s easy for me to say that because I love you, and that runs deeper than skin or broken hips,” he said, and without any warning, he moved. He lifted me out of his lap and onto my back, slipping my body under his. He held his weight off me, bracing one arm by my head. “That’s not something that goes away with age. It’ll strengthen and become unbreakable. That I know for a fact. I wouldn’t have Fallen if what I felt for you was that weak. You wouldn’t have fought for me, refusing to give up, if your love for me was that easy to break.”

I pressed my lips together in a mulish line. “You’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?”

“Saying the right stuff.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Do you want me to stop doing that?”

“Yes.” I sighed. “No.”

Zayne’s smile wrapped its way around my heart. “I get why this would freak you out, I do, but that’s borrowing tomorrow’s problems. We got enough for today, don’t we?”

“We do.” Lifting a hand, I touched his chin. His skin was so warm. “But that’s a lot like crossing that bridge when we get there, and we will get there, Zayne. That bridge is going to come.”