With his other hand, he reached out, gripped me by the wrist and dropped the thing into my upturned palm. His thumb curled my fingers over it, stroking my knuckles before releasing me. My eyes started to prickle. But that was stupid, because wasn’t this what I’d wanted from the start?

“A thank you for what?” I asked roughly.

SJ chuckled; the sound so strained it grated in my ears. “With my gratitude for a very … entertaining night. I must admit, I hadn’t expected you to be so … enthusiastic. Although in hindsight, I should have known.” He made a blasé gesture towards my bookshelves.

My heart stopped clamouring to get out and dropped into the pit of my stomach instead. “What are you doing, SJ?”

He shrugged, a nonchalant, one-shouldered gesture, his face a smarmy mask that the pain in his eyes made a lie out of. “I am not completely without morality. It felt … improper … to continue to reap your soul after everything we did last night … so consider yourself off the hook. Unfortunately, I cannot return the portion to your body, but⁠—”

“Hold on!” I interrupted, that prickling in my eyes becoming pressure. I blinked, but it wouldn’t go away. “Are you … trading me my soul for … for last night?”

“That’s a concise way to put it.”

“And what about …” I swallowed, or tried to, but the meteor in my throat was having none of it. “What about us?”

“There is no us.” The coldness in his voice iced my blood. “Whatever gave you that impression, Mouse?”

I scoffed as the first tears rolled down my cheeks. “Uh, your cute little pet name for me, for one! The fact that you told me last night that you had feelings for me!” I stepped closer, craving him in a way that I knew he felt. Needing to make him acknowledge it. But he was stiff, and even as I moved into arm’s reach, he kept his arms locked by his sides. His fingers flexed, but he didn’t reach for me.

“Was I the only one who thought we were becoming ‘us’ when you looked after me all night when I had a panic attack about the dark?” I strode up to him, poking him in the chest. “What about when you reaped the soul of my ex-boyfriend because you were furious about how he’d hurt me? Were we not actually becoming something then?”

SJ’s jaw slackened. “How did you⁠—”

“Chad came here looking for you! He said he’d felt wrong ever since you made a ‘deal’ with him to buy his art. He said you shook his hand, and … I guessed what you’d done.”

SJ looked like he was about to throw up. I felt it too, in the churning ache in my belly that had nothing to do with period pain.