Okay. I totally understood that. “You’re doing the same thing, Zayne. I can’t even think if something happened—” I cut myself off, not wanting to go down that road. “I wish you were a human who went to college and was studying to be a veterinarian.”

His brows lifted.

“Okay, maybe I don’t want you to be a human. Humans are too easy to kill, but you get my point.”

A slow curl tipped up his lips. “I do.” His head tilted to the side. “So, I’m scared, but what I feel—what I want is still there. It’s always there, and when I’m not with you, all I want to do is get back to you. At first I thought it was the bond, but it’s not. It’s something entirely different.” His mouth grazed my cheekbone, drawing closer to my lips. “And knowing that—knowing you feel...feel right—I’ll be damned if I’ll walk away from that, even though it terrifies me.

“I need you to understand something.” His gaze caught mine, held it. “I know that what I feel for you is nothing like what I felt for Layla. Nothing. And I realized something the night Stacey and I talked.”

That was the night he and I had gone to the next level. It had been only, what, two days ago, but it felt like weeks. “What?” I whispered.

“I...don’t know if I was ever in love with her,” he said. “I loved her. I know that, but I think I was in love with the idea of her and us. And I think...no, I know that the hardest part, what I’ve been dealing with since then, is realizing it would’ve never worked out between us, and how I couldn’t see that.” The hand around my braid slipped to my lower back. “I will always love that girl. There won’t be a time that I don’t, but I’m not in love with her.”

My heart pounded, and when I took a breath it felt like it went nowhere. “And Stacey helped you realize all this?”

That crazy-cute half grin appeared. “Yeah, she sort of called me out on it. Said some things I needed to hear—things I’d already been thinking.”

All right.

There was a swelling motion in my chest, one that threatened to lift me straight to the starry ceiling.

Maybe I shouldn’t be so mad about him staying out late with her.

But...

There was always a but.

I took another deep breath. I needed to say this. I needed to get it out there, because I could feel it building between us. The rules weren’t going to stop us. The dangers each of us faced weren’t going to be a hurdle. “I’m scared of getting my heart broken.”

His eyes met mine once more. “So am I.”