My fingers brushed against his hair, trying to smooth it down. I realized what I was doing a full minute after Liam had closed his eyes and leaned into my touch. Embarrassment flared up in my chest, but he grabbed my hand before I could pull back and tucked it under his chin.

“Nope,” he whispered, when I tried to tug it away. “Mine now.”

Dangerous. This is dangerous. The warning was fleeting, banished to the back corners of my mind, where it wouldn’t interrupt how good it felt to touch him—how right.

“I’m going to need it back eventually,” I said, letting him run it along the stubble on his chin.

“Too bad.”

“…crackers…” a voice breathed out behind us, “yessss…”

Both of us turned, watching as Chubs twisted around in his seat and settled back down, still fast asleep.

I pressed a hand over my mouth to keep from laughing. Liam rolled his eyes, smiling.

“He dreams about food,” he said. “A lot.”

“At least they’re good dreams.”

“Yeah,” Liam agreed. “I guess he’s lucky.” I looked back at Chubs’s curled up form and, for the first time, realized just how cold it was without the heat from Betty’s vent.

Liam let his head slide down to rest against his other arm, threading his fingers through mine. He seemed to be studying the shape they made, the way my thumb appeared to rest naturally on top of his.

“If you wanted to,” he began, “could you see what he was dreaming about?”

I nodded. “But those things are private.”

“But you’ve done it before?”

“Not intentionally.”

“To me?”

“To the girls in my cabin at camp,” I said. “To Zu that night in the motel. I’ve been in your head—once. Just not in your dreams.”

“Two days ago,” he said, putting it together. “At the rest stop.”

It was instinct to pull back, to let go before I felt him let go first, but he didn’t allow me.

“Don’t,” he said. “I’m not mad.”

He brought our hands down against his forehead, not looking at me when he asked, “Does it make it worse? To be touching someone, I mean. Is it harder to control?”

“Sometimes,” I admitted. I didn’t know how to explain it, because I had never wanted to. “Sometimes, when I’m tired or upset, I’ll pick up on someone’s thoughts or a memory they’re thinking about, but I can avoid being pulled in if I don’t touch the person. Touching them when my head is like that…it’s an automatic connection.”

“I thought so.” Liam sighed, closing his eyes again. “You know, when we first met, you used to go out of your way to avoid touching us. I kept wondering if it was something you had been trained to do at your camp, because every time one of us would try to touch you or talk to you, you’d jump like we had shocked you.”

“I didn’t want to hurt any of you,” I whispered.