He looks so upset, still frowning away, that I find myself speaking, though I know it’s a mistake before I start. “That’s not what I mean,” I mutter. “‘Have to’ is not what I’m talking about, and I don’t think you’re ‘that kind of man.’ No. Of course not. It’s just that —”

Just that I love him. I grit my teeth together before I can humiliate myself more. I should bite my tongue off right now before it ruins anything else.

“Just that… ?” he asks.

I try to shake my head, but he’s still holding my chin tight between his fingers.

“Mel?”

I yank free and shake my head fiercely.

He leans closer to me, and his face is different suddenly. There’s a new conflict I don’t recognize in his expression, and even though I don’t understand it completely, it erases the feeling of rejection that’s making my eyes sting.

“Will you talk to me? Please?” he murmurs. I can feel his breath on my cheek, and it’s a few seconds before I can think at all.

His eyes make me forget that I am mortified, that I wanted to never speak again.

“If I got to pick anyone, anyone at all, to be stranded on a deserted planet with, it would be you,” I whisper. The sun between us burns hotter. “I always want to be with you. And not just… not just to talk to. When you touch me…” I dare to let my fingers brush lightly along the warm skin of his arm, and it feels like the flames are flowing from their tips now. His arm tightens around me. Does he feel the fire? “I don’t want you to stop.” I want to be more exact, but I can’t find the words. That’s fine. It’s bad enough having admitted this much. “If you don’t feel the same way, I understand. Maybe it isn’t the same for you. That’s okay.” Lies.

“Oh, Mel,” he sighs in my ear, and pulls my face around to meet his.

More flames in his lips, fiercer than the others, blistering. I don’t know what I’m doing, but it doesn’t seem to matter. His hands are in my hair, and my heart is about to combust. I can’t breathe. I don’t want to breathe.

But his lips move to my ear, and he holds my face when I try to find them again.

“It was a miracle—more than a miracle—when I found you, Melanie. Right now, if I was given the choice between having the world back and having you, I wouldn’t be able to give you up. Not to save five billion lives.”

“That’s wrong.”

“Very wrong but very true.”

“Jared,” I breathe. I try to reach for his lips again. He pulls away, looking like he has something to say. What more can there be?

“But…”

“But?” How can there be a but? What could possibly follow all this fire that starts with a but?

“But you’re seventeen, Melanie. And I’m twenty-six.”