“Nothing,” she interrupted bitterly, and I shook my head.

“Not nothing. Everything. I risked everything yesterday to gain everything, but it was an everything that I can’t have and still keep what I love the most.”

She was listening. Thank you, God. I think I can say it now.

“The church, Jenks, you,” I said. “You as you are. Me as I am. I like me, Ivy. I like things the way they are. And if you bite me again…” I shivered and gripped my coffee tighter. “It felt so good,” I whispered, lost in the memory of it. “I’d let you bind me, if you asked, just so I would have that forever. I’d say yes. And then…”

“You wouldn’t be you anymore,” Ivy said, and I nodded.

Ivy went silent. I felt drained. I’d said what I had to say. I only hoped we could find a way to live with it.

“You don’t want me to leave,” Ivy said, and I shook my head. “And you don’t want me to bite you,” she added, looking at the coffee clasped between her hands.

“No, I said I can’t let you bite me. There’s a difference.”

She was smiling thinly when she brought her gaze to mine, and I couldn’t help but meet it with my own weak version. “There is, isn’t there,” she said. Her posture shifted, and she exhaled long and slow. “Thank you,” she whispered. I froze when she hesitantly touched my arm and then drew back. “Thank you for being honest.”

Thank you? I stared at her. “I thought you’d be pissed.”

She wiped her face and put her attention on the skylights to make her pupils contract. “Part of me is,” she said lightly. My pulse quickened, and my grip tightened on my cup. Sensing my movement, Ivy looked at me. The ring of brown around her pupils was shrinking, but she was still smiling. “But you aren’t leaving.”

Wary, I nodded. “This isn’t me playing hard to get. I mean it, Ivy. I can’t.”

Her shoulders lost their stiffness, and she half turned to look at the people around us. “I know. I saw how scared you were when you thought you were bound. Someone tried to blood-rape you.”

I recalled my terror, how she had comforted me with security and understanding, telling me it was okay. What we had shared in those brief moments was almost stronger than the blood ecstasy. Maybe that’s what she was getting at. Maybe that’s what was important here.

Shoulders slumped in an unusual show of fatigue, she leaned forward. With her hair almost brushing my shoulders, she whispered, “If you aren’t staying because I might bite you, then you are staying because you like me.”

Taking a sip of coffee, she started down the hall, pace confident and slow.