“Nope,” he said, and pulled her close again. “You do not get to be sorry. I kissed you. So whatever guilty moment you’re having at kissing someone you don’t care about, I would love it if you could ignore that long enough for me to kiss you some more—”

“I do care about you,” she cried, more emotion in her voice than he remembered hearing at any point, ever.

Unfortunately, he was a bit too wankered to properly examine that fact. “You know what I mean. The way I care about you. Centuries in the making, kind of weird and obsessive, totally romantic and not just because we’re both sexy, caring about you. Like that.”

“Will,” she said, her voice ragged with frustration, and that finally caught his attention. “You don’t understand. I do care about you like that. I really fucking do, which is why this is a terrible idea.”

He frowned, suddenly annoyed with himself for all the gin he’d had—because if he was sober, those words might make sense instead of swirling around on the unabsorbent surface of his brain. “But—you said—”

“I said I couldn’t do this.” The words were fast and raw, her gaze sliding away from his, her fingers curled up tight in the fabric of his jacket. Keeping him close even when she looked like she wanted to be a thousand miles away. “I said I couldn’t, and I can’t, because—when I really, really feel things, so much that it overwhelms me, I either explode with it or I panic and close my fucking mouth. I don’t want to be—too much, to put myself out on a ledge alone. I don’t want to be honest, because, God, Will, you have no idea how bad it can hurt. When you feel everything in the world, but the person you’re with feels nothing. You don’t know.” She shook her head frantically while his stomach lurched at the pain in her eyes. “I’m scared of it. But I know for a fact that relationships only work if you can be brave, and I don’t know how to do that anymore. I only know how to be clever and how to be safe, and I don’t want—”

Will stared, astonished, scrambling to keep up, a fire igniting in his stomach and cautious hope burning through his veins. “What, Abbie? You don’t want what?”

“I don’t want to fail you,” she said.

God, he was too drunk for this. But he understood, or at least, he thought he understood—and he didn’t like what he was hearing. “Fail me? You—you can’t. You couldn’t. Ever. You’d never be too much for me.” The idea was so ridiculous, the words felt alien in his mouth. “And I’d never leave you alone.”