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“You don't know anything about Ash.”

“Ash.”

Câlisse.

I closed my eyes.

Papa didn't comment on the name I'd just handed him. “You're right. I don't know him. I'm talking about you, and I know exactly what you do when you're afraid.”

“I've spent fifteen years being careful.”

“And now you've found someone who makes you want to stop.”

I didn't answer.

My father sighed. “Maxim, I am not telling you to walk away from him. I'm telling you that if this is different, you need to understand why before either of you gets hurt.”

As if I hadn't been asking myself the same question for weeks.

Ash was different.

My dragon knew it. I knew it too, although I was considerably less willing to admit it. Everything about the way I reacted to him felt unlike anyone who'd come before, but that didn't tell me anything about how Ash reacted to me.

That was the part that terrified me.

“What if I can't tell?” I asked, and my voice was quieter now. “What if he wants me and I can't tell whether it's him or me? What if I convince myself it's real because I want it to be?”

My father's silence lasted long enough that I knew he understood exactly what I meant.

When he finally answered, there was no false reassurance in his voice.

“I don't know.”

I hated those words.

I also trusted them more than an answer he couldn't prove.

“Then that's not particularly useful.”

“No,” Papa agreed. “It isn't. Play hockey, Maxim.”

“That's everyone's advice today.”

“Perhaps you should listen to it.”

“I'll consider it.”

“And be careful with Ash.”

The fact that he'd remembered the name irritated me more than it should have.

“I know.”

We ended the call without saying anything else, and I stood at the window for a while afterward, staring at the city without seeing it.

Melanie would disappear.

My agent was right about that. She had photographs of an apartment she'd entered without permission and a story she couldn't substantiate, and once the initial excitement faded, the people currently treating her like the center of the universe would find someone else to talk about.