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“I don’t know,” I muttered.
“Or longer? Longer than that?”
I let out a breath. “That’s insane.”
“It is,” she said. “You live here. You love living here. You have that amazing house that’s built around trees, and you can’t come with me and be part of the resistance, because you don’t even care about the resistance, and you don’t—”
“I care aboutyou, though.”
A long pause. “Do you?” She sounded so hopeful, like she wanted to believe it, but couldn’t.
I pushed up so that I could look into her eyes. “I’m in love with you, I think.”
She let out a devastated noise.
I winced. “Shit. If I’m freaking you out, I don’t mean—”
“No, I think, me too,” she said, but she sounded like she was going to cry. “I’m in love with you, too, Holston.”
I kissed her. “Yeah?” I was grinning. “Really?”
She cupped my face with both of her hands and forced my face back. She looked into my eyes. “You’re not in love with me. It’s your… it’s a chemical thing.”
“Oh, come on, shei. When is itnota chemical thing? Isn’t that what love is? No matter what species you are. How many different observations have been made in Toth labs, right?”
She considered this. “I mean… yeah. Love is about chemicals in the brain, I guess.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Reward chemicals, bonding chemicals, satiation chemicals, protection chemicals. It’s just a cocktail of things that are firing in our synapses, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not real.”
She nodded slowly, and her fingers on my cheeks became a caress. “Yeah…”
“I’m not saying this didn’t all start because of going off my suppressants, and I know the way it started with you, the first time I had you, was—”
“It was intense,” she said. “That’s all.”
“I know it’s been a journey,” I said, “but what I feel for you right now, it’s more than all of that. Maybe that was the spark, but it lit a huge blaze that has taken over me, and I… I love you, and I know it’s real. You feel it, too, don’t you?”
She let out a helpless laugh. “Oh, stars, I do. I really do.”
“Look, I’d ask you to stay with me, but you’d be miserable,” I said, grinning at her. “I don’t want to do that to you, so let me come with you.”
“Are you serious right now?”
“Would I lie to you about this?”
She let out a noisy breath. Her eyes were shining. “It’s just… it’s just…”
I pulled away. “Hey, maybe it’s… you keep saying that ‘intense’ thing, and I know you said that you didn’t feel assaulted, but maybe itislike a trauma response, and maybe what you need is to be away from me—”
“No, Holston, you are the opposite of a sexual predator. You’re a good person. You’re sweet to me, and I don’t…no.”
I hesitated.
She shook her head, patting my cheek. “Don’t say that ever again. You didnotassault me,no.”
I wanted to believe that, so… I just let myself. I let out a breath. I swallowed a lump that had somehow formed in my throat.
She stroked my eyebrow, her touch impossibly gentle and affectionate.
