“Sir, can I help you with anything?” She cleared her throat. The bright glows flicking against her face told me she was playing Candy Crush, and that she really didn’t give a damn about Jesse, Shadow, or even her job.

“I need to get in there.” I raked my fingers through my hair.

“Why?”

“Because he doesn’t know.”

“Doesn’t know what?”

That Jesse isn’t like the rest. Dr. Wiese was going to touch her, and she was going to freak out, and everything was going to go down the shitter. That was my only angle, really. Dude was going to ruin my progress with Snowflake. I would be back to square one trying to lure her out to the land of the free and independent. Right? Right?

Whatever. Fuck. Yes. Of course that was it.

“I need to get in there.” I slapped my palms over her desk, and she finally looked up from her screen, her fingers hovering over the mouse, her jaw slack.

“I’m not sure…”

“She doesn’t let anyone touch her,” I said, fast. “And he’s trying to. He doesn’t know, but she’s freaking out.” I was hoping I could communicate it to her with my gaze alone that Jesse could cock-punch Dr. Wiese if she felt too threatened.

Our eyes met and she nodded, swallowing. “I…uh…”

I didn’t bother to hear the rest. I stormed inside. The first thing I noticed was Jesse’s posture when her head whipped to look at who it was. It relaxed at my presence, and that wasn’t a stroke to my ego, but a full-blown hand job. Dr. Wiese was a couple feet away from her, explaining something about Shadow’s teeth that she probably couldn’t decipher because she was too busy having the mother of all internal meltdowns. I walked over to them, placing myself between her and the vet, leaning my entire body against a wall. A human shield.

“And you are…?” Dr. Wiese scratched his meaty cheek.

“Jesse’s bodyguard,” I said, reaching out to shake his hand. Dr. Wiese remained professional and got back to examining Shadow. I buried my hands in my pockets, and when Snowflake shot me a look, I answered back with a smirk. The old vet frowned, then said that he wanted to do blood work for Shadow, already washing his hands and putting his blue gloves on.

“Whatever for?” Jesse’s back straightened, her eyes widening. Wiese shook his head, patting an apathetic Shadow, still on the steel table.

“It’s just…here.” He took her hand and directed it to Shadow’s throat. Jesse’s hand jolted violently, but I stepped in, removing Dr. Wiese’s hand, placing mine on hers instead. Her palm was on Shadow’s fur now, and mine was covering hers. My heart pounded so fast I thought it was going to jump out of my throat, and I didn’t even know why. Her skin was hot and silky.

Perfectly gorgeous.

Perfectly damaged.

Perfectly ruined.

Did I mention perfectly forbidden? Because that shit should be at the top of the list. And since when did I care about how people’s skin felt like? Seriously, what the hell was happening to me?

I knew I needed to remove my hand from hers, now that I’d saved her from Dr. Wiese and mostly from herself, but decided to wait for her to give me a cue. The cue that never came. I felt her fingers trembling with excitement and fear under mine. No one talked. No one moved. No one breathed.

The Untouchable had been touched. And she’d survived.

Dr. Wiese swallowed loudly beside us. He was finally picking up on the context clues. “That’s it. Now, move her hand around, so she can feel the lump. It might be nothing, but we don’t want to take any chances. Shadow is not a pup anymore.”

Her hand froze on Shadow’s fur. I began to move it in circles under my palm. It felt…weird. Intimate. More intimate than fucking a girl to a near-death experience, somehow. I began to realize that maybe I wasn’t as immune as I thought I was to illicit pussy. Because all I could think about was directing her hand into the inside of the waistband of her jeans and have her fingering herself with my hand on top of hers.

“Blood work,” she echoed, as we both found the lump Dr. Wiese was talking about. Her eyes fluttered shut, and I squeezed my fingers between hers, lacing them together, tightening my hold on her.

My mouth was nearly pressed to Jesse’s ear. I was behind her, enveloping her, almost.

“Is he going to be okay?” I asked.

Asshole pled the fifth. I wanted to leap on Dr. Wiese and strangle the words out of his throat, but I wanted to keep my hand on Jesse’s more. Shadow began to move around, sniffing and whimpering, asking to be taken down. Jesse’s hand went rigid under my own. She turned around and looked at Dr. Wiese.

“I can’t lose him.”

“He’s in good shape, Jesse. We just need to run some tests.” He tried soothing her, rubbing Shadow’s cheek again. Must have been a nervous tick.

“No, no. I can’t lose him,” she repeated, her eyes filling with unshed tears.

“Jess…”

“He’s my only true friend.”

“Come on, sweetheart,” he murmured nervously. “I’m sure that’s not true.”

But it was. There was Old Sport, Mrs. Belfort, and then there was me. And I didn’t count because she was nothing but a business transaction to me. Sup-fucking-posedly.

Shadow was aimlessly pacing back and forth on the table, his nails making a click-click-click sound that matched the tick behind Jesse’s left eyelid. Dr. Wiese gave me a look, and I pulled Jesse away from her dog, again, surprised at how she had let me touch her, even though I kept shit as PG as possible, my fingers fluttering over her arm. Dr. Wiese took Shadow’s blood—a few tubes of it, at that—while Jesse looked the other way and cried silently.

“When are we going to get the results?” I shoved my hands into my front pockets.

“It’s pretty busy here this time of the year. We’ll call and send the results by mail, so watch out for them,” Dr. Wiese said as he placed all the tubes in the test tube rack. I gave Jesse a look to confirm she’d heard him, and she nodded faintly.

“What are we thinking about?” I walked over to stand by Dr. Wiese, watching Shadow, who looked exhausted and kind of spent. I’d never had a pet. Not for lack of wanting. Money had been tight, and a pet meant spending more money. Also, my mom had worked ridiculous hours the first ten years of her career, and I’d learned early on that in order to survive, I needed to hang out at other people’s places after school to eat home-cooked meals, so I hadn’t been around much, either.

I didn’t know what it felt like to lose a dog, but I had a feeling that for Jesse, it was also ten times worse, because he was more than just a pet. He was another piece of old Jesse she was never going to get back.

“All done.” Dr. Wiese snapped his elastic gloves off and dumped them into a stainless steel trash bin, turning around to wash his hands again. “Give him plenty of water and make sure he eats. Wet food, if he doesn’t have any appetite. I’ll prescribe him antibiotics right now, but we’ll be in touch.”

“Okay,” Jesse managed, still sniffing.

I grabbed Shadow and helped him down just when she turned to the doctor and said, “This is all my fault, you know.”

The silence that followed made me want to throw up a little.

I thanked the doctor, booked the follow-up appointment for Shadow myself with Miss Candy Crush, and paid the bill, because Jesse was busy shivering in the corner of the reception, mumbling empty promises and apologies to a lethargic Shadow. I carried the smelly furball to her Rover, put him in the back seat, and made sure that he was all curled up and comfortable. Then I turned around to face her.

I was going to say something. I wasn’t really sure what. Usually I just tossed a lie or two to make uncomfortable shit go away. But as I swiveled, I realized Jesse was right beside me, her green apples and fresh rain scent filling my nostrils once again.

“What?” I furrowed my brows.

She shook her head, taking another step closer to me.

“You’re entering creeper zone again,” I said. She didn’t smile. She didn’t talk. It didn’t register at first, when she rose on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to my cheek.

Now, here’s the part I wasn’t so crazy about admitting: I didn’t do any of my usual moves. I didn’t smirk or rake my eyes over her body or gather her into a one-arm hug like the tool they had taught me to be at All Saints High. I just stood there like a damn fool, feeling her kiss soaking into my cheek like poison. Why poison? Because it was going to kill me if I wasn’t careful.

This girl was an apple, all right.

But it wasn’t green. It was red and lethal and not worthy of six-fucking-million dollars.

Shadow broke the moment by barking from the back seat. Jesse stepped away. Old Sport cheek-blocked me. After everything I’d done for him. Now I knew generosity didn’t pay off.

We both hurried into the vehicle, our seat belts clicking in unison. Jesse drove us back into downtown Todos Santos, and I tried to convince myself that I wasn’t fucking up the deal, because kissing on the cheek was like a shoulder-punch in some cultures. There was nothing sexual about it, a statement that my throbbing dick didn’t agree with, but since when was I listening to his opinions? He liked everyone. That fucker and his hippie mentality.

“He’s going to be fine.” I said something aloud so that the voices in my head would stop urging me to do shit like putting my hand on hers again. Note to self: check if you did actually grow a vagina today. It started to look like I might have.

She answered, “I hope so, because he is the only one I have.”

“Flattered,” I quipped.

She laughed. “Stop doing this.”

“Doing what?”

“Offer me hope. Faith is a dangerous thing. It drives you to try, and when you try, you fail.”

I wondered if she realized that our knees were nearly touching. That we were closer than we’d ever been. That not only could we smell each other, but we could also study every individual freckle and blemish on each other’s skin.