“Kaylee, she’s not going to…”

“What happens, Nash?” I demanded, stepping closer as the girls jostled their way out of the bathroom and into the hall.

“Not that Sabine’s ever done this, but taking too much during a nightmare can leave the sleeper sick, unconscious, or…” He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to.

“Dead?” Chill bumps popped up on my arms at the memory of the dreams she’d woven for me.

Nash nodded. “But Sabine wouldn’t…”

“So you keep saying. But if you’re so sure she’s not dangerous, how come I don’t see you offering up your dreams to keep her sated?”

Nash’s irises exploded into motion, and his brows rose. “I could do that…” he began. “But I didn’t think you’d want Sabine—even her astral form—straddling me in my sleep, literally riding my dreams.”

Damn it. My cheeks flamed. But I couldn’t help being a little relieved by the fact that he hadn’t let that happen.

“Fine. Then let’s find her something more appropriate to eat. Okay?”

He shrugged. “At least that’ll give us something to do, other than think about what we can’t have.”

I was confused for a moment, until his meaning sank in. “By ‘us,’ you mean you and Sabine, not you and me, don’t you?” Of course he did. I’d just given them another reason to be together. Maybe I should have just let her snack on my cousin’s dance team.

“Kaylee, no matter what she thinks she wants from me, what she needs is a friend.” Traffic had picked up in the hallway, a sure sign the warning bell would soon ring. “You’ll just have to believe me when I say her problems are bigger than a bitchy cousin, an absentee dad, and a species identity crisis.”

I blinked and felt my face flame.

“I’m sorry…” Nash said, before I could recover from shock enough to even think about responding. “But the truth is that you’ve got it pretty good right now. Good grades, good friends, a decent place to live, and a dad who loves you so much he hardly wants to let you out of his sight. Sabine doesn’t have any of that, and I don’t have…” He swallowed, then met my gaze and continued. “I don’t have you, and without you, it feels like what I do have doesn’t matter.”

The sudden sentimentality and the yearning clear in his eyes threw me off and dampened my anger. I didn’t know how to respond. “I miss you, too,” I said finally, and the swirling in his irises became frantic at my admission.

And suddenly we were talking about us.

“Then what’s wrong?” Nash asked, trying to read the answer in my eyes.

“I just… I can’t help thinking about how much she must mean to you, foryou to go through so much trouble for her.”

Nash let his bag slide to the floor and stepped close to me. I could feel the delicious heat from his body and had to look up to see the urgent swirling in his eyes.

“I love you, Kaylee. Nothing’s going to change that, including Sabine. But she does mean a lot to me—as a friend I thought I’d lost. Sabine and I have a history we can’t just erase, and I’m not going to drop her, like everyone else in her life has done. I don’t want to drop her, because when she looks at me, she doesn’t see an addict or a football player, or any of the other labels people keep trying to stick me with. She sees me. She sees what I was before, and she knows I’m trying, and that’s enough for her. I really need someone who’s okay with me the way I am right now, Kay, and I know that can’t be you. So why can’t you let it be her?”

I didn’t want to answer. I wanted to be able to give him what he wanted—what he needed—to get through this and get back to the person he’d been when we’d met. But it wasn’t that simple.

“Because you’ll never see her coming, Nash. You think you know her, but you don’t know how far she’ll go to get what she wants, because back when you knew her, she didn’t have to chase you. She already had you. But now she has to work for what she wants, and she’s really good.” That was obvious, based on the fact that she’d seamlessly sewn herself back into his life and he’d accepted her like she’d never been gone.

“You’ll just be sitting there one day, alone with her, talking about someplace you went back in the day, and the next thing you know it, you’ll be looking into each other’s eyes, and it’ll feel just like it used to. She’ll kiss you—or maybe you’ll kiss her—and it’ll feel so good and familiar you won’t even remember that you should stop it. So you won’t. And then she’ll have you, and I’ll have lost you, all because I did the right thing, and she was willing to play dirty.”

Nash shook his head slowly. “That’s not going to happen, Kaylee. I wish you’d let me show you.” He leaned into me, watching me so closely he seemed to see right through my eyes and into my soul.

He bent toward me, and my lips parted, my heart and body ready to take him back right then, even while my mind screamed in protest of abandoned logic.

My pulse raced, and his lips touched mine, just the slightest warm contact. Then a familiar voice at my back drenched our rediscovered heat with an auditory bucket of ice water.

“Well, this looks promising!”

I jerked away from Nash and turned to find Emma watching us both, her Cheshire cat grin firmly in place. “It was,” Nash mumbled, retrieving his bag from the floor.