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“I love you,” he said simply and firmly. “I don’t know that I want to go to mush, like you just did, though.”

I let out a startled laugh that sounded all wrong to my ears—too ragged to belong to me. “Asshole.”

He grinned a little at that. “Pretty much always. But yeah, I love you too. You said before that you’d do just about anything for me. And I’d do anything for you, too. I hope you know that by now. But in case you don’t, here’s me saying it. I would.”

He might fight monsters for me. And open his heart to let me see the ooey-gooey parts of him. If you’d told me a year ago that he’d ever be willing to do that, I would’ve called you a crazy person. But the thing I really needed from him was the thing I couldn’t be sure of at all—and it was something I would never ask. I needed him tostay.

“You’re only attracted to women, though,” Michael said, bringing me back to the present moment.

“Right.”

He frowned thoughtfully at that. “But have you ever had a relationship with a woman?”

“I tried, once. After my brother and my dad were both gone. I was nineteen. I went back to live with my mother for a while—almost a year—and I was determined to try giving normal a shot.”

“You haven’t told me this.”

“I know. It’s not exactly a part of the Danny highlight reel,” I replied, grimacing. But I suddenly wanted to share all of this with him. I wanted to shareeverything.While I still could. While he was still here to share it with. “Anyway, I got a job at the supermarket, and I dated the nicest, most normal girl in town. Her name was Becca. She was normal and pretty and a really sweet person. It lasted almost two months. She was great. But I just—well, I didn’t feel anything. I liked her just fine, but none of it was… real. And she sensed that, I think.”

“Then what happened?”

“What do you think? I realized that a white picket fence wasn’t in the cards for me—it never has been—and I left town. I went right back to doing what I had been raised to do. I met you a couple months later.”

“And you feel things for me that you didn’t feel for Becca?”

“I feel things for you I’ve never felt for anyone else.” But I had to look away from him when I said it, because it was so fucking weird and selfish, that I was admitting any of this, when it couldn’t ever actually bereal.“Pretty fucked up, right?”

“Not really. You’re at least bi-romantic. Or maybe just homoromantic.”

“Now you’re just making up words.”

“Asshole. I might be a small-town mechanic turned monster hunter, but I do read. It means that you fall in love with guys, but that you’re not necessarily sexually attracted to them.” He paused. “You can be bisexual, heterosexual, pansexual, or some shade of asexual and still want to enter into a romantic relationship with guys, or with guys and girls equally. That’s sometimes a thing that happens.”

He said it so simply and matter-of-factly that I had to turn back to him. He’d just put into a single sentence the crux of why I’d felt so fucked up for months. And very likely why I had spent my entire life alone, for that matter. And why I’d probably spend my undead eternity alone, too.

He seemed to catch my look, because he smiled back at me, a little ruefully. And I couldn’t help the way my heart seemed to swell in my chest at the sight of it. I liked looking at him now, more than I ever had before. Had he always been so handsome?

I couldn’t help but remember the way my body had responded to him, back in the motel room. My earlier trepidations around being close to him seemed suddenly strange, like they belonged to someone else. They were faint echoes, more than anything else.

The only fear that remained was the worst one: what if this ruined everything?

Could I be brave enough to try?

“Hate to break it to you,” Michael told me, oblivious to the internal struggle I felt. “But you’re not broken or even unique. So, you’re not fucked up at all. Sorry, not sorry. Plenty of folks out there are in exactly the same boat as you.”

“Oh,” I replied, my gaze suddenly lingering on his lips. They were firm and decidedly masculine, but I was betting they were warmer and softer than I might’ve expected. Just like the rest of him.

“Go ahead,” Michael said it like a dare, his gaze locked onto me. “If you want to, you can.”

I leaned forward, so close that I could feel his breath on my lips. “How do you know I’m not just hungry?”

“Don’t be a dick,” he whispered, holding very still, like he was afraid that any movement might send me running in the other direction.

And then, without thinking about what I was about to do, I kissed him.

His lips were somehow both soft and firm at the same time. And they were warm—far warmer than I expected. It started as a chaste kiss, just our lips touching. But then, seemingly of their own accord, my lips parted like my body knew exactly what to do, and he took that invitation and ran with it. His tongue met mine, making it all so much dirtier and more demanding. Wet and sloppy and masculine and warm andgood.

So fucking good.