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He frowns.

“Besides that frown.” I press my thumb gently between his brows.

I rest my hand on his cheek, and he reaches up and eclipses it with his. “What, Angel?”

I swallow. “You care. You don’t just ask questions for the sake of conversation or even just because it’s interesting to you. When you ask questions, it’s because you care about the answer. What it means to me.”

He lowers my hand but doesn’t let it go. Just rests it against his collar like he doesn’t want to break contact. Then he looks away, taking another swig of beer.

“I know you don’t like compliments. Or you don’t know how to take them. But you’re a good listener, Griff. The best I’ve ever met, actually. And take it from me. I’ve known a lot of people who don’t listen.”

Griffin looks down, but he squeezes my hand still resting on him. He looks the way he does when he rubs a hand over his jaw, except both of his are occupied.

“What is it, Griffin?” I ask softly, teasingly. “You going to say something self-deprecating?”

“No,” he says, meeting my eyes again. His voice is a low rasp.

“Then wha—”

“I love you.”

I pause, whatever words I was going to say dying on my lips as my pulse leaps in my throat. “What?” I whisper.

Some part of me thinks he’s joking, because Griffin Kelly doesn’t do feelings. And if he does, he doesn’t say them out loud.

But Griffin Kelly meets my eye. “I’m in love with you, Sasha. Hopelessly fucking ass-over-feet in love with you.”

He drops his eyes, and it’s then I notice his hand has stopped moving against mine. That it’s trembling slightly.

“Griffin,” I whisper.

“You don’t have to say it back,” he says. “In fact, I’d prefer you didn’t. I wouldn’t know what the fuck to do with it. I don’t know if you do, but it’s out there now, so—”

I interrupt him by pressing my lips to his.

I’m flooded with so many intense endorphins that for a moment, I’m fairly certain I’m going to faint.

He’s in love with me.

No one’s ever said that to me before. Well, men have said it, but they didn’t mean it. Not the way Griffin does. Those men, they were in love with the idea of me. The girl they wanted to look at and touch, but none who actually looked at me the way Griffin does when I opened my mouth. None of them cared what I had to say.

They didn’t love me.

Griffin pulls away. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have put that on you.”

“Never be sorry, Griffin. Not for that.”

He lowers his beer, cupping his hand around the back of my neck, his rough thumb scraping a curve across the sensitive flesh behind my ear.

But even knowing he means it, some part of me still doesn’t want to believe it. That part of me that clung to that little bird—the one who needed to hear the reasons why.

“Tell me,” I whisper, as he presses his forehead against mine. “Tell me what it is about me.”

He knows I’m not fishing for compliments. He can hear the pain in my voice. I can tell just by looking at him.

Griffin laughs softly, but his face is instantly serious again. “Where do I start, Sasha?”

He brushes his thumb along my ear. “I love the way you look when you have a new idea. Your face lights up, like the sun’s shining on you.”