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“You’re breathing weird. Are you okay?” he asks.

My hands still. “What?”

“You’ve got that look.”

I force a half-laugh. “What look?”

He shifts, leaning one hip against the dryer. “The one that says your thoughts are trying to take over again.”

I don’t answer.

He reaches for another towel and starts folding, the silence stretching between us.

“You don’t have to feel guilty,” he says, his voice low now, stripped of the usual shine. “This whole thing, all of it—it’s about figuring out what you want.”

My throat tightens.

“What you like. What kind of life you want to live.”

I swallow hard. “Even if that means someone else?”

He doesn’t look at me. “If that’s what you need to figure it out? Yeah.”

I flinch before I can stop myself, a quick recoil like his words burned me.

He notices.

His shoulders straighten, the easy calm in his posture falling away. I stare down at the towel in my hands, twisting it once, then again, trying to keep it from shaking.

“Ani…”

“Is this just about sex for you?” I ask. The words feel scary coming out. And I hate how small I feel asking the question.

Because if it is—if that’s all it was to him—then I don’t know what to do with the way he held me after, or the way I let myself believe it meant something.

“No,” he breathes. The word slips out quietly, as if he got hit with something that he didn’t see coming.

I want to believe him. But I can’t look at him.

He drops the towel he’s holding and closes the door. Then his hands are on me. One settles beneath my jaw, the other cupping the back of my head as his thumb traces across my cheekbone. He leans down just enough to meet my eyes.

“No,” he says again, voice low now. “It’s not just sex.”

I keep looking at him as my heart jackhammers in my chest.

“If I thought you were ready to belong to someone, Ani, I’d’ve already claimed you.” He doesn’t blink. “But you’re not. And I care too much about you to cage you after you fought so hard to get free.

“I want you to explore–to figure out what you want. You deserve to know what you like. Even if that means doing it with Jonah. Or Boone.”

I shake my head, or maybe I start to—some half-hearted protest already falling apart before it reaches my mouth.

“I’m not—That’s not—” I fumble, the heat climbing up my neck.

He just smiles and leans in, cutting off whatever other sad attempt at an excuse I might make with a kiss.

This kiss is like nothing I’ve felt before. His lips brush, then press, coaxing rather than claiming, deepening only when I tilt my chin up and meet him there. I melt into it before I can second-guess the motion, my breath catching at the seam of my lips.

His hand in my hair tightens and I whimper into his mouth.