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I wrapped Taavi in my arms and legs, putting my head on his chest and feeling those damn traitorous tears sliding out of my eyes.

“Val?” He sounded scared.

I squeezed him tighter.

One hand ran over my cut-off hair, and I could feel the tremor in his fingers.

I wanted to beg him not to leave me—either literally by getting on a plane or in the larger, more dramatic sense of dumping my ass, even though I was pretty sure I deserved both. I wanted to promise him that I would never do this to him again… but you can’t make those kinds of promises, even if you really, really wish you could.

I wanted to tell him that he was the most important person in my world—but it was really hard to say that when everything I was doing said the opposite. You don’t leave that person alone in a house with your parents while you fuck off to hang out with your best friend. Yeah, extenuating circumstances and all that shit, but still.

“Val?” he asked again, his voice small and shaky. I felt him swallow, his chest rising and falling like it was a struggle.

I tightened my arms. “I’m here,” I whispered, knowing he’d hear me.

His hand pressed my head into his chest, and I felt him shift before warm lips pressed against my forehead. “I miss you,” he murmured into my skin.

“I’m sorry.”

He sighed. “I just—” He broke off.

“What?” I asked softly, knowing that whatever complaint he had, it was almost certainly justified.

“I’m scared.”

I tightened my arms around him again, holding him tight enough that I probably would have hurt him if he’d been human. “Of what?” I hardly dared to ask the question.

“It’s—It’s like it’s happening all over again,” he whispered.

“Like what—Oh.”Fuck. Shifters being killed. Their deaths being covered up. How had I not fucking seen it? How had it not occurred to me for one fucking second that my boyfriend—who had almost been murdered by anti-shifter assholes not once, buttwice—might be fucking traumatized about shifter murders?

Jesus fucking Christ in a chicken basket. I’m such a fucking dumbass.

“Taavi—” But I didn’t know what to say. What the fuckcouldI say?Hey, honey, sorry I completely forgot that you were kidnapped and tortured and watched people get murdered, then you got run down by a truck, and now I’ve left you with my parents without thinking about how fucking difficult this must be for you.

I really was the worst boyfriend ever.

And I had no fucking excuse.

Sure, I could point to Elliot and his murdered shifter father, but…

Fuck.

“Tell me what I can do,” I finally said, knowing damn well that it was a piss-poor fucking response. But I felt completely helpless, stuck between Taavi and Elliot.

Under my cheek, Taavi’s chest moved with a sigh. “I don’t know,” he replied, and there was a note of despair that made my heart beat faster.

Because if being with me made him that miserably unhappy…

I shouldn’t force him to stay.

Oh, God, I’d fucked this whole thing up.

I’d taken advantage of him when he was in a vulnerable position, whether you wanted to go all the way back to me pulling him out of the dumpster or just to when I took care of him after the hit-and-run. I’d then pressured him into moving in with me, making him financially reliant on me—or he would be, when he left his job and started school—so that he couldn’t say no. And now I’d dragged him all the fucking way to Shawano, Wisconsin so that I could be with my best friend, and he was stuck here without dropping a chunk of cash he didn’t have with my parents, now being pressuredagaininto this fucking disaster of a relationship.

Fuck.

What I should do was break this off. I should buy Taavi that plane ticket myself, send him back, and then figure out how to get him his own apartment again—