“What’s going on with you?” Shay asked me later that night. We were studying in his room. He was at his desk while I was stretched out on his bed. We were both dressed in lounging clothes. He had on a shirt and sweatpants, but I went the boy-shorts route. They were hidden underneath a large sweater that hung on me like a dress.

After talking to Sabrina, I tried to shake my insecurities off.

Shay wasn’t Parker.

I wasn’t going to become Sabrina.

Right?

I kept trying to reassure myself, but it was useless. For whatever reason—maybe the fact that I admitted to myself I was falling for him—my irrational sense of doom hung over me like a storm cloud. I couldn’t shake it, and seeing the puzzled look on Shay’s gorgeous face, I thought, fuck it.

I sat up, crossing my legs over each other. I faced him squarely from the bed. “Are you going to hurt me?”

His eyes widened. He’d been holding a pen in his hand, but it dropped to the floor. “What? Where did that come from?”

“You heard me.”

I was watching.

I was waiting.

But no reaction, other than his shock. I didn’t see any flicker of guilt in his eyes, and I instantly felt stupid. I needed to get a handle on my issues. “Nothing.” I dropped back to the bed with a sigh, letting my textbook fall to the side. “I’m being a girl.”

“Whoa. What’s going on?”

I heard the desk squeak. Shay came into view as he stood over me, frowning down at me. He folded his arms over his chest, and I tried not to gawk at how that defined his already spectacular chest, shoulders, and arm muscles.

I failed.

I was pretty sure I felt a little drool, but I wiped it away and scooted so I was sitting back against the wall facing him. He sat next to me, his hand on my leg.

I looked down at my hands, folded on my lap. “My feelings are stronger than I want them to be. Last time this happened, Parker squashed me like a damned bug.” I looked up. “Are you going to squash me?”

“No.” He shook his head from side to side, his eyebrows knitting together. “You really think that? Haven’t I shown you enough how much I care?”

My mouth went dry.

He had.

But . . . I gave him a small smile. “Could you maybe write it down? Like on flashcards?”

“Flashcards?”

I nodded. “I can pull those out anytime I start getting freaked about us.”

“You want me to profess my feelings for you on flashcards?”

“Makes total sense to me.”

I didn’t bat an eyelash.

That was all he did, raking a hand over his face. “I shouldn’t be surprised by anything by now with you.”

I nodded. That sounded completely reasonable.

But I was still waiting, and he saw that, too. He stood, going back to his desk. “Okay. Fine. Shay’s Flashcards of Love coming right up.” He picked up a pen and grabbed a deck of blank cards he’d been using for studying. “Silly me, I thought I would be using them to quiz myself tonight. Nope. They’re the new form of emotional reassurance.”

I closed my eyes, half-grinning, but half-cringing on the inside.

Whatever.

I’d been nuts since the beginning. It wasn’t as if I was starting a new protocol for our relationship. He enjoyed the sex enough. I was banking on that keeping him around if his real feelings started to fade.

“Flashcard one,” Shay started.

I could feel his gaze, and I looked up again, meeting it. I felt zapped. There was a fierceness in him, a smoldering emotion that I wasn’t sure if I was seeing correctly. I gulped. He wasn’t breaking eye contact as he started, “Spontaneous.” He scribbled the word down, then flipped to the back. “She’s down to have sex almost anytime and anywhere.”

I looked back down. The tips of my ears started to burn.

He continued, “She’s up for any adventure, too. Antonyms: boring or dull.” He coughed and then I heard him pull out a second flashcard. “Funny.” He flipped it over. “She can make me laugh just by being herself. She sits, and I think it’s cute and funny. She breathes, and I get aroused or I start chuckling. She gets upset about something, and I’m walking around with a hard-on.”

I didn’t think “funny” described all of that, but I bit down on my lip. I wanted to hear more, and I didn’t at the same time.

“Smart.” Backside of the card. “She’s a freshman, and she held her own with upperclassmen in a class I know she thought was boring as hell. She can challenge me to think beyond myself or my friends. How she acts makes me want to be a better man.”

My whole ear was inflamed. It was growing to my cheeks and farther down.

“Sweet.” He flipped it. “She had a roommate who treated her like shit at times, but she was so sweet, Kennedy never wanted to hurt her feelings. She could’ve humiliated her roommate and never did. She didn’t want anyone to know about our relationship in the beginning, which leads me to . . .” He pulled out a new card. “Fearful. She’s scared of being hurt by me, which is the opposite of annoying, which she thinks I am right now.”

I looked up, my hands clasped tightly together. I swallowed over a lump.

He wasn’t even writing. He was looking right at me, unflinching and unwavering, “The fact that you’re worried I’m going to hurt you is the very reason why I never will. It doesn’t make me want to run for the hills or jump on this chance to leave you. Because I could. I’m a guy. Guys know how to screw with a girl’s mind and insecurities, but I don’t do that. Not with you.”

He shoved the cards aside and stood.

He said, his voice eerily soft, “When I see you’re hurting, I want to wipe it away. When I see you doubting yourself, I want to give you the best damned pep talk in history. When you cry, I want to make you smile. When you laugh, I want to make you laugh harder. When you moan in my arms, I want to make you dissolve into a puddle. When you’re insecure about how I feel about you, I want to replace that with a proclamation that I love you so hard that I never want you to question us again.”

He was standing right above the bed, looking down on me, and I could only gape at him.

A moment passed.

A second.

Complete silence.

And a strangled gurgle left me. I was holding on to my sweater to keep myself from either jumping him or running away. I choked out, “You love me?”

“Completely.”

“I—”

“Do you love me?”

“I—”

HOLY.

FUCK.

FUCK.

FUCK!

My insides were screaming.

I only gutted out, “What?”

A glimmer of a smile showed, but then it was erased. He stared back at me, hard. “I’m not the nice guy who will say it and not expect a response. I’m not that guy. I’m selfish with you. I want to know. Right here and now. Do you love me back?”

My throat stopped working, but I nodded. I was crying—when’d that happen?

“Ye-yes.” I kept lifting my head up and down. “Yes. I love you.”

“Yeah?”

The hardness dropped from his eyes, and I saw vulnerability there.

He hadn’t been sure. His relief was so clear, and it humbled me. I thought I’d been the only one not sure.

I sat up on my knees, my oversized sweater fell to my legs. “I love you.”

We moved at once.

I went to him, and he caught me, his hand cradling the back of my head like that was the only place it was supposed to be.

Our lips met, and he whispered, “I love you,” before lifting me in the air and turning to sit on the bed. I was straddling him, my fingers in his hair, and I didn’t want to move. Fuck my insecurities. This night would be on repeat in my mind forever.

I didn’t think I’d doubt him again. Ever.

He showed me over and over again that night just how much he loved me.

Shay dropped me off at the front door instead of the back. It was late, around three in the morning, but I didn’t want to sleep at his place for the second night in a row after moving in with my new roommates. And since the last time I left from the back door and got creeped out, I thought maybe going the front way would be better.