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Cristina falls asleep in my arms. I ease out from underneath her as carefully as possible, making sure to place a pillow under her head.

My gaze catches on the Bitty Being atop her nightstand. The figurine is of a girl—teenage years, maybe—with a crack running down her face like a tear that never fell.

I want to know why she keeps it.

And I don’t want to know.

I run a hand down my face and exhale. I am so screwed.

Cristina sighs and turns, tugging the pillow closer. Flame hops toward me. I scoop her up and lower her in front of her cage.

The bunnicorn turns like she doesn’t want to go inside, so I pick her up and carry her, closing both adjoining doors behind me quietly.

Soon as I’m in my own space, I put Flame on the floor and slump onto the bed. My chest drops. It feels like all of me drops with it.

What the hell did I just say? I need to know you want me, not the escape?

It wasn’t a lie, just more truth than I’d planned to tell. Hell, it’s a bucket of truth. I’m lucky Cristina didn’t run from the room screaming.

There is something about her—everything, really—that calls to me.

This isn’t just a fling. It couldn’t be for me, not from the beginning and especially not after what I learned about her parents.

Goddoggit. Was that damn quilt right? Does the magic in this town know more than I do?

I plow my fingers through my hair as Flame hops over to me. I pick her up and place her in my lap, where she lowers herself, settling in.

“Well, at least one of us is okay with our life choices.”

Choices. The word ignites the conversation in my head once more. It wasn’t Cristina’s choice to be a sick kid, but it was her parents’ choice not to be proactive with her treatments.

My hands curl into fists. If her father sets one foot in this resort to hurt Cristina, I’ll make sure he never does so again. My God, to have the ability to keep your child healthy and then not do it? What kind of monsters are they?

I see Cristina again, telling me her story, and feel how tensed up she was, how every muscle in her body went taut. That wasn’t the reaction of a woman who’s over it. It was the response of someone actively reliving the trauma.

Shit. Her openness, her honesty, everything about her has burrowed itself under my skin, and it isn’t going anywhere. If we had sex now, I wouldn’t be able to shut myself off. I wouldn’t be able to pretend like I don’t care, like I want to lose the competition.

Damn.

She deserves more. She deserves someone without their own trauma. Someone who can cradle her and not bring with it their own ghosts—their own memories of hospitals and beeping blood pressure machines and a chemo wing that smells of lost hope.

Cristina doesn’t need someone like me, who will only wind up letting her down.

I can’t be the next person who hurts her.

Soon as I think that, my stomach cramps—I’m afraid I’m someone who could hurt her.

And that would kill me more than she knows.

A furry head presses into my hand, and I look down and smile at Flame, whose nose is wiggling as she sniffs me.

Cristina trusts me with the bunnicorn, and just seeing the expression on her face when she looks at the furry creature makes my heart squeeze.

I’m falling for her. There’s no denying it.

A memory surfaces—my mom, crying, tears dripping off her chin, and my small voice replying, I promise to stay awake, Mama.

My jaw clenches as my body recalls the moment, the memory soaked into me.