Fire bursts inside me. My lips part under his. Coming up on my toes, I fist my hands in his hair and kiss him back, sharing the flames that lick at my soul. I breathe as he breathes, liquid heat in my veins.

He kisses me like I am water and he is parched. Like I am air and he is drowning. He kisses me like he is dying and I am his lifeline. He is gentle and rough, taking and giving. In that moment, his kiss is all I know, all I ever want to know.

I come up higher on my toes and my lips cling to his as he pulls away. I’m left shaken and out of my element. I’ve never been kissed like that. I never imagined such a kiss existed.

I stare at him, stunned. We’re both breathless. His pupils are dark and dilated, surrounded only by a thin rim of iridescent gray.

“What was that?” I whisper. I’m cold without his body next to mine. I feel cheated that he’s stepped away from me.

“My one chance,” he says with a hint of his dark smile.

“For what?”

“To kiss you. To live the moment I’ve been wanting since the first second I laid eyes on you.”

I’m shaken to the core. He’s wanted to kiss me all along? Like that?

“Why didn’t you?” I ask, thinking of all the times I thought he would kiss me, all the times I wanted him to. All the times he pulled back, stepped away, leaving me disappointed.

“I didn’t want to hurt you.”

I laugh softly. “Trust me. That didn’t hurt.”

He drags his fingers back through the shaggy layers of his hair in a totally un-Jackson-like gesture.

“But what I’m going to tell you now will, and I swear to you, I’m sorry for that, Miki.” He takes a deep breath and turns away. “You’re here because of me.” His tone is flat. He doesn’t look at me, doesn’t touch me now. I feel the absence like a blow to the gut.

“Because of you?” I wrap my arms around myself, my lips still tingling from his kiss, my heart growing wary. “Explain.”

“I was first pulled when I was twelve.” He spins to face me, his expression icy and cold, and false. He’s in agony, suffering, I can see it beneath his carefully cultivated veneer.

Images assault me. Bright lights. A truck. The scream of metal on metal. The scent of blood in my nose, the taste metallic and salty on my tongue.

And then I’m broken. Like I was broken in my nightmare about the car accident. Pinned in place.

Dying.

Such pain, in my body, in my heart.

Not mine. Jackson’s. Jackson’s pain.

In a snap the images vanish.

“That nightmare you had,” he says, turning away once more. “It was mine.”

I frown, but I’m not exactly surprised. If anything, I’m more surprised by the fact that what he’s saying actually makes sense to me. As if somewhere inside, I knew it all along.

“I saw your nightmare? That night, I dreamed what you dreamed. Did you send it to me on purpose?”

He shakes his head, his posture stiff, his back toward me. I wish he would face me. I wish he would close the yawning distance between us and put his arms around me. “I was thinking of you before I fell asleep. I must have held you in my thoughts and sent you my dreams without meaning to.”

“Has that happened to you before?”

Again, he shakes his head. “Not that I know of. Only with you.”

“And now, right now, you put your memories of the accident in my head.” He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to. I knew he could do that even before I met him, that very first day when I heard him calling my name in my mind. I gather my thoughts, sorting them before I speak. “Your eyes are Drau. And you have their ability to”—I pause, searching for the right words—“to be telepathic, like them. That’s how you were going to question the Drau on our last mission. That’s how you could speak in my head.”

“Yes.”

“When you spoke to me that first day, you told me, Miki! Now! . . . to save Janice’s sister.” I tip my head to the side. “What would you have done if I hadn’t heard you? If I hadn’t run?”

He turns his head and looks at me over his shoulder.

“You would have saved her yourself,” I say, confident of that.

He looks away, like he doesn’t want to acknowledge the truth. Like he sees himself as some sort of monster.

“Who was the girl in the dream, the one with the green eyes?” I ask, very soft. Because I think I already know, and my heart breaks for him.

“Lizzie was my sister.”

I remember so many things in a sudden, painful rush: Jackson’s hesitation when I asked if he was an only child. His guarded reply when I asked him if he could do what the Drau did, taking electricity through human eyes. The way he drove, so carefully, obeying all the rules, hands in perfect position on the wheel. The way I woke up from the nightmare, certain that I had killed Lizzie . . . no . . . that was Jackson’s certainty. . . .

Lifting my head, I find him in the dimness, standing far away from me, still as stone. Brittle stone. If I go to him, if I touch him, he’ll shatter.

I saw it in him right from the start. I kept thinking that Jackson knew something about pain, that he understood my loss. But knowing the truth only makes me wish I’d been wrong. Better that he not know.

“I’m sorry, Jackson.” I know from experience that those words don’t help, but it’s been bred into us to say them when someone dies.