Page 314 of Ashes of Sin and Stardust

“What are you looking at?”

“I’m waiting for the sun to go down so I can see the stars.”

He kissed the spot where my collarbone and my shoulder met. I felt nothing, but my heart squeezed at the kindness.

“Why are you so nice to me?”

He secured his arms around my torso and rested his chin on the top of my head.

“You know why.”

“But will you say it?”

He was quiet for a few moments. “Do you want to hear it?”

I nodded, my throat thick. He’d said he “loved me like this” and he’d said it during a heated moment, but I wasn’t quite sure if I believed it.

“I love you, little bug.”

I closed my eyes, but it did nothing to stop my tears.

“Does that upset you?”

I shook my head. “Not anymore.”

The sun went down.He spoiled me with pizza; he got himself a pizza with pepperoni and green peppers and mushrooms, and he got me cheese because I was boring like that. We sat on the floor in my room and ate pizza while I looked through my map book and my telescope to find cool things to show him.

“That’s Virgo A. It has a bunch of constellations, and a black hole.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“That’s Sirius.”

“Dog star.”

“Yeah. But it’s actually two stars and they’re super close together. We didn’t know that until recently.”

“Huh.”

“That’s Venus. It’s the first thing to appear in the sky. Everyone thinks it’s a star but it’s not.”

“It’s a gas planet, right?

“Yeah.”

After a while, talking got a little easier.

I forced my mouth to move “Do you only love me because I let you do mean things to me?”

“No... It’s true that I love that you for not hating my Beast. But that’s not why I love you.”

I readjusted the telescope so we could see the waxing moon. “Do you only love me because of your vision?”

“I have been excited to meet you for a long time, but no, that’s not the only reason.”

“Do you only love me because you can control me?”

He chuckled under his breath. “You think I cancontrolyou?” There was just a hint of humor in his voice.

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