A lot of people considered Dani oblivious, but that wasn’t true: she simply chose to ignore the things that didn’t interest her in favor of the things that did. People, as a group, were therefore pushed to the back of her mind in favor of more relevant topics, such as snacks and poetry and panel research. But Zaf had a strange tendency to squeeze through the bars of her mental cage (which made no sense, since he was bloody huge) and stroll into her zone of focus like he belonged there.

Which is why Dani noticed the instant his breathing changed.

It wasn’t that she could hear it—not with her ears, anyway. They were on the pavement outside the boxy, modern building that housed Radio Trent’s headquarters, the traffic behind them busy enough to drown out the sound of one man’s inhalations. And yet, when that slow, steady rhythm faltered, Dani felt it, somewhere deep inside her own chest. Zaf sucked down his next breath as if dragging in the oxygen against its will, and she turned as if pulled. Then he bent down into a crouch, right there on the street, and she did the same without a second thought. It felt as if some shining tie was braided between them and if one of them couldn’t stay upright, neither of them could.

“Sorry,” he told her, his voice strained and rough as sandpaper. “Sorry.”

“Don’t you dare,” she said softly.

“I’m just—I just need to—”

“You can tell me later. Right now, do what you need to do.” Dani sat on her bum—some people didn’t have the quad muscles required to crouch, thank you very much—and added, “If I can help, let me know. Otherwise, feel free to ignore me. I’ll still be here.”

He swallowed hard. “I’m fine, though. This is fine.”

“Zaf.”

“You’re right,” he said with a tight little laugh. “Not fine. Not fine at all.”

“No,” Dani agreed. “But no one can be fine all the time. So we’ll stay here while you’re busy being not-fine, and we won’t move until you’re done, and that’s okay.” It was ridiculous, it was babble, it was the best she could offer. But she saw the tremor in his hands and the worryingly pale gold of his skin, and for the first time in a long time, she wished like hell that she could offer more.

Zaf, meanwhile, went quiet.

At least she knew what not to do. When Zaf had mentioned his anxiety disorder, natural curiosity had led Dani to spend a few hours researching the topic. So she wouldn’t grab him, or ask silly questions, or do anything else that might make him feel worse, and that was something, wasn’t it?

Well, it was all she had, so she supposed it would have to be.

After a while, his breathing slowed, and his broad shoulders relaxed inch by inch. With every infinitesimal sign of release, the thick rope of concern wrapped around Dani’s throat started to ease. Then Zaf opened his eyes and gave her one of his hard, impenetrable stares, the one that meant I’m going to be a bit of an arse now, and she knew he was back to his usual self and annoyed as always. She waited for him to say something brisk and grumpy and vaguely annoying. He opened his mouth, as if preparing to do just that. But after a long moment, he scrubbed a hand over his beard and sighed.

She bit her lip. “Are you okay?”

He grunted.

“Should I . . . cancel the interview? Because we can do that. If you want.”

He stared at her, his expression unreadable. “Ten minutes before we’re due to go on?”

“I don’t care if it’s ten seconds. Tell me,” she said firmly, “and I’ll go in there and tell them.”

After a long moment, his lips twitched. “Are you being nice to me right now? Because that’s twice in one day. Would you also take me somewhere with coffee and cake and try your best not to bitch about the evils of caffeine? None of the cheap shit, mind. I know you’ve got money.”

The spluttering noise she made was half amusement, half a sigh of relief. “If you can be irritating, I assume you’re much improved.”

“Yeah, actually. I guess, with some associations, you just have to . . . get through them. And if that’s what’s going to happen tonight, I’ll do my best to handle it.” His words were cryptic, his expression pensive, and she almost wanted to ask more questions. To learn what was going on inside his head, every tiny detail.

Luckily, before she could embarrass herself like that, he spoke again. “But you should know for future reference that I could be irritating with one foot in the grave.”

Dani couldn’t help it: she laughed. It was a quick, guilty bubble of sound—but then he smiled in response, slow and sweet like spilled honey, so she laughed some more, and suddenly he was laughing, too. They sat in the middle of the pavement, giddy and giggling and breathless like a pair of schoolchildren, and Zaf put an arm around her shoulders and sort of . . . leaned on her. Even though he didn’t give her half his actual weight, it felt good. So good Dani forgot she was supposed to be laughing.

And then they were simply very close, and Zaf’s eyes were very dark, and his face was very soft and very dear.

“You know what, Danika Brown?” he said.

She snuggled deeper under his arm, but only because she was cold. “What?”

“You’re all right.”

“Just all right? What a disgraceful understatement.” But all right from Zaf felt a thousand times better than self-conscious compliments from someone else. All right from Zaf made her twinkle inside as if he’d made a night sky of her. Except people weren’t allowed to make things of Dani, so she snorted and shoved him, and everything was easy again. “I hope our online stalkers aren’t lurking somewhere, filming all this.”

“Fuck ’em,” Zaf said cheerfully, but she didn’t miss the faint remains of wariness in his eyes. He caught her hand and hauled them both to their feet.

It was ridiculous to feel a little flip in her stomach every time he manhandled her, but apparently, Dani was a ridiculous human being.

“All right,” he said. “We’d better go in.” Except he didn’t move. “Am I sweating?”

She pressed a hand to his forehead. “No.”

“Feels like I’m sweating.”

“Is that usually how it feels?”

He shocked her by answering with honesty rather than a roadblock of a grunt. “Yeah. You know when you exercise in the freezing cold, and your sweat is hot but your skin is like ice, and you can almost feel the salt?”

She nodded, pressing her lips together. There was a sorry little hollow in the space between her stomach and her ribs, and in that hollow lived a very sad gnome who was greatly displeased that Zaf struggled this way, but glad he hadn’t been alone this time.

She hoped he wasn’t ever alone.

“Feels like that,” he said. “And then there’s the whole lungs-clogged-with-water sensation.”

“Oh. Delightful.”

“And my stomach dropping out of my body like it’s made of lead.”

“Sounds ideal.”

Zaf nodded solemnly. “Fan-fucking-tastic. Dan?”

“Yes?”

“Is this your version of being supportive?”

“Yes,” she said. “You can probably tell it doesn’t come naturally. I apologize.”

“Don’t,” he murmured, so quiet she barely heard him over the passing traffic. “I like it.”

Three words, and the familiar ache of not quite being enough vanished in a B-movie flash. “Oh. Really?”

Her heart pounded in time with the rhythm of his reply. “Yeah. Really.”

Zaf might’ve been embarrassed about dealing with a full-blown panic attack in front of a woman he wanted to sleep with—if he hadn’t spent the last couple of years developing a curriculum designed to teach boys that mental health struggles didn’t make them less masculine, and that there was nothing wrong with being less masculine, anyway. So, once he pulled himself together, he felt nothing but familiar exhaustion, and the glitter of laughing with Dani, and a slight annoyance that he hadn’t brought his antianxiety meds.

He’d handled things, though. He’d handled things well. So he’d focus on that. Or maybe on Dani, who was so pretty, he could stare at her all day.

Until she ruined things by asking hard questions like “Should we talk about the fact that you’re nervous?”

Zaf sighed and made himself concentrate on words instead of the fine little creases at the corners of her eyes. “I’m not nervous. It’s just, if I disgrace myself on the radio, my mother will beat me with a slipper every day for at least the next year. And I bruise like a peach.”

She swept a laughing gaze over him. “You do look rather delicate.”