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Then I feel the circles he’s tracing over my back, and I know they’re real. So I open my eyes slowly.

“I was scared to wake up,” I whisper. “I thought maybe I dreamed all of this, and I’d wake up alone in a bed again, knowing nothing about you.”

Zayn tightens his arm around me and presses a tender kiss to my hair.

“Selene,” he murmurs softly, saying my name as though even speaking it carries a risk. “I can’t let this happen again.”

His words make me pull away from him, letting the headboard support me. I’m wide awake now, waiting for him to explain, but my heart is pounding so hard that I’m convinced he can hear every frantic beat.

I’m afraid to ask, so I wait for him to explain on his own.

When he doesn’t add anything else, though, my anxiety builds with every breath, tightening the pressure inside my chest.

“Zayn…”

“I don’t want to keep wondering if you’re going to get back together with your ex,” he says seriously, his tone firm. “Or if something from my past shows up and you run away from me one more time…”

There is something so detached in his voice that for a moment, I wonder if I’m the only one who allowed my feelings to take over earlier. The thought cuts straight through me.

“Zayn, I…”

But he doesn’t listen. He seems determined to say everything that has been weighing on his mind, as though this is a decision he has already made.

“I’m a jealous man, Selene,” he says, holding my gaze. “And I’m utterly consumed by you. So I need you to understand that being with me means your ex won’t have access to you anymore. No reason. No excuse.”

He pauses, watching me closely, making sure I’m listening, making sure I understand what he’s asking of me.

“And my attention and time will be focused entirely on you. Which means I’ll always need to know where you are, who you’re with, what you’re doing. Not because I don’t trust you, but because it’s a need that eats me alive, Selene.” His voice remains firm, the conviction behind his words unmistakable.

“Zayn…”

“You’ll also have to understand that there isn’t a single woman in this world I could ever care about or even look at.” His eyes remain fixed on mine. “Beside you.”

I stop trying to interrupt him because it’s obvious he won’t stop until he says everything he needs to say.

“I can’t go through another breakup with you,” he continues. “I can’t not know where you disappeared to, hiring private investigators just to find you…”

My eyes widen instantly, and his expression hardens as he gives me a look filled with accusation.

“And I can’t keep thinking that if something happens again, you’ll push me away without trying to fix things with me,” he adds calmly. “Because, Selene, I would never do anything that could make me lose you. Never.”

The seriousness in his voice makes tears spill down my cheeks.

“So please, if you think you can—and want to—live like this beside me…”

I throw my arms around him instead of answering and press soft kisses to his neck, breathing in the perfume that woke me. The same scent that makes my knees weak every single time I catch it around me.

“Most people would say everything happened so fast,” I whisper into his neck, and he tenses in my arms. “But those people don’t know that I’ve wanted you ever since I was still in another relationship.”

Zayn goes still in my arms.

“They don’t know that all it took was for you to show up somewhere I was, and my knees would go weak instantly. All it took was one look from you to make me forget everyone else around me,” I whisper shakily. “Or that I spent the night I got engaged crying because all I could think about was that you were there to watch me get engaged to someone else.”

He pulls away, searching my eyes, looking at me as if he’s trying to analyze every word, every expression, every truth I’m giving.

“This is the fucking truth, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise just because it makes me look like a bad person,” I explain with a shaky breath.

I need everything out in the open because I don’t want our relationship to be shadowed by doubts.