**Stella's POV** Shawn's question sits in the car with us. I don't answer it immediately, which is already an answer, and we both know it. I turn back to the window. The city is fully awake now — pedestrians, morning traffic, the glass faces of buildings catching the early light — and I watch all of it without seeing any of it, because the honest answer to his question is the one thing I cannot afford to say out loud. No, I'm not sure. I haven't been sure since the first moment he touched me, and the fact that I spent the better part of last night constructing a very clean, very reasonable explanation for why it was a last time suggests I'm even less sure than I'd like to admit. But that is not information Shawn Black gets to have. "The boundary stands," I say finally, my voice level. "Whether I'm sure or not is irrelevant." I feel him look at me. Then a scoff — low, almost private. "That's not a no," he says. "It's not an invitation either." A beat. Then, quietly
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