“What?” I shouted viciously. Gertrude had looked at me like that when I’d struck her with radiance and promised I wouldn’t do it again. When I’d shown her how weak and mean I truly was. It was only a matter of time before Ezra understood the same thing she did—that I was hopeless.
Anger felt good. Felt much better than missing her and wanting him.
Ezra took a step back and eyed me warily. “Are you always this moody?”
“You don’t know the half of it,” I muttered, trembling. I closed my hands into tight fists and tried to understand why tripping over a stone had enraged me. Why did I feel so much?
“That’s what I’m worried about.” He sank into a crouch, and for a heartbeat, I thought he might spring at me like a wild animal. Then I realized that he was only responding to the skittering light around my body. He was slipping into a defensive stance. He was frightened.
Radiance danced on my skin, thready veins of white-hot light. I tried to will it away.
“I’m not troubled by the way youfeel,” he gritted out, as if it pained him to speak. “It’s this.” He gestured carefully. “You’re not as disciplined as you think you are. What if you kill someone? What if you do something you can’t take back?”
My breath sucked in with a sharp hiss, and I jammed my hands into my pockets. My trousers would do nothing to curb the flow of radiance, but hiding my hands helped me restrain myself. I wanted to tell him that losing control was exactly what I was afraid of.
But I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t make it that real.
“Something’s wrong with me?” I asked instead, because it was easier to blame him for seeing it. It took everything I had to keep from setting my own pockets on fire. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“No. Something’s wrong with radiance. Fundamentally. And you know it.” He scrubbed his hands over his face and ran them back through his sweaty hair until he looked like he wore a twiggy bird’s nest on his head. “You know it in your heart. Isn’t that why you’re angry?”
He was wrong. Something was fundamentally wrong with my control. Not my radiance. “Don’t presume to know what I feel.”
“Anyone could see that you’re close to boiling over.” His voice broke, the wrecked sound of it startling me. “But you’d have killed someone by now if you weren’t a good person. You’re good.”
He sounded regretful.
“You are confusing,” I whispered, wanting to sink to the dirt and curl up in the thick clover alongside the path. I reached for something biting to say and found nothing but hollowness around my lungs.
Ezra straightened, no longer crouched like a cornered animal. Still, something shadowed his gaze as he studied me.
You’re good.The echo of it lingered on my skin. Why had he sounded disappointed? Did he expect something terrible of me?
I didn’t want to know. Not right now when my mind was already overly full.
“I know I’m not a ruthless killer,” I said, trying to make the words light. “I grew up with the most irritating people in the world. They survived, didn’t they?”
He didn’t smile. “What would happen if you had a good reason to take a life?”
“Then I’d do it,” I snapped. “Wouldn’t you?”
Ezra’s lips parted. The woods were quiet enough for me to hear how sharply he inhaled. And then he sighed. “I don’t think so. I don’t want to. I wouldn’t want to.”
“So, rather than defend yourself, you’d give up and die?” I asked, my voice too thin.
We regarded each other in silence until the train whistle sounded shrilly, making me jump.
“The shipment,” I said, groaning. “I’m going to be late to work. I’ve got to go.”
“Of course,” he said with another small sigh. He gestured for me to lead the way on the path, and I couldn’t blame him. I’d just admitted that I’d kill someone if given cause. He’d called me good, but he’d said it as if the word were a splinter. Maybe I’d do him a favor and prove him wrong.
It would be easier for both of us if he hated me.
As I jogged toward the train yard, birdsong and our heavy footsteps gave way to the grunts and shouts of people working, and the heavy thuds of machinery. At the tree line, I stopped short to smooth my blouse and the front of my trousers, then adjust my tool belt. A few stray flower petals fell from my hair when I ran my fingers back through my close-cropped curls. I wasn’t naive enough to ignore the conclusions others would jump to if they saw me rushing from the woods with a boy, mussed and covered in bits of plants.
Ezra plucked a blossom from the scarf at my throat. His fingers brushed my skin. “There,” he said softly.
A shiver ran up my legs. I resisted the urge to startle away—or surge toward him. The impulse was as hot as my anger had been. As impossible to ignore. But I only trembled.
