Or was I meant to tear everything down to make space for Julian’s vision of the future?
“Hey. Have another bite,” Ezra said. Frustratingly tender, he’d been feeding me pieces of warm biscuits and honey between remarks on the frailty of my city-dweller skin.
“We can’t all be ferrymen,” I said, cross. “My calluses happen to be quite specialized.”
“I told you, knowing how to operate a raft doesn’t make me a ferryman.”
“Is that why we ended up nearly drowning in the Dry Bone?” I asked with my mouth full. “We should have had a proper ferryman at the helm.”
He rolled his eyes and gave me a big enough bite to silence me for quite some time. I appreciated the meal and the rest. We had a long journey ahead to find Nikola in Sterling City.
Across the street, Julian was helping a farmer repair the gears on a grain drill. He had his sleeves rolled up and his vest hung up on a rail. In a steady, patient voice, he explained what he was doing to the children who had gathered to watch. Even without using radiance, he managed to diagnose why the gears had been sticking.
“He enjoys a problem,” I observed.
Ezra followed my gaze. “So do you, it seems.”
I turned back to him, frowning. “What?”
“You look at him a certain way.”
My frown deepened to something hot and annoyed. “What way is that, exactly?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I said ‘a certain way.’” Ezra held up more biscuit, and I jerked my head away with a small growl.
“Don’t try to shut me up. What are you trying to say?”
“Only that it seems to me you’re sweet on him. And he doesn’t like girls. And he’s insufferable. Thus, you enjoy a problem.”
“That’s quite an observation from you. Someone who hatched a plan to thoroughly humiliate me!” I shouted.
Everyone across the street had paused, though only a few dared to glance over at us. I ducked my chin, mortification flashing cold-hot through me over the way I’d raised my voice. I saw Julian’s head shake ever so slightly before he resumed working.
“Be quiet,” I whispered to Ezra impatiently.
“I am not the one shouting,” Ezra pointed out. “And I don’t care who you’re sweet on.”
Resisting the urge to shove the biscuits down Ezra’s throat until he choked, I took a deep, slow breath. “Is that so?”
His gaze lowered as he set the tin plate of biscuits aside and absently licked honey from his fingers. “No, it isn’t so. I suppose what I mean is if you’re sweet on him, that’s all right.”
“I do care for him,” I admitted, my head spinning with the effort to try to explain my tangled feelings. “It’s different from the way I feel about you. I don’t … well, I don’t want to kiss him. But that doesn’t mean I care less, does it?”
Ezra smiled to himself. “I don’t think it means you care less. I think you’re asking yourself the right questions. You’re learning how your heart works.”
“Then stop carrying on about problems,” I said with a huff.
“The real problem with Julian is that you think you dislike him tremendously up until you don’t,” Ezra mused, looking across the street at him.
Irritated, I pushed to my feet. “Come with me.”
Ezra watched me warily. “Where?”
The look I gave him left no room for argument. Looking appropriately concerned, Ezra picked himself up and followed me around the back of the general store. Here, we stood in a dirt lot surrounded by a few empty troughs and no onlookers. I found myself breathless with frustration, not at Ezra but at how difficult it was to understand my own mind. Sometimes simply looking at Ezra made me angry, angry at how much I—
I didn’t want to give the feeling a name.
“You’re rather scary sometimes,” Ezra said, scratching his neck. He wore a borrowed shirt that didn’t fit him right. It should have looked ridiculous. Instead, I wanted to get close to him, touch him where it clung to his skin.
