Infuriating.
I pressed against him, pushing up on my toes. “How dare you demand to know what’s in my heart when I’ve got no idea what’s in yours?”
He opened his mouth to respond, but I wasn’t finished.
“And!” I exhaled raggedly. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed that you still fancy Julian as much as I do.”
Ezra’s lips squirmed. With a blinding sort of indignation, I realized he was trying not to smile. “So?” he asked, ill-contained laughter a tremble in his voice. “Does that mean you still fancyme?”
I launched at him, more of a flail than anything else, and he caught my wrists easily and held me as I breathed raggedly.
“You’ll hurt yourself,” he whispered, the amusement on his face replaced by something else. Something that made his eyes darken.
“I don’t care.”
Then my wrists were free, and he was lifting me at the waist, and our mouths crushed together. I let out a wet gasp when my back thudded against the wall.
“Ezra,” I said—a warning. We’d be seen. We’d embarrass ourselves.
I’d burn up.
I’d burn to pieces.
He exhaled my name with a low rumble, his mouth against my throat, hot as a brand, his sweaty hair tickling my jaw. Heedless of my bandaged fingers, I pawed at him, pulled his shirt, scratched at his ribs until his mouth found mine once more and we made a messy attempt at kissing. My head knocked back against the boards behind me, and he winced when my thighs tightened around his waist. I’d never done anything—never felt anything—like this.
“What are youdoing?”
Ezra froze, his forehead pressing against my shoulder. His chest heaved against me. Pinned like that, I forced myself to look for the source of the question.
Julian stared at us with a nauseating mix of anger and hurt. He held a greasy rag in his hand, twisted it. “Have you no shame whatsoever?”
Gently released, I slid down the wall and ducked out of Ezra’s arms, leaving him leaning against the back of the general store, collecting himself. “Julian,” I tried to say, wiping my mouth self-consciously and running my fingers over the disarray of my curls.
Julian’s gaze shifted from us to the wall beside us, his expression faltering. I craned to see what he was staring at. Pasted over layers of sun-weathered posters, a newer one depicted a drawing of a grave beneath a dead tree. Conduction lines crisscrossed the top of the poster. The words were large and bold.
RESIST THE HOUSE OF INDUSTRY PROGRESS IS POISON
“Concise,” Ezra remarked weakly. “Compelling. It’s a good thing no one knows where the two of you came from. I’d rather none of us have our throats slit in our sleep.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Julian spoke stiffly, his words clipped and quiet. “There’s a private coach willing to take us as far as the train station in Grandville. We leave in an hour. Do try to be prepared.”
With that, he turned on his heel and left us in the shade of the store.
Sinking to sit at Ezra’s feet, I buried my face in my hands. For once, a flush didn’t overtake me. Instead, I felt as if Julian’s scathing stare had drained every bit of blood from my body. I wasn’t ashamed of kissing Ezra, of our helpless expression of anger and grief and want.
I was ashamed of the way we’d added to the pain lining Julian’s face and the way I wasn’t sure exactly what we’d done wrong. His expression had been more than simple disapproval or disappointment.
Ezra’s body made a scraping sound against the boards as he sank beside me, his thigh too warm against mine, too familiar and too close.
“Why aren’t you lovers anymore?” I dared to ask, my pulse erratic and thunderous in my ears.
He sighed with longing that echoed in me like the ache of an old bruise. “Because I didn’t believe in him.”
I wasn’t sure that was the whole truth. But at least we’d have days trapped in a stagecoach together to figure it out.
As if reading my mind, Ezra lifted his face to the sky and whispered, “Fuck.”
I’d traveled by coach only twice—on the way to the train station from the House of Industry in Sterling City, and to the House of Industry as a small child. I had faint memories of riding in the back of wagons or on horseback before that, scrabbling for purchase around the waist of an adult. I couldn’t recall if it had been my mother or father or someone else, but in the memories, I’d laughed, unconcerned.
