“I’m a failure,” I croak.
“No. No, you aren’t. You’re just…”
I collapse against my pillow. “I don’t need your kind words.”
Heavy footfalls ease toward me, and the next thing I know, Samson’s crouching at my bedside, bracing his tattooed arms atop his knees. “Good. I can’t think of a kind way to ask whether or not you’re having a nervous breakdown.”
Several consecutive hollow laughs escape me. “Don’t be ridiculous. This is just my astigmatism.”
“Mm,” he rumbles. “I see.”
“Good for you. I can’t.”
He exhales a humored puff. “Okay, Orange Juice. Talk to me.”
My thoughts stagger. SurelymySamson didn’t just call me by a nickname. Sniffly, I peek out at him. “What did you just say?”
“Talk to me.”
I swallow. “Before that.”
A brow arches. “Orange Juice? Why? Didn’t like it?”
“Isn’t it…a bit weird for you to call someone by a nickname?”
He lifts his beautiful shoulders. “Is it? I don’t think so. I call Lazul an idiot all the time.”
That…is very much not the same thing.
Taking in air, I say, “I’m sorry I’ve worried you. I’m overwhelmed, which is nothing new, and it’s not like I had a support system before I came here. I just…” Had a work schedule and bills that forced me to get up and pretend I was okay. Day-in, day-out. Pretending. Panicking in the bathroom. Wishing my freezer privileges hadn’t been cruelly ripped from my sad little Floridian hands. “There are so many steps. So much to do. Nothing is linear. Everything is more complicated than I know how to deal with. I can’t anticipate every detail, but what I can expect is too much already, just on its own. Lazul is letting me live here so I can help with disaster relief, but I can’t even help myself. My mind is spinning, and I’m spiraling, and I can’t breathe, and—”
“Shh,” Samson murmurs, dragging a lock of my hair away from my cheek. It tries to stick, and that’s how I know I’m…crying. “Lazul has no right putting this kind of pressure on you. All the problems he wants you to fix aren’t yours to deal with. They’re ours. You have done more than enough good in a single week to earn your keep here for months. You don’t have to tackle everything you see around us that’s broken. If you do nothingother than tend this farm and provide Kao with fresh produce, that is more than enough.”
A tear traces down my cheek. “What happened to being wary of me? How come you’re suddenly so kind to a stranger when you barely tolerate being around the people you threatened me to protect?”
He swipes the rough pad of his thumb beneath my eye, catching the moisture. “Who knows? Maybe you’re easy to tolerate. Maybe they’ve never brought me chocolates.” He plants an elbow on my bed and settles his chin in his palm. “It’s hard to distrust someone who makes herself ill with worry over a sorry group of strangers. Last I checked, the people I grew up around wouldn’t bother having panic attacks alone in their pitiful shacks. Hurting like this, Citrus, doesn’t do you any good unless you’re faking and you make it public. You haven’t.”
Guilt riots in my chest all the same. “It sounds like I bought your favor with sweets.”
“Yup.” He rises. “My care is fickle and one hundred percent dependent on sugar. Hence, the wellness check on my dealer.” Peering at the disgraceful single-room farmhouse, he grunts. “Would it be overstepping if I helped you organize your sorry excuse of a storage system? I just find it personally offensive is all.”
Everything in me deflates. “S-sorry.”
“Nothing to apologize for. It’s a relief to know you’re human and not naturally good at everything.” He juts his thumb at a chest. “May I?”
I gnaw on my lip and nod, so he lowers himself to the lid and begins rifling through the contents. A swear hisses out of him. “Void bags suspend time, Citrus, but you can’t just keep perishables in wooden boxes. You have to dry your herbs and jar your fruit. You’re lucky this mess hasn’t gone bad yet.”
I shrink. “Right. Yeah…that makes…sense.”
Sighing, he closes the lid and hefts the entire chest onto one big beautiful shoulder, then grunts, “Come on.”
Come on?
Come onwhere?
I can’t be expected to follow the big beautiful man who just threw a hundred pounds of assorted goods onto his shoulder, can I? There’s a billion minus three pears in there. Unlike in the game, where you shake a tree and two-to-five fruits fall, the pear tree on the northwest forage side of the map was loaded nearly to broken branches. To reach it, I had to cut my way through debris and mud, past an overfull swamp that—in game—is one of the major fishing lakes.
Little and large things all aroundscreamthat this isn’t a game.
