Ezra's lips pressed into a thin line, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed down the disappointment brought along by my response to his proposition. "Why?" he finally asked, the words catching somewhere on their way up his throat. "You know everything now! We never would have broken up if you knew it was actually me rescuing you. Why are you still trying to punish me? We've been getting along alright, haven't we? Doesn't that prove we could still work?"
Unprepared for a rejection to my rejection, I scrambled for an excuse that didn't hint at my future misdeeds.
"You lied to my face," I accused. "As Tempest. You said you weren't the one to stop me from getting hit by the car at that coffee shop, but you were there — as you! As yourself? Out of costume, as a — a human." I scrubbed a hand down my face and groaned. "You know what I mean."
"I didn't lie." Then, wincing, he amended, "That time, at least. I was telling the truth. I don't know who else has wind powers or who may have done it, but it wasn't me. I wish it had been, truly, but I reacted too slow, and before I knew it you were already on the air, freaking out."
"I did not freak out. I was proportionately distressed given the circumstances."
"Sure," he said in the spirit of appeasement, without any true conviction. "But I didn't lie, so if that's your only reason—"
"It's not," I interrupted. "What's this really about? We'd been friends for awhile before dating, but we were never that serious. Like, come on, you're a superhero, and not just any Super, either. You're the Super other Supers compare themselves to. Don't try to convince me that you can't get any girl you want, because I won't believe you. They'll be lining up down the street just to meet you, so there's no need to be so pressed about this. You'll find someone else."
Someone not trying to steal his employer's secrets and abscond off into the woods to live their days in isolation, preferably.
He surprised me with his sincerity, and the vulnerability of his response. "I don't know if I will. I'll never know if they're only seeing me for my mask and my fame. I'll never know if their feelings for me are genuine. I want something real, someone who likes me for me."
I almost impulsively snapped that at the moment I wasn't liking him very much, either. Alas, that was too mean, even for me. To the contrary of what he seemed to think, we had no romantic future together whatsoever, but how to convince him of that?
"Ezra..." I sighed. "Can't you do again what you're doing here? Get to know a girl, and then when you're sure she's not after you for being Tempest, spring it on her that you're actually a superhero. There! Problem solved."
"Because that's obviously working so well for me right now," he said, walking the edge between sounding sarcastic and plain whiny.
Either way, my dads did not raise me to give into the whims of whiny men. No guilt trip would ever work on me. I was immune. Impervious. I'd drawn my firm line in the sand, and now it was up to him to see it.
"That tactic's not working with me because we obviously aren't meant to be together in the long term," I said, not unkind, but firm. "When it's meant to be, your girlfriend will understand why you kept the secret from her, and she'll accept you as you are."
Not me, though. Better luck next time, buddy.
"I can't go around telling girlfriend after girlfriend about my secret identity and hope that eventually it works out. When it doesn't, that will just be one more person out there who knows who I really am. Maybe you don't understand the risk that comes with having your identity known to the public, but it's never good."
Trust me, I thought grimly, recalling everything my father had told me about my grandfather, I get it, more than you know.
"You were awful quick to presume I won't expose you," I felt obligated to point out.
"Because I know you'd never tell."
My jaw actually dropped. "I've told you to your face at least a dozen times that I'd love nothing more than to collect a check by telling everyone your business. As a matter of fact, my first call after you leave this room is to the most salacious reporter I can find. What part of all that gave you the impression that I'd," I whipped out the air-quotes, "'never tell'?"
Eyes rolling, he said, "You're not going to tell anyone. You can drop the act. I know you better than that."
I took grave offense at his assertion. "You're only making me want to prove you wrong," I warned him.
"You're being deliberately stubborn."
I shrugged. "Guilty as charged, but I could say the same about you."
He took a step closer, and I stood my ground, watching him approach through a cold lens of emotional indifference. He was graced with powers beyond comprehension, but so was I, apparently. How much could I heal, I wondered. A few cuts? A broken arm or two? What about a severed limb? That seemed like something I should look into.
Later.
It wasn't an immediate concern. After all, I trusted enough in Ezra, in our previous relationship and the friendship that preceded it, to feel at ease, if not slightly awkward, in his presence. He wouldn't hurt me.
"Give me a chance." Only a handspan away, he stopped, making the cramped room feel suffocating by his proximity. "Just one. There's an event I'd like you to come to with me - as my date. We'll have fun; It will remind you why we dated in the first place. It's a private affair, so you won't need to worry about being jumped by my fans in a dark alley. Zero cameras allowed."
"I don't know..." I said wearily. How many times did I need to reject him for him to understand? It was more difficult to be staunch in my stance with him so close. "I think I've had my fill of Guild Gala's for one lifetime. I don't think my heart can handle that much excitement with any frequency."
Or another roof falling on my head. Especially that.
He cracked a small, tense smile, that played at being lighthearted. "It's not like that, like, at all. It's just a small dinner to thank some of the higher paying donors. That's it."
"The Gala was supposed to have a dinner, too," I pointed out.
"The Gala had over three hundred guests and an open bar. This is less than fifty."
"I could do with an open bar..."
"Be serious for just one moment, I'm begging you."
"And in what universe does 'less than fifty' count as small?"
"Lily!"
Diversionary tactics: a failure.
Unable to handle the confrontation any longer, I pulled away and turned around, a clear dismissal. "Fine. I'll think about it. No guarantees, though, so don't get your hopes up. In fact, get your hopes low. Very low. Subterranean."
"Perfect! Thinking about it is all I ask." I could hear his accursed beaming grin in his voice, and the obvious disregard of my plea for him to anticipate an inevitable no. "The dinner is in three weeks. October eighteenth. You have until then to give me an answer — a yes, I'm sure."
"Don't count on it," I told the wall, folding my arms rigidly across my chest.
"Ever the ray of sunshine, aren't you?" he laughed, somehow still buoyed by my lackluster response. "Well, I'll leave you to finish unpacking. I'll check up on you later."
"Please don't."
"Bye!"
A ray of sunshine.
His words echoed in my head long after the door clicked shut. Maybe that was part of the problem, why I was no longer unconcerned with how our puzzle pieces never clicked snugly together. We'd never fit perfectly in the first place. I knew that, but I hadn't minded in the past the way I did now. Even as a joke, I chafed at the notion that I was supposed to be bright and cheerful and unbothered by what I'd been through. A ray of bloody sunshine.
I wasn't one, and never would be. Ezra didn't understand that. He always had the ability to protect himself, so he never experienced the same brand of fear I had in the woods, or when I met Shade every time we crossed paths, or when my brother and mother died and I hadn't. He couldn't understand the ways that I'd changed, and worse yet, I doubted that he accepted I was changed at all from the girl he knew.
But I'd walked through fire, and one didn't come out the other side the same person. No amount of denial could change that.
I accepted it. Eventually, he would, too.