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“I’m sure there will be,” Jewel answered, having already thought of all of this at least two or three times over.

Lea drew in a ragged breath. “I don’t want to be an experiment.”

Jewel nearly choked on her breath. She pivoted everything she had on that one moment, on that one sentence, and she shook her head. “You’re not an experiment.”

“You haven’t been with women.”

“I’ve dated women, Lea. I dated one for months in college.”

“Is that your longest relationship with a woman?”

Jewel flinched, but she wasn’t going to lie. “Yes. And to answer your next question, no, we didn’t have sex.”

“So this is an experiment,” Lea asserted.

“No, it’s not. I promise you. I don’t want this to just be testing the waters. I don’t need to do that. I’ve had sex, Lea, just not with a woman. I don’t need to have sex with you to know I’m attracted to women. I am attracted to them. I’m attracted to you.”

“But why?”

“Really?” Jewel scoffed. “God, you’re utterly brilliant, but you can’t see this?”

Lea’s lips parted in surprise.

“I like you because of you. You’re so compassionate. You give everything you have and more to your students. You are so detail-oriented that it doesn’t even faze you half the time that the rest of the world isn’t. You’re so in control of your life, your emotions—you know what you want, every moment of every day. You’re the strongest, kindest, most empathetic person I have ever met.”

Jewel could barely stand to look at her. The surprise that had been there before hadn’t vanished, but it had morphed, changing with something else, something Jewel couldn’t name, and she wasn’t about to ask either.

“I wish you could see you through my eyes. Then you would know.”

“I guess I would.” Lea’s voice was so quiet, Jewel almost missed it.

The pounding of hooves pulled them out of the conversation. Eli came around the corner of the road. She pulled her horse to a stop and looked at both of them before grinning. “I figured you two would be farther up. Come on. We can take the north trail.”

“Sure,” Lea answered, her cheeks still red, her eyes still wide, and her voice off in the distance as if she wasn’t really paying attention to what she was saying.

Mercy moved as soon as the others did, taking Jewel with her wherever they were going. She had no control over what they were doing that day. The only thing she could do was follow.