Tag didn’t trust her own reaction.
Ferris was an outsider. He was a stranger and a new arrival. She’d learned young that visitors never brought anything good with them, and that outsiders weren’t to be trusted. Worse, he’d smelled like forest and earth when she’d opened the door, like the outdoors and the open fields. Tag stifled a shudder. She hated the wilderness. She hated the unpredictability of the natural world, of animals and even of other people. Emotions and instincts were unreliable and inconsistent.
Just look at her now, intrigued by a guy who couldn’t be more wrong for her. It was irrational to the point of being stupid. He was just new, different. If she’d met him in a crowd, he wouldn’t have been interesting.
It was his name that got her. Ferris. When she was young, Tag ha
