“Let me ask you something,” Diane continued. “In all the time he was here—all those weeks of living in your house, watching you learn magic, dealing with your chaos—did he ever once try to make you smaller?”
Cassie thought about it. Really thought about it.
About the morning he’d made her coffeewithout asking, just because he’d noticed she was tired. About the way he’d talked her through the thunderstorm, patient and steady, never once suggesting she was overreacting. About the music box, and the way he’d fixed it without being asked, just because she’d been sad.
About the things he’d said:You’re not too much. You’re exactly enough.
About the way he’d looked at her, even when she was glowing and setting things on fire and creating weather patterns in her kitchen.
“No,” she admitted. “He never tried to change me.”
“He didn’t tell you to calm down? To be less emotional? To stop being so dramatic?”
“No.”
“Even when you literally pushed him across a farmers market with accidental magic?”
Cassie winced. “Even then. He just looked… sad. Tired. Like he was watching me destroy something he wanted to keep.”
“That’s because he was.” Diane’s voice was firm. “He wasn’t trying to make you smaller, Cass. He was trying to make room for all of you. The chaos and the magic and the too-much-ness. And you kept pushing him away because you couldn’t believe anyone would actually want that.”
The tears came then. Not the ugly sobbing of the night before, but a quieter kind of grief—for thetime she’d wasted, for the pain she’d caused, for the woman she could have been if she’d just been brave enough to believe she deserved good things.
“That letter from your aunt,” Diane said, gentler now. “You said she spent sixty years alone because she pushed away someone who would have stayed. Sixty years, Cass. Is that what you want? To be seventy or eighty-something and wondering what might have been if you’d just been brave enough to let someone love you?”
“No.”
“Then what are you doing sitting here feeling sorry for yourself when there’s a man at a motel twenty minutes away who’s waiting to see if you’re going to show up?”
The question hung in the air.
Cassie looked at her coffee, gone cold now. Looked at the gray walls that seemed to be listening. Looked at Luna, who had curled up on the counter and was pretending to be asleep but definitely wasn’t.
She thought about Derek. About twenty years of making herself smaller. About the way he’d looked at her at the farmers market, still so certain he knew who she was, still so confident that she was the problem.
She thought about Liam. About the music box and the thunderstorm and the way he’d looked at her like she was something worth seeing. About hispatience and his frustration and the raw hurt in his eyes when she’d pushed him away with magic she couldn’t control.
She thought about Elspeth. About Thomas. About sixty years of lonely what-ifs.
And she thought about herself. About the woman she’d been before Derek convinced her she was too much. About the woman she was becoming, with magic crackling under her skin and a talking cat and a house that changed colors with her moods.
That woman was chaotic. Messy. Too much and not enough and everything in between.
But maybe—maybe—she was also worth choosing.
She pulled out Elspeth’s letter and read it again. The words she’d memorized by now, burned into her brain like a brand:
You are not too much, my darling. You are exactly enough. You always have been.
“I’ve been the one holding myself back,” Cassie said slowly. “This whole time. It wasn’t the magic ruining my life. It was fear.”
“Ding ding ding.” Diane mimed pressing a game show button. “She finally gets it.”
“I pushed him away because I was scared of what it would mean if he stayed.”
“Yep.”
“And now he’s gone and the binding is brokenand I still—” Her voice cracked. “I still want him. Even without the magic. Even without any excuse. I just… want him.”
