Of all the times I’ve walked into the woods in my dreams, I haven’t had a purpose in mind. And sure, it’s only eight p.m., but who says it has to be three a.m. to run into your werewolf ex-husband in the woods?
21
Elise
I have been power-walking the hills of Mystic Falls for the better part of an hour now, and I have yet to flag down a particular werewolf. Jogging went away pretty fast, because I don’t have that kind of stamina, unfortunately. I’m a fucking chef, not a marathon runner.
It’s times like these that I miss Boston’s public transportation system, something that never happened until I moved out here. Fucking mountains. Ugh, this is why Shawn was always complaining about there being nowhere good to hike when we were together, because he was used to roaming around actual fucking mountains.
Low-key, a lot more little things like that are starting to make sense.
I peak over a hill and check my watch. Eight forty-five. Maybe it would be quicker to just call him, if I hadn’t blocked his number and deleted his contact info off my phone forever ago. I was really starting to regret that, even if it had been justified at the time.
Evening creeps up around the edges of the horizon. It’s one of those summer nights that bleeds into the day, staying up past its curfew.
I look around and recognize most of Mystic Falls. Large rocks jutted randomly out of the landscape amongst low, wandering fieldstone walls that one could easily step over.There’s the occasional building that dots along the winding mountain road, most structures sagging from their years: paint chipped and wood rotted. Even the lasting fieldstone structures had a handmade, cobbled quality to them. I find the shape of the brewery just a service road away from the main highway, the tall, brick-walled factory on one side, renovated glass walls of the offices and outdoor tables on the other side standing sharply out from the landscape, the only recent construction in sight.
And then, further up the road, the familiar slant of shoulders, the faded back of a band T-shirt I remember wearing to bed a number of times.
“Shawn!” I call out, perhaps not as loudly as I should to get his attention. Even from a distance away, he turns around, and I see his expression shift to alarmed the moment he catches sight of me.
He glances between me and the brewery, and after a moment, decides to cut through one of the fields to meet me. The mist hangs low over the ground, and I finally get close enough to him as he steps over one of those meandering fieldstone walls to me.
“What are you doing out here?” he asks, glancing at the sky, the ghostly, almost invisible moon creeping higher overhead.
“Looking for you.”
“Yeah, but...” he glances back at the sky one more time, like he’s worried it’ll swoop down on him. He eyes me carefully, a muscle tensing in his jaw.
The last ten or so feet between us feel like they might as well be a hundred more, when he finally sighs and shakes his head.He glances over his shoulder one more time, and then sits down against the wall.
“You already know.”
Instantly, my throat feels tight. It’s not the way I wanted to broach the subject, for him to just throw the truth at my feet, as if it weren’t even worth it to say it out loud.
No, I’m resolved to squash any guilt I have about not telling him I saw him shift from one form to another. He’s had years to tell me himself. It didn’t feel like betrayal, but a void between us, a cruel gap that lived between our hearts, a murmur between chambers. It was the first broken seam, the chip where all our issues wedged themselves and pried us apart.
“You knew in the boutique, then too.” He digs his hands deep in his pocket, his mouth set in a hard line. “And you were just going to wander around for how long? Elise, if you know, then...God, what if I hurt you?”
“I don’t think you would have.”
He groans and leans back, bringing his hands up to scrub over his face. He looks pleadingly at the clear, fading blue sky. “You don’t understand. I’m not myself when I...I don’t have the ability to rationalize and control myself as well as when I’m human.”
I bristle, unable to keep it out of my tone when I say, “Well, if I don’t understand, clearly there’s a reason for it. You didn’t tell me anything!”
He doesn’t even meet my eyes. “I always meant to tell you, really.”
“When? When were you going to tell me? Eight years ago?”
“I wanted to tell you...I’ve needed to tell you. But the truth was harder to express than I thought,” he says, and I do understand that, and sympathize.
It was definitely not on my bingo card for reasons our relationship crumbled; I don’t know that I would have believed him if he’d just told me, how I would have reacted if he’d tried to show me.
“I was afraid you would leave me if you knew. Even though it was inevitable that not knowing would eventually drive you away,” Shawn says. “And I couldn’t bring myself to let go of you. I always knew you were too good for me. And when we were falling apart, I kept convincing myself if I could just keep us together, we’d make it through and be happy. But it was unfair to you, and...I’m sorry. I wish I’d ended things before it got to that place.”
I can see the way he must have thought he could keep me and his family both happy.
“Fuck, Elise. I would have told you if I’d known how,” he says, voice hoarse with emotion. He shakes his head and swallows. “I still don’t know, honestly. Maybe it doesn’t matter, we’ll say goodbye after the wedding anyway.”
