I probably deserve worse, she thought.
And doubly so, when he revealed his actual motive: the tree. Their hollowed-out tree. Still with the blue tarpaulin over the entrance, in a way that made her heart clench and her breath catch in her throat. She had to turn away to hide the tears that were in her eyes, immediately, at the idea that he must have looked after the tree all this time.
And then she followed him in, andoh.
Oh, they had been right, somehow they had been right.
Because inside, it wasmagical.
It was twice as large as it should have been, and filled with everything you’d ever want to see inside an enchanted tree. Therewere toadstools for seats, a blanket of stars for lights, a carpet of moss far greener than moss ever usually was. And thicker, too. The second she made her way inside, her shoes sank in almost up to the laces. Each step felt like heaven.
And there was more, so much more. A small stove with a chimney, shelves filled with fantastical-looking books, tiny cabinets brimming with all sorts of things. As she stood there taking it all in, Seth rummaged through one of them. Then finally came up with a jar of jam, and cookies wrapped in wax paper. Some cheese too, of a kind she had never seen before. And a heel of bread that smelled so divine her mouth watered.
She sat down on one of the toadstools before he had even gestured.
Then she watched as he boiled a tiny kettle, and brewed and stewed and sieved. He made her a teeny cup of tea, and handed it to her. And it was only when she reached for it that she managed to stop marveling at everything long enough to speak. “I should be taking care of you, Seth,” she said.
But she could tell he didn’t get it, even before he replied.
He looked at his filthy shirt and his healed but blood-smeared hands instead.
“Hey, I’m okay. They didn’t do anything to me. It was mostly just insults and tying me up and trying to use my blood to replicate whatever potions you gave me. I really don’t think they thought through any of what they did,” he said.
Because he was a fool. A lovely, lovely fool.
“And that’s good, Seth, it’s really good, but whatever they did isn’t the reason I think so,” she explained, and now he winced. Now he looked away.
“Yeah, but I was kind of hoping we could skip right over that.”
“We already have skipped over that. Forwaytoo long.”
“And it was working fine. We were best buds again. Everything was cool. In fact, it was so cool that you somehow believed I would never do that thing they said I did to you, despite having photographic evidence that I had.”
He looked at her then. Same way he had on the stage—full ofastonishment and gratitude and awe. Like she was something so special and generous. Even though she wasn’t at all. She was terrible, and he needed to know that.
“Because you’re a good person, who earned my trust.”
“So now you don’t want to? Now you can’t, because I lied?”
“Seth, I don’t feel like you lied. I feel like you tried to spare my feelings.”
He sighed then. Shook his head. And finally looked at her. Gaze fierce, and more full of warmth than she deserved. “It wasn’t about your feelings, Cass. It was about what I knew you’d do once you had them. Because let’s be honest, if I had said, after that medicine you made worked and I put two and two together about everything, ‘Hey, I think you might have accidentally turned me into a werewolf,’ you wouldnothave been chill about it. You would have run around doing everything you could to make it up to me, up to and including forgiving me for what I did to you. And I didn’t want that,” he said.
Though all that did was confuse her. “But youdidwant that.”
“No, I really did not.”
“Seth, all you’ve wanted is to be friends again.”
“Yeah, therealway. The actual forgiveness way. Not some phony thing you only do because you feel bad,” he protested, intensely enough that she had no response. She simply let his words sink in, and by the time they had he was calmer. “If we became buddies again, I wanted toearnit. I wanted to earn your trust and your love. I never wanted to wonder if that trust and love only existed because you felt you owed it to me.”
After which, she still couldn’t speak. But now it was for a different reason. Now she wasn’t just taken aback. She was being swallowed whole by her own heart. She had to simply live in that love for him, for a long moment, before she could get any words out.
And the first ones she managed were still tear-choked and terrible.
“I did something that awful to you, and all you thought about was making sure I could really believe in you. That if I loved you again, I loved you truly,” she said, and shook her head, marveling.“I don’t even know how you did it. How you made yourself that okay with it.”
But he just looked bemused. “I didn’thaveto make myself okay about it, Cass. Iwasokay. Iamokay. It was a fuckingaccident. You never intended to actually turn me into a werewolf. I don’t even think the potion was meant to do that. I think it was meant to protect you from harm, because I didn’t feel one thing after that. I didn’t turn. I didn’t show any signs of anything like it. In fact, you know when I did? When I saw that they wanted to keep hurting you. That’s when I thought,If I am a beast, I want to be one who can keep her safe. And a wolf was what I thought of. And what I became,” he said, so earnestly she wanted to accept that. She wanted to feel some relief, that she hadn’t been as responsible as she’d thought.
