His jawline contracts, all the lies reflected back in his face. “I wanted to tell you,” he tries. “I was going to…” He doesn’t finish, but he doesn’t look away from me either.
My head spins, confused. Mom never mentioned Oak’s dad—but she rarely talked about the men in her life. She swung easily from one romance to another. Like Archer, she never took love seriously, never considered the crumpled hearts she left in her wake. It was always about survival. And she didn’t care who got hurt.
“My mom left with your dad…,” I mutter, trying to piece it together. “And you knew it. All along?” The photo in my hand starts to feel heavy, like it’s gaining weight, like it’s going to slip from my fingers and fall into the fire, burning to nothing. “Is this why you were following me, why you came to my school that first day?” I try to remember how to breathe, but the air tastes like dust. Like everything he never said. “Because you knew who my mom was?”
His throat tightens, and he sways a little on his feet. “It’s been three years since my dad left…. I kept waiting for him to come back,” he whispers. “But he never did.” For a long moment he is silent, breathing, like he’s searching for the right way to explain. “I finally got up the courage…. I wanted to see for myself.” He shakes his head. “I needed to see the family that ruined mine.” There is hurt in his eyes, a raw kind of pain I’ve never seen in him before, and it tangles up all my emotions. “I wanted to hate you….” His green eyes drive straight through me. “But when I saw you outside theschool, I felt something… like…” He winces. “Like something was burning me from the inside out.”
My hands shake, not wanting to hear this.
He felt what the tulips wanted him to feel.Love.A pull toward me, unexplainable, perilous. He felt an ache, a need, a desire that wasn’t real.
It never was.
I swallow, the feeling inside me like a sudden storm, a sea crashing against rocks, violent and terrible.
Everything between us has been a lie from the start.
He takes a risky step toward me. “I wanted to know if I could be around you… and not feel something. I wanted to prove to myself that I was stronger than my father, that I could resist a Goode.”
I feel like I’m going to be sick. I thought he was immune; I thought the tulips had no effect on him. But maybe I onlywantedto believe it.Needed to.I was stupid. Wrong. He felt what everyone else does, but he fought it, resisted, for as long as he could.
This is why he’s tried to keep his distance, why he pulls away when we get too close—because he feels himself falling,tumbling, an urge to be even closer to me. The enchantment digging its way under his skin. That day in the boat, I asked about his father, and it must have reminded him of why he came to find me in the first place—it reminded him of the promise he made to himself, not to fall in love, not to repeat what his father did.
“He bought it for her,” he says, nodding to the photo still in my hands. “Only a few months after they met, he bought her that sailboat. He was so in love with her.”
I bite down on all the pain cracking through my ribs, makingmy heart feel shriveled and black and worthless. “Was she ever here, in this house?” My eyes dart around the living room, trying to imagine her seated on the low gray couch, trying to imagine her at ease within these cold walls.
But Oak shakes his head. “No. He never brought her here—he knew how I felt. I had heard about the Goodes at school, heard rumors. I told him that she couldn’t be trusted, but he didn’t care.” He dips his chin, eyes to the floor, breathing. Oak thought the Goodes couldn’t be trusted… but he is the one who lied. “One morning,” he continues, “he said he was taking a trip with her. They were going to take the sailboat out, leaving from the coast. That was three years ago. He just never came back.”
Three years.I know the weight of those same years.
“Have you heard from him?” I need to know… need to know if his father cares enough to write, when our mother hasn’t bothered to send even a postcard.
Oak nods. “He calls sometimes, doesn’t say much. They were in Europe a couple of months ago—Spain, I think. I know he feels guilty for leaving, and I think hearing my voice just makes him feel worse.” He blows out a breath, looks exhausted and angry and broken. “But he also sounds… I don’t know… happy, I guess. Like he really loves her.”
I cringe, knowing that my mother is more to blame for all of this than his father. Maybe she loves Oak’s father, or maybe she is only using him. Either way, she used the tulips—our family’s charm—to convince him to take her far away from the town she always hated.
She convinced him to leave his son behind. And never go back.
She is the villain.
But if his father still thinks he loves her, then the enchantment hasn’t worn off, hasn’t left her flesh. It trailed her even after she left Cutwater. But eventually she will lose him, her charm will run out, the allure will wear off—it won’t last forever—but not before she hurts everyone in her orbit.
Oak’s eyes flick back to mine, and I don’t want to admit it, but we both have known the same pain. The same years of waiting. The same loss.
We both have been abandoned because of love—the wrong kind of love.
The lying kind.
We both have made vows to ourselves—not to end up like our parents.
And now… here we are.
Tears leak down my cheeks; I’m unable to press them back down. He takes a step toward me, like he’s going to wipe them away, but I shoot him a look not to touch me. “You lied,” I tell him. “You knew all along, and you didn’t say anything.”
“I’m sorry. I never should have kept it from you.” His eyes are dewy points of light, pinpricks of hurt. “I screwed up. But I wanted to believe that I could see you and not feel anything.” I can see the anguish in him, the tears pressing against his eyelids. “I had to prove it to myself. But it became harder and harder not to think about you, not to…”
I shake my head,notwanting to hear any of it, and I clench the towel tighter against my chest.
