Seth #2
Of course, she does. Out of everyone, the Hawthorne sisters understand. I inhale deeply, shaking, and nod.
“I’m an ass.”
“Maybe.” There’s a soft smile in her words—not mean, not like she’s making fun of me, but like she wants to make me laugh.
I can’t quite manage it, but I let out a shaky breath. Close.
“But I know you can be better,” she says. “I’ve seen that. Coming here, talking to Scarlet… that takes bravery. She’s terrifying.”
“She’s not that bad. It’s all an act. Mostly.”
“Still.” Rowan goes quiet for several seconds, and I let her. “This… it isn’t about Laurel, is it? You aren’t still waiting for her, even though she found someone else?”
I have to be hearing her wrong. After everything, Rowan is asking about Laurel. It gets so damn tiring.
Laurel and I have been friends since we were young, but we were never more than that.
Everyone around Starbrook always assumed we were.
Rowan should know the truth. I trusted her enough to let her cast spells on me and drag me around town, but she doesn’t trust me enough to know what my heart wants?
“What the hell?” I snap.
She leans back into her seat, gripping the wheel. “I had to ask—”
“Why?” I let out a confused, frustrated laugh. “You should understand—she’s just my friend. That’s all she’s ever been.”
She closes her eyes tightly and nods. “I know.”
“I can’t do this right now.”
After saying she understands me, after opening up about my mom and losing everyone, I’ve never felt more misunderstood. I open the car door and get out, stomping down the street.
Rowan groans. “Where are you going?”
“Walking home. Don’t wait up.”
Though she asks me several times to get back in the car, she gives up. She listens. She leaves.
And there I go again, pushing someone else away.
I don’t make it a quarter of the way home before someone in a shiny, vintage, cherry-red car pulls up to me. I know the car almost as well as I know the face of the person who rolls down the window and glares at me.
“Get in,” Scarlet says.
Just what I need. More time with Scarlet.
The fresh air is doing me some good, and being active has always helped me clear my mind. I don’t need the ride home—that’s why I rejected it from Rowan in the start, but…
Maybe Scarlet and I need a moment alone. To really wrap things up.
Hexes can be accidental, right? Maybe that’s what this is, though I’m not stupid enough to ask her directly.
This could go terribly wrong, but I hop into her car anyway. Even though I haven’t been in it in years, it’s familiar: perfectly clean, smelling of leather, with a seat that still feels like my own.
“Still living in the same place?” she asks.
“Yup.”
We both know there’s nowhere else for me. I moved out for a few years, only to move right back in after my mom’s sickness got worse: weaker muscles, more exhaustion. She needed someone to help around the house, and my sisters were about to go off to college. I wouldn’t let it be them.
“So…” Scarlet draws out the word. “Hexed, huh? Is the bad luck why your friend left you behind?”
“No. I just needed a minute to myself.”
She snorts. “Typical. Always need to be alone.”
I wince.
“Sorry—”
I gaze into the glass sunroof and the bare trees looming high. “No, keep going. This is what I need. Someone else to make me feel like an ass.”
“Well… I’m here for that anytime.” She chuckles—nowhere close to the laughter I used to pull from her, but it’s something. “Ass.”
I’m hurting Rowan with my hex. It’s the last thing I ever wanted to do.
“It’ll wear off eventually, you know,” Scarlet says.
Scarlet is right, and if anyone knows about hexes, it’s her—even if she wasn’t the one who cast it. Probably. Trusting her about this feels important, even if it would be easier to blame her.
“I know.”
“Then what’s the problem? Why are you fighting for it? It’s not like you want to date again. I’ve heard rumors—”
“I’m sure you have.”
“Then why?”
I close my eyes and hit the seat with the back of my head. “Because I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
“Right. That’s what it’s always been about for you, but in trying to take care of everyone, you hurt people. Everyone. Your sisters miss you, you know. When’s the last time you texted them?”
She doesn’t have to say what I know she’s thinking—that it’s why I left her, gave her the freedom she didn’t want. Never wanted. Scarlet wanted me to be a better boyfriend, but instead of trusting myself to do that, I ended it. It still feels like the right thing to do, but I can’t deny it hurts.
I was hurting, too.
I huff. “You still talk to my sisters?”
Somehow, that’s the most confusing part of this conversation.
“Yes. I do.”
She parks outside my house, and Rowan’s car still isn’t in the parking lot across the street. What would she think if she saw me with Scarlet? Why does it matter when she already thinks the worst of me?
“I’m sorry,” I say, the words coming easier now that we’re alone. “I really cared about you, and I still do, even if it’s not the same.”
“I know. You can still care about me, I can still care about you, and I’m still allowed to be bitter about how it ended. All of that gets to coexist.”
“How long is that going to go on for? It’s not healthy, Scar.”
“At least another decade.” Scarlet turns to face me, smiling ever so slightly. “Look, I may not be over it yet, but I’m getting over it. I am. And I actually want you to be fucking happy.”
My eyes widen, just slightly. “Really?”
“Yeah, asshole.” She glares, but there’s something playful behind it. “Just not before I get to be happy. So don’t move on too fast.”
I shake my head. “I’ll try.”
“Doubt it.” She turns away. “Get out of my car. Talk to Rowan, or… whatever you have to do. Just go.”
Scarlet and I both have wounds that will take a little longer to heal, but when I get out of her car for the last time, I think we both feel a little closer to whole. She barely has time to drive away before there’s an interruption.
Laurel runs across the street. It’s like she appears out of nowhere—pretty typical for her—a flash of green hair and wide eyes as she stops in front of me.
“Slow down,” I say. “You’re going to slip.”
“What was she doing here?” She hits my chest, pinning me with an accusatory glare.
Right. It wouldn’t be the first time Scarlet and I hooked up after our breakup. I didn’t even think about her like that. I didn’t even look at her that way. It seems like I failed Scarlet’s final request—maybe I’ve already moved on.
Either way, this looks bad to Laurel.
“Just gave me a ride home.” I lift both hands. “Honest. We’re… we’re really over now. Have been for a while.”
“I’ve heard that before.”
“Yeah, well… I mean it this time. She’s over me, too. I think.”
I know Scarlet. If she still wanted me, she would try to have me. She’s always been the type to go after exactly what she wanted. And I want her to be happy too, but it has to be with someone else—someone who can give her everything she needs. I was never that person.
“Good.” Laurel sniffs. “Let’s go inside. You’re going to catch a cold.”
She walks toward her house, and I know I’m supposed to follow, but I stay rooted.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea…”
She turns back around. “Why not?”
“Rowan thinks there’s something going on with us.” I roll my eyes. “Like, you and me. I don’t know, she was being weird.”
She crosses her arms. “Don’t call my sister weird.”
“I didn’t mean it like that, but come on. Out of everyone, her accusing me of being in love with you—”
“It’s not really about me, is it?”
Laurel is frustrating now that she’s a seer, speaking in half-truths and riddles, a faraway look in her eye as she gazes at me from the middle of the street.
I step closer. “What do you mean? Is it the hex?”
She shakes her head, pushing away the fuzzy gaze along with it. “Rowan is… I don’t want to talk about her feelings, but…”
“As if that’s ever stopped you before?”
“Touché.” She nods, biting her lower lip and slowly releasing it. “I don’t know everything that’s going on with her, but I know she’s insecure. She has four sisters, and she compares herself to all of us. Maybe she’s comparing our friendship now that you’re getting closer. You know?”
“I… I guess…”
But there’s something more. I don’t need magic or intuition to know there’s something just out of my reach—between the moments of our fingers brushing, our lips nearly touching, and—
“You need to talk to her,” Laurel says bluntly.
I nod repeatedly. “Yeah. Right. Of course.”
“Like, now. She’s at the tavern. Go.”