Page 25 of Evergreen

Chapter 11

Cass

And for once, I was right. I didn’t sleep hardly at all that night. By the time morning came, I was groggy, disheveled, and less awake than I would like to before having a big confrontation with Linden. But there was nothing I could do about it. The time had come to go to the conservatory and serve my sentence, so that’s what I did.

The greenhouse was already unlocked when I arrived, which meant Linden had beaten me there. Of course he had. The guy probably didn’t need sleep the way normal people did, what with all his plant magic or whatever. I pushed through the entrance, steeling myself for whatever awkwardness was about to unfold.

He was kneeling beside one of the planters in the eastern section, his hands glowing that familiar golden color. He looked up as I approached, and I watched his expression shift from focused concentration to something more guarded. So he was nervous too. That was something, I guess.

“Morning,” I said, keeping my tone neutral as I set down my bag. “Ready to get to work?”

“Yeah,” he replied, standing up and brushing ash from his jeans. “There’s a lot we need to accomplish today.”

So we were just going to pretend last night didn’t happen. That was fine. That was actually better, probably. Less complicated. Less likely to end with me completely fucking everything up.

Except it wasn’t fine. It wasn’t better. And as I watched him move around the greenhouse, carefully examining the plants that had survived, I realized that pretending was going to be torture.

“Linden,” I said finally, unable to help myself. “About last night⁠—”

“You made your position clear,” he cut me off, his voice careful and measured in a way that somehow made it worse. “We’re working together. That’s all.”

“Yeah, but⁠—”

“Sparks.” He turned to face me fully, and I could see the effort it was taking him to maintain that calm expression. “I understand. Really, I do. You don’t want to get involved. So we won’t. We’ll just work on the greenhouse and when the semester ends, you’ll go back to your life, and I’ll go back to mine. No harm done.”

Except there was harm done. I could feel it, this ache in my chest that had nothing to do with the physical labor I was about to endure. I’d hurt him. Not catastrophically, maybe, but enough that he was retreating behind that careful politeness of his.

“That’s not what I wanted to say,” I started.

“Then what did you want to say?” he asked, and there was something in his tone that made me stop. Not anger exactly, but a kind of exhaustion. Like he didn’t want to hear me feed him more excuses.

I opened my mouth. Closed it. Because the truth was, I didn’t know what I wanted to say. I wanted to tell him that I was scared. That I liked him more than was probably healthy given the circumstances. That the thought of him giving up on this, on us, made me feel like I was throwing something away.

Instead, I said, “I’m sorry. For what I said last night. I was being a coward.”

Linden was quiet for a long moment, studying my face like he was trying to decide if I was telling the truth or just making shit up to spare his feelings.

“You weren’t being a coward,” he said quietly. “You were being honest about how you feel. I respect that.”

“But I wasn’t being honest,” I said, pushing myself to actually say the things I’d been thinking about all night. “I was scared. I am scared. Of you realizing I’m not worth the trouble. Of my parents finding out and losing their minds. Of a lot of things, actually.”

Linden set down the small potted plant he’d been holding and turned to face me fully. In the soft morning light filtering through the damaged greenhouse walls, he looked almost ethereal. Definitely too good for someone like me.

“I’m not asking you to not be scared,” he said slowly. “I’m just asking you to not make decisions for both of us based on that fear. That’s my choice to make too.”

“So what, you want to try this?” I asked, and I could hear the disbelief in my own voice. “Even knowing what a disaster I am?”

“I want to try,” he said simply. “If you do.”

I thought about what Nerion had said last night. About taking chances. About how sometimes the most wonderful things came from doing something that seemed crazy. And I thought about how Linden had kissed me in the grove, surrounded by ancient trees and northern lights, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

“Okay,” I heard myself say. “We can give it a shot I guess.”

Relief flooded across his features, and I watched as that careful politeness melted away, replaced by something softer. Something that looked almost like joy.

“Really?” he asked.

“I’ll try not to make you regret it,” I said, but I was smiling despite myself. “Can I ask you something, though?”