In honor of Valentine’s Day, you get a teaser from Bloodborn! It’s a scene where Brock, the bitten-by-a-werewolf protagonist, first meets Cyn, a girl who broke up before he was changed. It is, of course, a little bittersweet, but like chocolate, I find it tasty.

Time to go home. And I am, but the wind changes. Sweetness fills my nose, fruit and sugar. I spot candy apples in the front window of the Klikamuks Candy Company, perfectly red and round. My throat tightens. The smell brings back the day me and Cyn met so vividly, all I have to do is close my eyes and I can see it.

Last year, at the Evergreen State Fair, Dad was showing Max, our champion Holstein bull. Max’s a real monster, with rippling muscles beneath his dorky black spots, but he’s kind of a wimp at fairgrounds. I was walking the bull around his barn when he got spooked, swinging his big head around and tugging on his halter.

And there’s this girl standing there with a candy apple. Cyn, though I didn’t know it yet.

Max stops fighting and flares his nostrils, sniffing in her direction. She walks toward him, slow and quiet, her face calm.

“Hey,” I say to her, “don’t get too close. He’s dangerous.”

“Dangerous?” Her eyes sparkle. “Really?”

The bull dips his head down and looks almost bashful. He noses her candy apple.

“Can he eat it?” she says.

I shrug. “Won’t hurt him.”

Max snorts on her apple, and she wrinkles her nose. “Bull boogers.”

I laugh, my face hot. “I’ll buy you a new one.”

And so we spent the rest of the day together. I told her all about the livestock, the produce in the grange displays, and the best or the shittiest tractors. It wasn’t at all embarrassing to be a farm boy around her, because she was actually interested. But not as interested as she looked while staring into the eyes of the bull.

I knew right then she was a girl who liked a little danger, and the rest is history.

Well, I guess we’re history now.

I blink the memory away, but the candy apple smell still lingers in my nose. I shove open the door to the Klikamuks Candy Company.

Does she remember that day the way I do?