Scot and Bothered

14. Now

14

NOW

Brooke woke to the predawn glow, the only proof that she had, in fact, dozed for part of the night. The wind was still feral, her whole tent shaking above her head. She rubbed at her itchy eyes before unzipping her tent to the sun barely rising over the horizon, a blurry pink through the mist blanketing the sky. An instant morale boost.

Jack sat on a boulder, his camp stove between his feet, a coffee mug cradled in his hands. He gazed out at the view, bundled into his burgundy fleece zip-up and a beanie, his dark hair curling out the bottom. His black joggers clung to his thighs and hinted at the muscle underneath.

He’d been right. Things did look better in the morning.

Jack caught her staring, a grin spreading across his face. “Ah, this is why you never let me see you without makeup.”

Too late, she remembered the calamine lotion all over her face—the chicken-pox look. “It’d serve you right if I was contagious.”

“Brooke, scabies are nothing to joke about.”

She couldn’t help smiling at his overly serious expression. Or the way her stomach hitched at the sound of her name in his lilting accent. “Don’t ever say ‘scabies’ to me again.”

His laughter followed her as she headed down the hill for some privacy and to wash the chalky pink lotion off her face. But as her rosy warmth from her sleeping bag faded with the wind, so did that fizzing excitement in her stomach.

Dropping her guard with Jack was too easy, like spring slipping into summer. Brooke might’ve called a self-imposed cease-fire, but that didn’t mean she’d forgotten what he’d done.

They broke camp and headed over the Trotternish Ridge. The day was clear as if they’d passed some test after battling the Quiraing.

By the time afternoon was descending, they closed in on the Storr—the monolithic rock pillars that rose from the slope of the mossy green mountain. The trail had been mostly deserted the past two days, but as they reached the famous landmark, day hikers and tourists abounded. People milled about, shattering the feeling of isolation that had long besieged them, and removed some intensity from the bubble they’d been in.

A trio of pinnacle rock formations pushed ten stories into the sky. Brooke had to crane her neck for a view of the top, imagining being a tiny crab on a beach, staring wearily up at a towering drip sandcastle.

Jack crouched down to snap a shot of the Storr. He moved with an easy grace she didn’t remember. More self-assured, like he’d grown into his body, grown into himself.

Brooke couldn’t deny she was curious about him. She wondered if he’d worked on other memoirs. If he traveled around taking pictures of extraordinary landscapes. If this was a normal day in his life.

If he still lived in that two-bedroom flat with the bay window he used to share with Rohan. If he still rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes when he woke up. If he ever thought about her anymore.

That tug she’d always felt with Jack—craving stories, demanding details—returned. But she was older and wiser now, able to recognize an impulse and not chase it down.

“Anything around here would be great for photos,” she said, tipping her head toward the craggy pillar. “It’s stunning.”

“Aye. This entire island is a geological wonder. The high peat content of the soil means it absorbs so much water, making it very prone to landslips. The biggest ones happened nearly three million years ago and we can see thousands of years of exposed layers of sedimentation. The Storr fell some eight thousand years ago, tipped on its head, and has been whittled down into points from the ensuing wind and rain.”

Brooke had done her homework and already knew the history, but a grin tugged at her lips and her heart fluttered in recognition at Jack’s thoroughness, like the way he’d once told her about the Scott Monument. Captain floated through her brain and she bit her lip to stop herself forming the word.

“They call it the Old Man of Storr because from this angle, it looks like the ridges of an old man’s face if he was lying down for sleep. Another legend says that he was the last of the giants and when they went to bury him, they ran out of stone, so his thumb still pokes out from the ground. Or…something a bit cruder.”

“Jack!”

He cast her a devilish look, his tongue coming out to wet his bottom lip. She couldn’t fight the smile on her face or the way her body temperature spiked.

She looked up at the towering rock, shaking her head. “I can never unsee that…”

Jack’s laugh rumbled through her and spread out across her skin.

The tourists parted and he jogged down the hill and set up a shot. Someone came up behind him, walked directly into his sight line and took their own picture. Jack glanced over at Brooke with an exasperated eye roll and she grinned in response, like it was an inside joke.

And it felt dangerous, sharing looks like that with Jack. Because Brooke knew exactly where it led. Her heart had always wanted to be in Jack’s inner sanctum, to know his secrets. Even if she’d had to be one of them.

But look where that’d gotten her.

Brooke turned away, pulled her attention back to the people around them, back to the present day where she wasn’t Jack’s secret; she was only his past.

Keeping her eyes off him, she dug her notebook out of her pack and pulled it from the ziplock bag she’d had the forethought to stick it in. She needed a distraction from this humming in her veins. Some reminder to not lose sight of her goal—not a second time.

As she sat on a rocky outcropping, she wrote down the myths Jack had shared. So much of the current draft of the memoir centered around the logistics of the trail development. Maybe adding some legends would soften the narrative, bring some more flavor to the story.

Brooke also wrote details about the Quiraing: the giant craggy pillars, the path that cut through the grass leading to the natural fortress. The glassy lakes down below, cupped in the slope of the land. The faint blue of a mountain range across the water.

Mhairi had said she’d included this landmark because the foot trails were already established in this area. That people were drawn to this iconic and otherworldly site, shrouded in mist and the folklore that came with the unexplainable.

But sitting on the slope of an ancient landslip, a jagged mountain range behind her, didn’t feel the same as staring down into the Grand Canyon or gazing up at Half Dome in Yosemite.

The beauty out here, the isolation, made her feel both in significant and so very vital. So present in her own body. She felt elemental. Minuscule, but essential.

She wondered if that’s what Mhairi felt out here, too.

Jack made his way back to her. “Did Mhairi ever tell you about the Skye Bridge?” he asked, not like he was trying to smooth her over, but like he was trying to help.

“No.”

“They built the bridge in ’95 to connect Skye and the mainland, mostly to support tourism and make it easier to reach without a ferry. But as soon as the bridge was built, they started charging a toll. Well, the islanders didn’t appreciate that very much and some refused to pay. They were ticketed and to add to it, the government set the court on the mainland so they’d be in double offense once they arrived.”

Jack stood with one leg straight and the other bent to accommodate the hill. He cupped the lens of his camera even though it hung from the red-and-black strap around his neck. The memory of that first night in his room popped into her mind, soft and rosy. When he’d been some irresistible mixture of brooding and shy and she’d wanted to know his heart.

“But there was a loophole in the law about the tolls that exempted farmers or anyone with livestock. So Mhairi and her friends went round and talked to the landowners. The ones closest to the bridge agreed to build a wee corral on each side, so if you were ever needing to cross the bridge, you’d pick up a sheep on one side and drop it off on the other. Of course, Mhairi would opt to bring a sheep round with her to do the shopping.”

Brooke smiled at the image of Mhairi chatting with a sheep while she loaded her bags into the truck. “I can see that. Naming it Lambert or Peabody.”

“Or Ewe Jackman.”

Brooke laughed, that easiness settling between them. “She never told me that.” But it tracked, Mhairi’s streak of defiance that came out when faculty members murmured about her pop-up critique groups in the lobby coffee shop or the way she let her mail pile up an extra week after the office manager told her to clear it out. She knew Mhairi. She’d literally heard her life story. But the image Jack painted was a bit different than the Mhairi Brooke had written into the memoir. A little more fun. A little more audacious.

The heartbeat of a story was never beautiful scenery or folklore footnotes. It was always character. Was this what Charlotte thought was missing? The heartbeat?

Brooke scribbled flowers in the margins of her journal. Wrote “Mhairi Characterization??” and underlined it. A tendril of anxiety twisted through Brooke’s chest. She’d nailed Professor McCallister’s voice, but was this story about Trail Mhairi instead?

When the crowds thickened and Jack gave up on photos, they made their way down the steep hill, past the parking lot stuffed with cars and tour buses, and crossed to the other side where the trail picked back up and led toward Portree.

“Did you know The BFG was filmed here?”

“Well, there’s a fun fact. You could’ve made a great guide.”

“I would hope so. I did it for six years after…” He gestured between them.

“What?” The word was out of Brooke’s mouth before she could even process it. “But you hated it.” She knew how much grad school had felt like a lifeline to Jack. Or a reset button. He’d been right there with her, chafing against expectations, wanting more for himself. It would’ve cost him dearly to go back to his family’s business.

She’d assumed he’d gotten everything he’d ever wanted after they’d imploded. He was here —photographing a prestigious memoir. The idea that Jack had gone back to his family’s business when she knew how crushing their expectations had been didn’t compute.

He walked with tight shoulders and hard lines around his mouth. “I was a little delayed developing a spine, wasn’t I?”

“Jack.”

The regret on his face was almost enough to make her reach for him. Brooke assumed he hadn’t faced any backlash because it’d suited her anger. He might be the villain in her story, but he’d been knocked down, too.

“I left The Heart last year. I have you to thank.”

“We haven’t talked in years.”

“No, but back then, you made me question what I really wanted. It just took a bit for me to sort it out.”

Brooke had been so full of herself, so sure of her path and wanting Jack to feel the same way. She’d been such an asshole, pushing him like that when it had cost her nothing—but it could’ve cost Jack his family. She wanted to apologize, but it didn’t seem like the right thing to say. He seemed happier now.

Brooke studied his profile. The hard slope of his nose. The curve of his cheekbones. The roundness of his lips that she’d once fantasized about tasting and then knew like her own mind.

The way he gazed out at the land in front of them—greens and purples and blues—was still the look of a dreamer, but grounded now. Steady.

She knew exactly how hard it was to make a change after choosing the safe thing.

Pride swelled in her chest for him, but it also buzzed with unfriendly spikes. She wondered what he thought of her; the one who’d challenged him hadn’t achieved any of her dreams. Wasn’t even fighting for them anymore.