Chapter 12
Phil
The cottage is cold when I open the door.
Not properly cold. Just empty. The kind of cold that settles into rooms when no one has been there to interrupt it.
I drop my keys into the bowl by the door and shrug out of my jacket, hanging it on the hook.
Her scarf is still there.
Soft grey wool, one end twisted slightly where she must have pulled it free last time she left. She’d forgotten it. Or maybe she hadn’t. Maybe she’d left it without thinking, the way she’d left her toothbrush in the bathroom and her mug beside the sink.
Evidence.
Proof she existed here too.
I touch the scarf briefly as I pass, straightening it without meaning to.
The kitchen smells faintly of nothing. Clean, but unused.
I open the fridge.
Sausages. Eggs. Milk.
Enough.
The pan hisses as I set it on the hob, the flame catching immediately. Oil follows. Then the sausages, their skins tightening almost instantly, the sound filling the room.
It’s too quiet otherwise.
I reach for my phone before I can think about it.
Her name is at the top of my recent calls.
I press it.
The ringing feels longer than it is.
She answers.
“Hi.”
Her voice settles something in my chest immediately.
“Hi,” I say.
I shift the pan slightly, watching the sausages brown along one side.
“What are you doing?”
“Just finished at the shop,” she says. “I’m placing some orders before I lose the will to live.”
I smile.
“Sounds dangerous.”
“It is. I may never recover.”
I turn one of the sausages. It resists slightly before releasing.
“I’m making dinner,” I tell her.
“Oh?”
“Sausages.”
She laughs softly.
“Living dangerously, I see.”
I lean against the counter.
“I missed you today.”
The words leave before I can edit them.
There’s a small pause.
“I missed you too,” she says.
Warmth spreads through me, quiet and certain.
“I want to see you soon,” I add carefully.
Another pause.
Longer this time.
I watch the sausages, listening to the oil spit against the pan.
“I’d like that,” she says finally.
But something in her voice is different.
Not wrong.
Just… softer. Like she’s standing slightly further away.
I frown slightly, turning the heat down.
“How was your day?”
“It was fine.”
Fine.
Not bad.
Not good.
Fine.
I wait.
She doesn’t elaborate.
She usually does.
I press the spatula gently against one of the sausages, testing it. It gives under the pressure, not ready yet.
I stare at the pan without seeing it.
“Christina,” I say carefully, “is everything okay?”
“I saw your grandfather today,” she says finally.
My grip tightens slightly on the spatula.
The image of him appears instantly. Sitting in the garden with that blanket he insists he doesn’t need. Watching everything like it matters more than he lets on.
“Oh,” I say.
“He told me you’d been there.”
“Yes,” I say. “Yesterday.”
I’d gone after work. Sat with him longer than I meant to. Longer than necessary. But that’s never the point with him.
“He told me you told him about us.”
Something shifts in my chest.
Not panic.
Not fear.
Something steadier.
“I did,” I say.
There had never been a question about it. He was the first person I wanted to tell. The only person, really. Because he’s the one who raised me. Because his opinion still carries weight in ways no one else’s does.
Because if something matters, he should know.
“He was very sweet,” she says.
Another pause.
Longer this time.
Something isn’t sitting right.
“I asked him something,” she says.
I turn the heat off without thinking.
“What did you ask him?”
She hesitates.
Long enough that I feel it in my stomach.
“If he thought you might be embarrassed,” she says quietly.
I frown.
“Embarrassed?”
“To be seen with me.”
The sentence lands fully now.
Cold.
Wrong.
My hand presses flat against the counter.
For a moment, I don’t understand what she means.
Embarrassed.
The word doesn’t belong anywhere near her. It doesn’t attach to anything real. Not to her face when she laughs. Not to the way she moves through a room like she has every right to be there. Not to the quiet certainty of her standing beside me like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“Why would you think that?” I ask.
I’m not defensive.
I’m genuinely lost.
She hesitates.
“I don’t know,” she says. “It’s probably nothing.”
Nothing doesn’t sound like that.
Nothing doesn’t sit in silence like this.
“I just…” She exhales softly. “Sometimes when other people are around, you seem different.”
Different?
I try to understand what that means.
“I don’t mean in a bad way,” she adds quickly. “Just quieter. More careful. Distant”
Distant.
The word settles somewhere uncomfortable.
I picture the last few days automatically. The pub. The Manor. The street outside her shop. Nothing unusual. Nothing wrong. Just ordinary moments, unfolding the way they always do.
Nothing I would ever associate with shame.
“I thought maybe,” she says, her voice smaller now, “it was because of my race.”
The word hits harder than anything else she’s said.
Race.
The idea that she could believe that. That something I’ve done has allowed that thought to exist.
“Christina,” I say immediately. “No.”
The certainty is absolute.
“I am not embarrassed of you.”
I don’t soften it.
I don’t qualify it.
Because there is nothing to qualify.
She exhales.
“I didn’t think you meant to hurt me,” she says.
Hurt.
The word twists somewhere deep in my chest.
I never wanted that.
Never.
“I don’t want there to be anything between us that isn’t real,” she adds quietly.
Neither do I.
The thought arrives fully formed, solid in a way that leaves no room for hesitation.
“Tell me,” I say.
She doesn’t answer immediately.
“What?” she asks.
“What I’ve done,” I say. “Tell me how I made you feel like that.”
There’s a pause.
Long enough that I wonder if she’ll refuse.
“I don’t want to make it into something it isn’t,” she says.
“You won’t.”
My voice is steady.
Because I need to understand it. Not in theory. Not in feeling. In fact.
“But you need to tell me. So I don’t do it again.”
The silence stretches between us.
Then she exhales.
“It’s small things,” she says carefully.
I wait.
“Like at the pub. When Tommy came over.”
I picture it instantly. The noise. The sudden shift in conversation. His voice cutting through the space we’d been standing in.
“You moved your hand,” she says. “You’d been touching me. And then you weren’t.”
I frown slightly.
I don’t remember deciding to do that.
But I must have.
“And at the Manor,” she continues. “When that man came out. You stepped away.”
The gate. The hinge. The sound of the door behind us.
I’d thought about the interruption. About the conversation that followed.
I hadn’t thought about the distance.
“It’s nothing,” she says quickly. “It’s probably just me noticing things that don’t mean anything.”
“No,” I say.
The word comes out firmer than I expect.
She goes quiet.
“It meant something,” I continue. “Because it hurt you.”
She doesn’t argue.
Which tells me everything.
“I didn’t realise I was doing that,” I admit.
The truth sits heavy in my chest. Not as an excuse. As a failure.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
The words feel insufficient, but they’re the only ones I have.
“You don’t need to apologise,” she says gently. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
I close my eyes briefly.
I had.
Not intentionally.
But intention doesn’t undo consequence.
“You don’t need to protect me from it,” I say quietly.
She doesn’t answer.
“If I ever make you feel like that again,” I continue, choosing the words carefully, “I want you to tell me.”
She’s quiet.
I can hear the faint sounds of the shop behind her. A drawer closing. Footsteps. Ordinary life continuing while everything here has shifted slightly out of alignment.
“I mean it,” I add. “Don’t wait. Don’t try to protect me from it.”
“I wasn’t protecting you,” she says softly.
“I think you were.”
Not out of dishonesty.
Out of kindness.
Because that’s who she is.
I press my thumb into the edge of the counter, grounding myself.
“I need you to understand something,” I say.
I don’t usually explain myself. Not like this. Not out loud. But she deserves more than silence and instinct.
“I don’t like attention,” I tell her. “I never have.”
That part is simple.
“When people look at me, when they expect something from me… I become aware of everything. Where I’m standing. What I’m doing. What it means.”
I hesitate, searching for words that don’t come naturally.
“And being with you… people notice something different about me. They like to gossip and new things shift you to the centre of attention.”
Somehow it doesn’t feel like I’m explaining myself well.
I exhale slowly.
“So I can only assume,” I continue, “that when I stepped away, it wasn’t from you. It was from that feeling. From being watched.”
The admission sits between us.
Uncomfortable.
Necessary.
“It has nothing to do with you,” I say.
“You are…” I stop.
The words feel too large to carry safely but I carry them anyway.
“You’re beautiful,” I say.
The truth of it steadies me.
“You’re extraordinary.”
I close my eyes briefly.
“And I’m falling for you.”
The words leave without permission.
“Very hard.”
I grip the counter harder, suddenly aware of how much I’ve given away.
Not because I regret it.
Because I don’t know how to take it back if she doesn’t feel the same.
“I don’t ever want you to think I’m ashamed of you,” I say quietly. “Because I’m not.”
I never could be.
Not in this lifetime.
Not in any version of it.