29
Rihaan
I WOKE TO THE smell of butter and coffee.
For a moment, I didn’t move at all.
Not because I was tired. Because there was something fragile about the way the morning sat in the room—like if I shifted too quickly, I might break it.
The ceiling above me was pale with early light, softened by the curtains that Maeve had insisted on adjusting the day before because “you can’t live in a place that feels like a hospital ward, Rihaan.”
I remember thinking she was dramatic. Now I wasn’t so sure.
Rain had stopped sometime during the night.
I could feel it in the air more than I could see it—like the world outside had exhaled and finally decided to rest.
The cabin was quiet.
But it wasn’t the kind of quiet I used to imagine. Hollow.
This was different.
Lived-in quiet.
Soft edges. Warm corners. A place that had started to remember people.
It had been two days since we’d arrived at the cabin. Our late night of confessions and kisses had become a sacred moment of some kind. We hadn’t spoken about it, but we’d done more than enough to acknowledge that the rules had been broken. Again and again.
A faint clatter from the kitchen brought me back to reality. A cupboard closing too firmly. A low mutter I couldn’t quite hear, but I didn’t need to.
Maeve.
I smiled before I even opened my eyes properly.
It was immediate. Unthinking. Like my body had decided before my mind caught up.
I would be lying if I didn’t admit to the fact that in the two days she’d been here and helped me put together this piece of my life back, she had already changed the way the place breathed.
I lay there a moment longer, letting that thought settle in my chest before I pushed myself up, dragging a hand through my hair, and reached for a T-shirt from the chair beside the bed.
The fabric was still slightly warm from the radiator as I pulled it over my head before freshening up quickly.
Entering the kitchen, the smell hit me properly.
Butter. Coffee. Something slightly burnt underneath it all that I chose to ignore out of respect for the effort.
Maeve was in the kitchen.
Standing at the stove in one of my jumpers—too big for her, sleeves swallowed her hands so she had to push them up every few seconds like they were personally offending her.
Her hair was a mess. Like sleep and stubbornness had taken the fight out of her, or maybe she just didn’t care enough to fix it yet.
She was staring at a pan like it had personally betrayed her.
I stopped in the doorway.
Not because I was unsure.
Because I liked looking at her before she noticed me.
There was something unguarded about her in these moments.
Before she remembered the world existed. Before she became sharp or defensive or clever.
Just Maeve.
Just here.
“Don’t.” Her voice cut through the quiet before I could even step in properly.
I paused instantly. Not because I was afraid of her tone. Because I recognised it.
That particular warning that meant I was currently holding something that may or may not be on fire and I need you to not make it worse.
“What?” I asked carefully.
She didn’t look at me.
Which, honestly, told me everything I needed to know.
“You’re not allowed to judge me.”
I glanced at the pan anyway. Smoke curled up from it in a slow, lazy spiral like it had given up trying to be subtle.
“I wasn’t planning to,” I said.
A lie.
A small one.
She finally looked over her shoulder at me, eyes narrowed. “Liar.”
I stepped further into the kitchen. “You love that particular word, don’t you?”
The floor was warm under my feet.
The kettle hissed softly in the background.
The whole room felt…alive.
“What are you making?” I asked.
“Breakfast.” I looked at the toast popping up from the toaster.
It was black. Not golden. Not even brown.
Black.
“That’s one word for it,” I said quietly.
Her eyes flicked to me immediately. “I was going to surprise you with breakfast in bed.”
I nodded solemnly. “I am very surprised. I thought you could cook. You’d done a great job yesterday.”
Then she huffed. “I can. My mind’s just not in it today.”
“That’s what you said about the eggs, yesterday.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “Did I?”
“Yes,” I replied, closing the gap between us. “Just admit that you got distracted by the view, again.”
She immediately shifted, stepping sideways to block the pan from me like I was a threat to national security.
“I’ve got it,” she said firmly.
“Have you?” I asked.
“Yes.”
A pause. I tilted my head slightly. “Because the toast is black.”
Her eyes flicked to the toaster again. “…That’s intentional.”
“You trying to kill me, trouble?”
“Yes.”
“I thought we had a deal.”
She hesitated. Just for a second. “Fine. Maybe, it’s there to add character.”
I laughed—I couldn’t help it. It spilled out before I could stop it.
And the moment I did, something in her face softened.
Just slightly.
Like she’d been bracing for criticism and instead got something else entirely.
She smiled despite herself.
“Sit down,” she ordered.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re standing there trying to kill breakfast, and I’m hungry.”
She pointed a spatula at me. It was slightly threatening. Mostly comedic.
“Sit,” she repeated.
I raised both hands in surrender. “Fine.”
I sat at the kitchen island, tucking my hand under my chin and watched her.
Let the moment exist without interrupting it. A few minutes later, she placed a plate in front of me.
Eggs. Toast. Fruit.
I stared at it, then at her.
And something in my chest loosened at the sound.
Because that was the thing. The way she easily moved around me each morning, trying her best to make me feel…
safe. I’d noticed it yesterday when she’d started helping me clean my Ma’s room slowly.
The way she’d give me the space I needed to process everything, and still was by my side when she’d noticed something tugged at me more stronger than I’d expected.
Maeve
THE STRANGE THING WAS that he never mentioned it.
Not once.
It should not have mattered. It should not have lodged itself so deeply beneath my skin that I could feel it even in the quietest moments, even when he was nowhere near me. But it did.
Because silence from him had never felt empty. It was deliberate, careful, the kind of silence that meant he was holding something in his hands and choosing not to drop it yet.
He had not mentioned the conversation on the sofa.
He had not mentioned the way I had said the word secret and watched something tighten behind his eyes, like I had pressed on a bruise.
He had not brought up the question he had asked so softly it had almost sounded as though he already knew the answer.
What about your rules?
I should have felt relieved that he had not pushed. That he had not forced the conversation open or made me say the things I was not ready to say aloud.
Instead, it stayed with me.
Everywhere.
It followed me when I reached for my book and forgot what I had been doing.
It sat at the edges of my thoughts while I watched him move through the cabin as though he belonged there more than I did.
It tightened something in my chest whenever I remembered how easily he could have broken the fragile little bubble we had built around ourselves and, instead, had chosen not to.
By then, I knew him well enough to understand the difference.
He was not avoiding it.
He was waiting.
And I did not know what frightened me more: that he would ask again, or that he would not.
Because this week had become something I did not have language for. It was too soft to feel temporary, too warm to feel entirely safe, and too much ours to feel real.
We had built it without meaning to.
Our mornings had begun with the smell of coffee and him pretending he did not enjoy making it for me.
Afternoons blurred into Edinburgh streets, cold air, and his hand finding mine without hesitation.
Evenings dissolved into films we never finished because somewhere along the way, we stopped pretending we were only watching a film.
Somewhere in between all of that, I had started to forget what it felt like to brace myself for the end of something.
That was the dangerous part.
Not that I wanted it.
That I could imagine wanting it forever.
I was curled into the corner of the sofa, my laptop open but long forgotten, when the front door opened. The sound cut through the cabin, followed by a rush of cold air and the familiar sound of footsteps.
“Hey, trouble.”
My fingers stopped above the keyboard.
Something in my chest tightened so sharply that it almost hurt.
Because it was not just the nickname anymore. It was the way he said it. The warmth behind it. The quiet familiarity that made it sound as though the name belonged to me.
I looked up.
He stood in the doorway with bags in both hands, his hair damp and curling slightly at the edges, his cheeks flushed from the cold outside.
For a second, I simply watched him.
I had the strange, irrational thought that I was trying to memorise something I already knew I would miss.
“You were gone ages,” I said too quickly.
He raised an eyebrow. “Were you timing me?”
“No.”
The pause that followed made him smile.
“Maybe.”
His smile was small and easy, but his eyes stayed on my face.
Not really leaving it.
“You don’t like it,” he said suddenly.
My stomach dropped slightly. “Like what?”
“Trouble.”
The word sounded different now. Less playful. More deliberate. As though he had been paying attention.
My fingers curled against the edge of the laptop.
“Why do you say that?”
He set the bags down on the counter, slower this time. “You always make that face when I say it.”
“What face?”
“That one.” He pointed lightly towards me. “Like you’ve just swallowed a lemon.”
A laugh escaped me before I could stop it, although it did not quite reach my chest.
“I don’t hate it.”
“You don’t like it.”
I exhaled and leaned back into the sofa, as though the cushions might somehow steady me.
“It’s complicated.”
His expression softened almost immediately. “Most things with you are.”