Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
S he was gazing at Bryan in a way that made his chest feel tight and his eyes sort of sweaty, while his tongue tied itself in knots and clogged his throat. He nudged the charcuterie board closer to his guests so they could soak up some of the whisky.
“This pancetta is really amazing,” Wes said, oblivious to the electricity swirling around the kitchen. “ I respect your choices, but you’re missing out.”
“I’ll let Eòghann know you approve.”
Her head shot up at the mention of his cousin, but then she looked back down, suddenly entirely focused on the cheddar. “ Eòghann picked it out?”
“I rely on him to choose all my meats”—he grimaced at the innuendo hanging in the air—“when the occasion calls for it.”
“That’s nice of him,” she mumbled, her cheeks turning pink. Had she figured out his cousin wasn’t a priest yet?
“Really nice,” Grace agreed, eyeing her friend in a way that suggested she had not.
“That’s Eòghann . Kindness to a fault. Unlike me.”
“Agreed. You’re not nice at all,” Grace said. “ This whole thing”—she gestured at the empty whisky glasses and half-eaten food tray—“incredibly rude.”
“So rude,” Wes agreed. “ How am I supposed to go back to drinking beer and appletinis now?”
“A thousand apologies,” Bryan said, though he wasn’t the least bit sorry.
“Seriously.” She offered him a shy smile. “ Thanks for the sensory overload.”
“I’ll give you one to take home,” he promised, and she clapped her hands giddily.
“You going to stay up and write?” she asked Grace , unfolding herself from her stool and stretching languidly.
“Depends. You going to bed?”
“I’m going to get in bed.”
The two shared a look laden with meaning that Bryan couldn’t unpack.
“I’m probably too tipsy to write, but I’ll stay up awhile.”
“I was going to make a fire,” Bryan told Grace . “ You’re welcome to join me if you won’t be too cold.”
The Americans continued to stare at each other.
“A campfire sounds perfect,” Grace finally said.
“Grand,” Bryan said, a little too loudly for a man trying to play it cool.
“Grand,” Grace replied.
“Grand,” Wes agreed.
* * *
Grief was a cunning devil, sneaking up to slap you sideways when you least expected it. The most mundane tasks could knock you down flat if you weren’t careful. Laying a fire in his grandad’s old sand pit brought another wave of memories flooding back, and all Bryan could do was kneel there and breathe through it, holding onto the kindling for dear life and hoping Grace didn’t notice before he escaped the undertow.
He should’ve been here. Should have come home sooner. All those nights pouring out plans over FaceTime , but he could have told Grandad Mac in person while sharing a dram around the fire. He could have made sure the old man was warm, breathed in his tobacco scent, and basked in the musical tones of laughter that a phone could never quite reproduce.
“I still can’t get over how light it is this late,” Grace said, crashing into his melancholy, throwing a life preserver of distraction around his chest.
Bryan cleared his throat and added some biochar to make the wood smoke. “ Aye . Reckon it must be unsettling if you’re not accustomed. Have you had trouble sleeping?”
“No more than usual. You were right, the curtains are good.”
He nodded, dragging a pair of chairs from the patio to the pit.
“Should we roast marshmallows?” she asked as he reached for a box of matches.
Bryan shook his head. “ I ought to have warned you. I’m testing an eco-friendly alternative to peat. It’ll be a touch smoky.”
Grace shrugged, so he lit the fire.
It smoked all right, almost immediately, and the smell was godawful. Like ten thousand dirty athletic socks and old wet dog and food-turned-science-experiment in the back of the fridge.
“Is that how it’s supposed to?—”
“No.”
He dumped a bucket of sand over the whole thing, extinguishing the flame, but the rancid smoke still hung heavy in the air.
“Come on,” he grumbled, grabbing the hand not being used to cover her face and practically dragging her back to the porch.
“The chairs?”
“Leave them,” he coughed.
Fortunately, the porch was downwind tonight, and the smoke didn’t quite reach it. He collapsed onto the loveseat, pulling her down beside him, coughing and rubbing his burning eyes. Whisky without smoke was like sweets without sugar. If he couldn’t find a sustainable biochar that didn’t smell like absolute arse, he’d be done before he got started.
“What was that?”
“An effective experiment demonstrating I’ve not yet found a replacement for peat.”
She giggled, and it was like all the sharp, tiny bubbles in her sparkling water were forcing their way to the surface.
“Funny, is it?” Had he stammered without realizing? Mixed up his words? He tried to play them back in his head, but her laugh was too distracting. He couldn’t recall precisely what he’d said.
“I love how you spin it. Not a corpse flower–scented mistake, just testing a hypothesis to rule out a potential solution.”
Flames licked up the back of his neck. She probably didn’t mean anything by it, but calling it spin made him think of his father.
“That’s how experiments work. ’ Course I’d rather it didn’t reek,” he said archly. “ Hopefully the next won’t.”
She sobered. “ Suppose I could use that excuse?”
He bristled again at the word excuse but focused on the purplish evening sky. “ How d’you mean?”
“I haven’t failed to write my book. I’ve just written a million words that aren’t the right ones. Not that I’ve written anything close to a million words.”
Bryan frowned. Was that what he sounded like to his family?
“You could’ve brought out your laptop,” he snapped, not meaning to sound so testy.
“Is there an outlet?” she asked, squirming around on the seat so her arse brushed against his thigh, sending tremors of heat straight to his groin.
He crossed his legs and cleared his throat. “ No .”
“Then there’s no point. It needs charging.”
“Ah.”
She studied him a moment, and he knew his face was scrunched up in a resting bastard face, but he couldn’t seem to relax it.
“Thank you,” she said, almost uncertainly. “ For what you did tonight.”
And that did it. Those words were all it took to finally ease the knot in his brow and loosen the one in his throat. “ My … pleasure.”
“Was it true? About the color altering your perception of the flavor?”
“?’Course. What do you imagine a dark whisky tastes like?”
“Strong and smoky?”
“And a light one?”
“Smooth and fruity.”
“Exactly. Total bollocks. The color comes from the aging cask. It’s often enhanced for aesthetics.”
She scoffed.
“You think I’m lying?”
“I don’t. It sounds like something a company would do.”
“Folk want an eye-catching dram as well as a tasty one.”
She watched him for a moment, a little too intently, and his scalp prickled.
“Was it your grandfather who taught you to love it?”
“Not really. But he was damn chuffed when I took the apprenticeship. He crowed about it to everyone he met and made sure I knew it too. Quit drinking Laphroaig in favor of Ardbeg from that day on.” He smiled to think of those phone calls, Grandad Mac so eager to hear every detail about the still and all.
“I’m sorry you lost him,” she said. “ I lost my abuela not long after Diego left home.” Her voice was thick and low with the weight of her own sadness, and it shouldn’t have done funny things to his belly, but it did.
“To play for Celtic , you mean?”
She shook her head. “ He went to Florida first. A sort of soccer academy there. They did take him to Scotland for some kind of camp, though. That’s how Celtic knew about him when he went to UNC .”
“That’s when he met Teàrlach .”
Her eyes went wide. “ Before Celtic ?”
“Aye. Hurt his wrist, I think? Met Teàrlach in hospital.”
She shook her head. “ What are the odds?”
“You missed him. When he left home?” If it was that long ago, Diego would’ve been a teenager, and Grace just a kid, maybe no older than Elspeth had been when he left Barra .
“Every second of every day. It’s crazy to think how close we used to be.”
“Used to?” His heart clenched.
“If I told him how much I missed him, he might have given up the game and come home. It was easier to just… stop talking. By the time I came over for his wedding, he was a stranger.”
“Ah. I’m familiar.”
She looked at him curiously. For someone who spoke as little as possible, around her, he sure couldn’t seem to shut up.
“Didn’t talk to Eòghann for years. Reckon I was afraid he’d ask me to come home before I was ready.”
“Would he have?”
He thought about it for a long moment and shook his head. “ I don’t think he would.”
“Did you never ask him to visit you?”
“Nah. Eòghann’s of the island. He’ll never leave. He …” But it wasn’t really his story to tell, was it? To his eternal shame, Bryan had only been an extra standing on the sidelines. “ All the rest of us left, and Eòghann was trapped here, holding the family together with two hands. Alone . Just like you after Diego and your abuela left.”
“She didn’t leave, she died.”
“Amounts to the same thing though, doesn’t it?”
“A gaping hole,” she agreed.
“Is that why you write friendship so well? On account of you’re lonely?”
She studied him intently, like she was trying to see through his words, searching for a hidden insult among them. If anyone could find fault with his clumsy speech, it would be her.
“No,” she finally answered. “ I center friendship in my stories because I stopped being alone.”
“You’re not alone now,” he whispered, and he meant it as a question, to probe deeper, to learn about the people close to her, like Wes , who followed her halfway around the world as a cheerleader on her quest. But it tripped off his tongue like a statement full of prophecy and laden with meaning he hadn’t intended.
Her brow furrowed and he wanted to kiss it smooth, to show her his words were right and true, she wasn’t alone. He was here, he understood—a maddening turn of events.
“I’m not?” she asked, and it completely undid him.
“Not if you don’t want to be,” he whispered, leaning closer. “ Can I kiss you?”
She pulled away. “ Why ?”
He choked back an anguished laugh. Why ? “?’ Cause I —‘cause I can’t think about anything else.”
What a stupid answer. He should’ve said how pretty she was, or how she made him feel like his bones were nothing but custard, how her novel had filled up the cracks in his heart and soldered it back together stronger than it was before.
But magically, they must have been the right words after all, because she rocked forward, smoky whisky still lingering on her breath—his whisky—as she tentatively kissed him.
It was all dry, cracked lips and erratic breathing, like she was as hungry and unprepared for him as he was for her.
She scraped her nails lightly through the hair at the base of his skull, sending wave after wave of shivers down his back, and he cupped both of her cheeks to keep his hands the right side of appropriate. When she finally broke the kiss to catch her breath, he pressed his forehead to hers.
“You’re b-beautiful,” he whispered.
“I’m sure you say that to all the ladies.”
“Ladies, gents, I’m not fussy,” he teased, immediately regretting being glib, but she laughed nervously, and he pressed his lips to her throat to absorb the vibrations of her mirth.
She stopped laughing then, breathing in sharply, right in his ear, a little whimper that made every hair on his body stand on end.
They snogged on his grandfather’s loveseat for what felt like hours as the sun dipped to almost the horizon on its journey through nautical twilight, never quite setting, as though they had all the time in the world, without looming deadlines or rampant expectations.
The whole while, Bryan kept his hands where she could see them, though he desperately wanted to run them the length and breadth of her gorgeous body, cover every inch of silky skin, slip up beneath her sweater before dipping down into her waistband, but he knew better than to rush.
She was an inexpert kisser, although an enthusiastic one, clashing tongues with him like a fencing match, give, then take, changing it up, keeping him guessing. She kissed with her entire personality, and it was the most intoxicating thing he’d ever experienced. He couldn’t get enough.
When she ran a hand over his chest, it made his breath judder to a halt, and when she kept going down the rock-hard length of him aching against his joggers, he thought he might never breathe again.
Then she froze.
Perhaps copping a feel had been an accident.
He opened his eyes.
Hers were wide, a trapped doe, as a flush spread hot across her cheeks like so much spilled bourbon.
“Sorry,” she gasped.
“It’s f-f— It’s … No worries,” he replied, leaning in to take her mind off it with more kisses, but she turned her head and pulled back.
“I’m on my period,” she whispered.
“All right,” he said, confused. “ I wasn’t trying to?—”
“Of course not,” she interrupted him.
He scanned her eyes, searching for the minefield beneath the surface. What was the right thing to say? It had sounded like a brush off. Did she actually mean she wanted him but was merely offering a warning? Or was this some kind of fact-sharing game? Every possible reaction seemed like the wrong one.
“I mean, if you’re keen—” he offered.
“No! Don’t be ridiculous.”
He tried not to let irritation at her repeated interruptions bloom and spread across his face. It was an old wound, one she wasn’t responsible for.
“I’m not, I wouldn’t,” she said.
“Fine. Only if you did, it’s no harm. ’ Cause I? —”
“I said no.”
“Right.” He slid to the edge of the loveseat, staring straight ahead instead of facing her. “ That you did.”
“I should go to bed.” With that pronouncement she scrambled off the bench careful not to brush against him again. “ Lots to do tomorrow.”
“Aye,” he agreed, bewildered by the change in her.
“Good night, MacNeil ,” she said, returning to their earlier formality.
“Night, Rios ,” he managed to return, but she didn’t let him get the words out before slipping through the door.
And it wasn’t a good night, not for Bryan , as he tossed and turned, unsure what had happened, what she thought of him, what she wanted from him. Morning and a chance for a fresh start on that stone wall couldn’t come soon enough.