Chapter 22 #2
“To family,” Alan said quietly, lifting his own cup. “All the kinds we’re born into and all the kinds we choose.”
Forbes caught Gwen’s eye. She was exhausted and rumpled and newly powerful and unsure—but she was smiling at him like he was worth everything she’d just survived.
“To family,” Forbes agreed.
And meant it completely.
Forbes had been staring at his phone for twenty minutes.
The library was quiet, late afternoon light filtering grey through the windows. Everyone else was in the kitchen—he could hear Sinclair’s voice rising and falling in some elaborate story about sparkly friends, Lilith’s laughter threading through it. Normal sounds. Family sounds.
He should be in there with them. With Gwen, who’d fallen asleep in his bed an hour ago—his bed, in the guest room he’d been calling home for weeks now—tucked under the quilt with her hair spread across his pillow.
He liked that image more than he probably should.
Liked knowing she felt safe enough to sleep there, surrounded by his things, while he sat downstairs pretending to be useful.
Instead he was here, thumb hovering over a contact he hadn’t willingly called in three years.
Dad.
The last time they’d spoken properly—not the stilted birthday calls, not the brief exchanges at book launches—Forbes had been defending his decision to write another novel instead of returning to academia.
His father had called it “a waste of your training.” Forbes had called it “my life, actually.” The conversation had ended with both of them too proud to apologize and too stubborn to try again.
That was the MacLeod way. Build walls. Maintain distance. Mistake silence for dignity.
Forbes was so bloody tired of walls.
He pressed the call button before he could talk himself out of it.
Three rings. Four. He was almost relieved when it seemed no one would answer—
“Forbes?” His father’s voice, surprised. Wary. “Is everything all right?”
“Aye. Everything’s fine.” Forbes rubbed the back of his neck. “I just—I wanted tae call. To talk.”
Silence. Then: “It’s the middle of the night there, isn’t it? In America?”
“It’s four in the afternoon, Dad. Time zones work the other direction.”
“Ah. Yes. Of course.” A pause. “Your mother’s at a conference in Glasgow. She’ll be sorry she missed you.”
“I’ll call her tomorrow.”
More silence. Forbes could picture his father in his study—books stacked on every surface, reading glasses pushed up on his forehead, probably holding a red pen even now. Grading papers. Finding errors. It was what he did.
“I read your last book,” his father said abruptly. “The one about the Jacobite uprising. The love story.” Forbes waited. This was familiar territory — the prelude to criticism. “Bought it the day it came out. Don’t tell your mother—she thinks I borrowed her copy.”
A sound that might have been a throat clearing. “It was... I found seventeen historical inaccuracies.”
“I know. You sent me a list.”
“Did I mention the rest?”
Forbes’s hand tightened on the phone. “What rest?”
“That I stayed up until three in the morning to finish it. That I cried at the ending—don’t you dare tell anyone that, I’ll deny it completely.
” His father’s voice had roughened. “That I’ve never been prouder of anything you’ve written.
That I should have said so at the time instead of sending you bloody footnotes. ”
Forbes’s throat closed.
“Dad—”
“I’m not good at this.” The words came out stiff, uncomfortable—the sound of a man forcing himself through something painful. “Your mother says I show love through criticism because I don’t know how else to connect. She’s probably right. She usually is.”
“I know.” Forbes managed. “I’ve started to figure that out.”
“Have you?” Surprise in his father’s voice. “How?”
Forbes thought about Alan, who’d shown him memories of Culloden because he was tired of lying. About Gwen, who’d taught him that some truths couldn’t be documented—only felt. About Sinclair pointing at colors no one else could see and being believed anyway.
“I met someone,” he said. “She’s... she sees things clearly. Calls me on my nonsense. Made me realize I’d been so busy protecting myself from disappointment that I’d stopped letting anyone in. Including you.”
“Someone.” His father’s tone shifted—curiosity now, not wariness. “The tour guide? Your mother mentioned something. She follows you on that Instagram thing.”
“Her name is Gwen. And I’m in love with her, Dad. Completely.” Forbes took a breath. “She’s the one.”
A pause. Then: “Forbes, you’ve known her less than a month.”
“Aye.”
“That’s... that’s very fast.”
“It is.”
“Your mother will have opinions.”
“I’m counting on it.”
His father made a sound that might have been a laugh. “And you’re certain? This isn’t just—holiday romance, new place, got swept up in something?”
Forbes thought about Gwen blazing with power, sealing something ancient and terrible while he stood behind her, believing with everything he had even though he couldn’t see what she was fighting.
The way she’d collapsed into his arms afterward.
The way she’d said I love you like it was the easiest word in the world.
“I’ve never been more certain of anything,” he said quietly. “She’s extraordinary, Dad. Brilliant and stubborn and brave in ways I’m still learning to understand. She makes me want to be better than I am. She makes me want to stop hiding.”
Silence again, but different this time. Considering.
“Your grandmother was the same,” his father said finally.
“Your mother’s mother. I never understood what your grandfather saw in her—all that folklore and superstition, tales about the old ways.
Seemed like nonsense to me.” A pause. “But he loved her for forty-seven years. Said she made the world bigger than he knew it could be.”
Forbes’s eyes burned. “That’s... aye. That’s exactly it.”
“Well then.” His father cleared his throat roughly. “I suppose we’d better meet her. Your mother will insist on visiting, whenever you’re ready. And I... I’d like to come too. If you’ll have me.”
If you’ll have me. From a man who’d never asked permission for anything in his life.
“Of course,” Forbes managed. “Of course I’ll have you. Both of ye. I want ye here.”
“Good. That’s—good.” His father’s voice was thick now.
“Forbes, I should have—there are things I should have said years ago. About being proud of you. About how hard it must have been, choosing your own path when I made it so clear I didn’t approve.
I wasn’t—” He stopped. Tried again. “I wasn’t a very good father, in some of the ways that matter. ”
“You were the father ye knew how to be.” Forbes heard the words come out and realized he meant them. “That’s more than some people get. And we’ve got time now. To do it differently.”
“Aye.” The word came out Scottish—more Scottish than Forbes had heard from his father in years. “Aye, we do.”
They talked for another ten minutes—awkward in places, stilted in others, but real in a way their conversations hadn’t been since Forbes was a teenager. When they finally hung up, Forbes sat in the quiet library, phone pressed against his chest.
The door creaked open.
Gwen stood in the doorway, backlit by the warm glow from the kitchen, her expression soft with understanding.
“You called him,” she said. Not a question.
“I called him.”
She crossed the room and settled beside him on the old leather sofa, tucking herself under his arm like she belonged there. Which she did. She absolutely did.
“How did it go?”
“He cried at my last book. Stayed up until three to finish it.” Forbes pressed his face into her hair, breathing in lavender and home. “He’s been proud of me for years. He just didn’t know how tae say it.”
Gwen’s hand found his, squeezing gently. “Sometimes the walls come down on both sides at once.”
“Aye.” He pulled her closer. “Sometimes they do.”
“Mo chridhe,” he murmured into her hair.
She tilted her head back to look at him. “What does that mean?”
“My heart.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “It’s what ye are.”
Her breath caught. Then she settled deeper into his arms, curling her hand into his shirt like she was holding on.
“Mo chridhe,” she repeated softly, testing the sounds. “I like that.”
“Good. Because I plan tae keep saying it.”
They sat like that as the afternoon faded into evening, the sounds of family drifting from the kitchen, Forbes’s phone warm against his chest where his father’s voice still echoed.
We’ve got time now. To do it differently.
For the first time in years, he believed it.