Chapter 9
The castle doesn’t sleep, but it watches.
Isla feels it the moment she steps into the corridor, the air cool and faintly damp, stone breathing in slow, patient rhythms. Morning light slants through narrow windows, catching dust motes and turning them into drifting constellations.
Somewhere deeper in the castle, a door closes. Footsteps echo and fade.
After yesterday, she had spent time in her room, relaxing and trying to decide what she hoped to accomplish while she was here. This morning, she knew and was going to begin her search in earnest, but first, she had to learn the castle.
Didn’t she deserve to know if her mother’s version of her father was correct? Maybe she could find the divorce papers and see if there was any information about why her father chose never to see her again.
She hasn’t seen Callum this morning. That should be a relief.
Instead, it leaves her unsettled, as if something unfinished is humming beneath her skin. The absence sharpens into an edge she hasn’t felt in years, not nerves, not fear.
Defiance.
And something more dangerous.
Desire.
It unsettles her that her body noticed him before her mind caught up. That it answered him without permission, without logic. She doesn’t understand why it chose him, this man who stands in her way, who challenges her footing in a place that already feels unsteady.
Maybe it’s because men have always come second in her life.
Because boyfriends were rare, brief, and never quite fitting.
Most men lost interest once they realized she belonged to the piano, that hours at the keys weren’t a phase but a devotion.
That her life was measured in rehearsals and flights, in performances that demanded more than constancy ever could.
She had learned, quietly, not to expect much from them.
And now this man, this infuriating, guarded, impossible man, has awakened something she thought she’d trained herself out of needing.
That realization unsettles her far more than his absence ever could.
She told Callum she would search, and he offered her his help, though she wasn’t certain he meant what he said.
She told her mother she would search. She told herself that if she stayed in this castle and did nothing but play music and sleep badly, then her mother would still be right, this would all be indulgence. Emotion. Chaos.
Truth requires action and she intends to find that missing puzzle of her life. Her father and why he never visited her.
Isla stops outside a door she recognizes only because she’s passed it twice already.
Keir’s private study.
Not the conference room near the main hall, the tasteful room lawyers like to gesture toward. This one sits deeper in the castle, down a narrower corridor, its door darker, more worn. The handle is polished smooth from years of use.
Her pulse kicks.
This isn’t accidental anymore.
She reaches for the handle.
The door isn’t locked.
It opens with a faint protest, hinges whispering like they disapprove.
The room smells different from the rest of the castle, older somehow.
Paper and leather and dust layered with something faintly sharp, like old smoke or ink.
Light filters through tall windows, illuminating a broad desk scarred with use.
Old guitars line the wall. Music is scattered on the desk, and some Diamond record awards line the walls, while others sit waiting to be hung. So much paraphernalia.
This room feels lived in.
Isla moves closer to the desk.
Her fingers brush a stack of loose papers, receipts, handwritten notes, a folded sheet of hotel stationery with a city name scrawled across the top. Glasgow. Berlin. Los Angeles. Lives reduced to ink and impulse.
She lifts a photograph.
Keir stands in the center, arm slung around a group of people she doesn’t recognize. Everyone is laughing. Everyone looks alive in a way that has nothing to do with fame and everything to do with belonging.
Isla’s throat tightens.
“You look happy,” she murmurs, then stiffens at the sound of her own voice in the room.
She shouldn’t be here. But she doesn’t care. He’s her father. He’s dead, and she’s going to go through his things and hopefully find the answers she needs to her questions.
That thought doesn’t stop her from opening a notebook. The handwriting is unmistakable, fast, slanted, and impatient. Lyrics crowd the margins, crossed out and rewritten, emotion spilling wherever it can fit.
One line is underlined so hard, the paper nearly tears.
She deserves better than my silence.
Isla’s breath catches.
Her hand trembles as she closes the notebook, heart hammering. This isn’t curiosity anymore.
This is intrusion.
She opens a drawer.
Cassette tapes.
Dozens of them, stacked carefully, labeled in Keir’s slanted handwriting. Dates. Cities. Some with names she recognizes, bandmates, producers. Others with nothing but a time written beside them.
Her fingers curl around one.
“That’s not for you.”
Callum’s voice cuts through the room like a blade.
Isla spins.
He stands in the doorway, broad shoulders filling the frame, expression closed and unreadable. He hasn’t raised his voice. He hasn’t moved toward her.
Which makes it worse.
“You said you’d help,” Isla says.
His jaw tightens. “I said maybe.”
“You followed me.”
“I followed the sound of a door that shouldn’t have been opened.”
Her grip tightens around the tape. “You don’t get to decide that.”
“This room isn’t part of the estate tour.”
“Neither is my life,” she snaps. “And yet everyone seems comfortable managing it.”
He steps into the room, closing the door behind him with deliberate care.
The sound lands heavy.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” Callum says.
“I know exactly what I’m doing,” Isla fires back. “I’m looking for the truth.”
His gaze drops to the cassette in her hand.
“That won’t give it to you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
Something sharp flares in his eyes. “Those tapes aren’t confessions. They’re fragments. Half-thoughts. Bad nights.”
“Or honesty,” Isla counters.
“Or damage,” he says. “You don’t listen to a man at his worst and call it truth.”
Her pulse pounds. “You did.”
He stills.
For a moment, the air between them hums.
“You were there,” she presses. “You know things.”
“I know enough to tell you to put that down.”
Isla lifts her chin. “Make me.”
The words fall into the room, reckless and unmistakable.
Callum steps closer.
Not fast. Not angry.
Controlled.
The space between them shrinks to nothing but breath and heat and the faint scent of coffee and wood smoke clinging to his clothes.
“You’re trespassing,” he says quietly.
“You’re hiding things.”
“I’m protecting this place. I’m trying to protect your father.”
“And I’m trying to understand where I came from.”
His gaze drops again, to her hand, to the tape, to the way her fingers are trembling now despite her resolve.
“You think listening to his voice will fix something?” he says. “It won’t.”
Isla’s eyes narrow. “You’re not just protecting the castle.”
He doesn’t answer.
“You’re protecting him,” she presses. “Or at least the version of him you want to preserve.”
His jaw flexes. “You don’t get to rewrite a man’s life from scraps.”
“And you don’t get to edit it,” she shoots back. “You’ve been deciding what survives him.”
That lands.
Callum looks away, just long enough for her to know she’s right.
“He trusted me,” he says finally.
“To do what?” Isla demands. “Guard the truth? Or bury it? You didn’t even know about me."
His gaze snaps back to hers, raw and furious. “To protect what mattered.”
“So I didn’t matter.” The words are ripped from her throat.
Silence stretches, thick and volatile.
Callum steps closer, voice low. “You don’t understand the damage this could do.”
Isla doesn’t retreat. “To whom? My father or me?”
He doesn’t answer.
“I understand exactly what you’re afraid of.”
His breath ghosts her skin. “Do you?”
“Yes,” she says. “Losing control.”
Something shifts.
Callum’s hand lifts.
He doesn’t touch her, not yet, but it hovers near her waist, fingers flexing like they’re remembering something they shouldn’t.
The air goes thin.
Isla’s breath catches. She can feel the pull, undeniable and reckless, like standing at the edge of something with no railing.
She tilts her head, just slightly.
Callum swears under his breath.
For one suspended, dangerous second, he doesn’t stop himself.
His hand lands on her waist.
Heat explodes through her.
Isla gasps.
His thumb presses in, firm, possessive, like he’s forgotten every reason not to. She feels it everywhere, her spine, her knees, the sudden, dizzy awareness of how close his mouth is.
Too close. His full lips are beckoning her, and she wants to know how he tastes.
Her fingers curl into his shirt.
Their foreheads almost touch.
Time fractures.
Isla becomes acutely aware of everything at once: his grip at her waist, the hard line of his body inches from hers, the sound of his breath breaking control. Her pulse stutters, loud enough she’s sure he can feel it.
She shouldn’t lean in.
She does anyway.
Callum’s hand tightens, fingers digging in like he’s bracing himself against a fall. His head dips, just enough that she feels the promise of his mouth, the threat of it.
This isn’t curiosity.
This is collision.
For one suspended heartbeat, she knows, knows with absolute certainty, that if he kisses her, nothing in this castle will remain intact.
Not the search.
Not the boundaries.
Not either of them.
This is not slow.
This is not careful.
This is the kind of kiss that ruins things.
Callum leans in—
And stops.
The moment shatters.
He drops his hand like it burned him and steps back hard enough to knock into the desk.
“Jesus,” he mutters.
Isla’s pulse roars in her ears. Her skin feels too tight, too alive.
She stares at him, breath unsteady. “That—”
“Shouldn’t have happened,” he says sharply.
“But it almost did.”
He looks at her then, studies her, something wild and furious and undone flashing across his face.
“That’s the problem,” he says. “It almost did.”
He reaches past her, plucks the cassette from her hand, and sets it back in the drawer with finality.
“This search,” he says, voice rough, “just got dangerous.”
And before she can answer, before she can think, he turns and leaves the room.
The door slams behind him.
Isla stands there, heart racing, skin still burning where his hand had been.
The castle exhales.
And nothing will ever be simple again.
Isla grabs the cassette and storms toward her room, desire and fury tangling in her blood. She’s going to hear his voice. She’s going to know the truth. And not even the near kiss, hot, unfinished, and haunting, will derail her.