Chapter 12
The phone rings while Isla is practicing scales she doesn’t need.
She knows she doesn’t need them. Her fingers move automatically, muscle memory honed by decades of discipline, by mornings that began before sunlight and nights that ended with her hands aching and her mind refusing to rest. Still, she plays them anyway, precise and controlled, because control is easier than thought.
The sound cuts through the music.
She ignores it once.
The second ring is sharper, more insistent, as if whoever is calling knows she’s listening and refuses to be dismissed.
Isla exhales and lifts her hands from the keys. The final note hangs in the air, unfinished, before dissolving into silence.
She checks the screen.
Her mother.
Her chest tightens.
Of course, it’s her mother. It’s always her mother when Isla pauses long enough to be reachable. Distance has never mattered. Alisa has always known when to press.
Isla lets it ring a third time before answering.
“Hi, Mama.”
“Isla.” Her mother’s voice is warm, controlled, perfectly pitched between concern and authority. “I was beginning to think you weren’t going to answer.”
“I was practicing.”
A pause. Just long enough to register disapproval without voicing it.
“You’ve been there longer than I expected,” Alisa says. “Your manager has been calling.”
Isla stiffens. “I told him I was taking personal time.”
“Yes,” Alisa replies smoothly. “And he told me you have two performances coming up that require preparation. Commitments you don’t usually neglect.”
There it is. The soft blade beneath the velvet.
“I’m not neglecting anything,” Isla says carefully. “I’m regrouping. And I’m preparing while I’m here.”
“You don’t regroup in a castle in the Highlands,” her mother says lightly. “You regroup at home. With your piano. With your schedule.”
With me, the unspoken words add.
Isla’s fingers curl against the bench. “I’m exactly where I need to be right now.”
Another pause. This one colder.
“I know this trip has been… emotional,” Alisa says. “But you’ve stayed long enough. Ninety days is excessive for someone with your responsibilities.”
Isla’s spine straightens. “The will states—”
“I’m not talking about the will,” her mother interrupts gently. “I’m talking about your life.”
Isla closes her eyes.
This is familiar territory. Concern reframed as a command. Love wielded like leverage. Her mother has always been careful not to sound cruel. Cruelty is obvious. Control works better when it feels reasonable.
“I have rehearsals scheduled,” Alisa continues. “Interviews pending. You can’t disappear every time the past demands attention.”
The past.
As if it’s a hobby Isla indulges too often.
“I’m not disappearing,” Isla says. “I’m learning.”
“Learning what?” Alisa asks, and there’s the faintest edge beneath the question. “He’s gone, Isla. Digging through his things won’t change that.”
Isla’s throat tightens. “You don’t know that.”
“I know enough,” her mother says. “Enough to protect you.”
Protect.
Isla remembers being ten years old, crying quietly in her bedroom while her mother told her that disappointment was a weakness she could afford exactly once.
She remembers being fourteen, offered an opportunity, and warned what it would cost. She remembers being seventeen and exhausted and told that exhaustion was the price of excellence.
She remembers being told that her father had chosen music over her.
Full stop.
“I’m not a child,” Isla says.
“No,” Alisa agrees. “You’re a woman with a career you worked very hard for. One that requires focus.”
“And obedience,” Isla mutters.
Her mother exhales, the sound controlled. “Isla. Don’t do this.”
“Do what?”
“Turn this into something it isn’t.”
Isla opens her eyes and stares at the piano keys, black and white and uncompromising. “What is it, then?”
“It’s closure,” Alisa says firmly. “And closure doesn’t require excavation.”
Isla’s jaw tightens. “You always did prefer clean endings.”
“That’s because messy ones destroy people.”
Isla thinks of the photograph in the drawer. The worn edges. The proof of care that had been hidden, not erased.
“Send me your flight details,” Alisa says. “I’ll have your assistant adjust your schedule.”
“I’m not coming home yet.”
Silence.
Not the polite pause of conversation. The dangerous kind.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said I’m not coming home yet,” Isla repeats, her voice steady even as her pulse races.
“Isla,” her mother says, and now the warmth is gone. “This is not a negotiation.”
It never has been.
“I’m staying,” Isla says. “I need to finish this.”
“Finish what?” Alisa demands. “He didn’t come back. He’s dead. End of story.”
Isla’s breath catches.
“Are you afraid I’ll discover some hidden secret?” she asks softly.
The line goes quiet.
For one terrifying second, Isla thinks her mother has hung up.
Then Alisa speaks, and her voice is very calm.
“You’re tired,” she says. “You’re grieving. And grief makes people reckless.”
“No,” Isla replies. “Loss of control does.”
Another pause. This one longer.
“You’re coming home,” Alisa says finally. “We’ll talk about this when you’re thinking clearly.”
“I am thinking clearly,” Isla says. “For the first time in a long time.”
“You’re being influenced,” her mother snaps. “That man—”
“Don’t,” Isla cuts in sharply. “Don’t bring Callum into this.”
“I will bring anyone into it if they are distracting you from your obligations.”
There it is. The word that has governed Isla’s life more than love ever has.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Alisa says, already retreating into control. “After you’ve calmed down.”
The line goes dead.
The silence after the call is too loud.
Isla lowers the phone slowly, as if the sound might still be attached to it, as if her mother’s voice might leap back out and finish the argument.
Her hand is shaking. She notices that before anything else, how her fingers tremble, how the calm she worked so hard to maintain has cracked like thin ice.
She presses the phone face down on the piano bench.
Her chest feels tight. Not panic. Not grief.
Control.
That old, familiar grip closing around her ribs.
Isla sinks down on the bench, elbows braced on her knees, staring at the floor. She breathes the way she was taught to breathe before walking onstage, slow, counted, deliberate, but it doesn’t help. This isn’t performance nerves. This is something older. Deeper.
She hadn’t raised her voice. She hadn’t cried. She hadn’t agreed.
And yet she feels like she’s ten years old again, standing in the doorway while her mother explains what’s best for her, what’s reasonable, what’s necessary.
You don’t need that.
You don’t want that.
Trust me.
Isla presses her palm flat against her chest.
Her mother never forbade her from feeling anything outright. That would have been too obvious. Instead, she’d organized Isla’s life so efficiently that feelings became inconvenient side effects, things to be managed, postponed, or quietly outgrown.
Music had been allowed because it could be shaped into discipline. Grief had been tolerated because it sharpened ambition. Anger had been redirected because it fueled excellence.
But questions?
Questions were dangerous.
Isla stands abruptly, the bench scraping softly behind her. She paces the length of the music room, bare feet whispering against stone. The castle feels different now, less like an inheritance, more like a provocation.
You’ve stayed long enough.
The words echo.
Her mother never said come home because I miss you. She said come home because this is disruptive.
Isla laughs softly, the sound edged and humorless.
“I won’t,” she says to the empty room. “Not this time.”
The decision settles into her bones with surprising steadiness.
She isn’t leaving. Not because of the will. Not because of Keir.
Because something here frightens her mother enough to reach across an ocean and tighten the leash.
That thought sends a sharp, electric clarity through her.
Isla grabs her sweater from the back of the chair and strides out of the room.
She doesn’t hesitate. She doesn’t second-guess herself.
She goes straight to Keir’s office.
The office looks smaller in the late afternoon light.
Or maybe Isla is bigger now, angrier, sharper, less willing to move carefully through a space that suddenly feels complicit.
She opens the drawers she skipped earlier. Pulls folders apart with impatience. The neatness that once impressed her now irritates her. This room is not neutral. It is cultivated silence.
“This is ridiculous,” she mutters, flipping through correspondence that leads nowhere.
Contracts. Royalties. Schedules.
All the proof of a life lived loudly, publicly, everywhere except where she was.
Her throat tightens.
Isla shoves one folder aside and opens another. This one thinner. Older. The paper smells faintly of dust and time. She skims quickly, irritation building.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
The fury spikes suddenly, sharp and uncontained.
“Where are you?” she demands of the empty room.
The words come out louder than she intends.
She presses her hands flat on the desk, head bowed, breathing hard. This is exactly what her mother warned her about, this unraveling, this reckless need to know.
But she can’t stop now.
The door creaks softly.
Callum.
Isla doesn’t look up. “If you’re here to tell me to slow down, don’t.”
“I wasn’t going to,” he says quietly.
She straightens despite herself. He stands just inside the doorway, watching her with an intensity that makes her chest ache in a way she doesn’t want to examine.
“My mother called,” Isla says. “She wants me home.”
Callum’s jaw tightens. “And that’s why you’re tearing the place apart.”
“Yes.” She swallows. “Because she’s afraid.”
Callum steps closer, drawn into the orbit of her fury. “Of what?”
“That I’ll find something she couldn’t control.”
She gestures helplessly at the papers. “But I’m not finding it. I’m just proving what I already knew, that he chose everything else.”
“That’s not true,” Callum says.
The certainty in his voice makes her spin toward him.
“Oh?” she snaps. “Because from where I’m standing—”
She stops.
He’s close. Too close. Near enough that she can touch him, the solid steadiness of his presence in a way that makes her suddenly, painfully aware of how alone she’s been.
“You don’t get to tell me what’s true,” Isla says, her voice trembling despite her effort to control it.
“I’m not,” Callum replies. “I’m saying you’re looking for proof that hurts you.”
She laughs sharply. “That’s all there is.”
“No,” he says. “There’s something else. You just haven’t let yourself see it yet.”
The room feels tight. Charged.
Isla takes a step back, bumping into the desk. Callum follows instinctively, stopping just short of touching her. His hands brace on the desk on either side of her, caging her in without trapping her.
Her breath stutters.
This is dangerous.
She should push him away. She should tell him to back off. She should remember every reason this is a bad idea, this man, this castle, this moment.
Instead, she tilts her chin up and meets his gaze.
“You don’t know what I need,” she says, her breath whispery soft.
Callum’s voice drops. “I know what you’re afraid of.”
That does it.
The control snaps.
Isla surges forward and her lips land on his. They’re soft, and warm, and oh God, tremors rack her body. It’s been so long.
The kiss is not gentle. It’s not careful. It’s a collision, her mouth crashing into his, her hands fisting his shirt as if she’s anchoring herself to something solid. For one heartbeat, Callum is stunned.
Then he kisses her back.
Not with restraint.
With heat.
His hands slide to her waist, firm and grounding, holding her like he understands exactly what this is, not romance, not comfort, but release. The kiss deepens, urgent and raw, tasting of anger and want and something dangerously close to hope.
Isla gasps against his mouth, the sound half-sob, half-laugh.
She pulls back abruptly, breathless, eyes wide.
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “No, that was—”
He pulls her to him tightly, his mouth covering hers, and for a second, she relaxes against him. The feel of him hot against her has a moan escaping from her throat.
She pulls away. “We can’t.”
Callum stills instantly, hands dropping. “Isla—”
“That can’t happen,” she says, pressing her fingers to her lips as if she can erase the feeling. “I don’t do this. I don’t lose focus.”
“You weren’t losing it,” Callum says softly. “You were breaking.”
That terrifies her more than the kiss.
Isla turns away, heart pounding, and yanks open the next drawer.
“This means nothing,” she says fiercely. “Nothing.”
Callum doesn’t argue, but he reaches out and rubs his hand down her back as if to reassure her.
He says quietly, “Keep looking.”
She does.
And this time, this time, the evidence finally appears.