Chapter 14
The kiss leaves her unsteady.
Not dizzy. Not swept. Unmoored, like her spine has forgotten how to hold her upright now that her mouth has done something reckless and honest and completely unplanned.
And oh, how her body responds in ways she’d never dreamed of. Heat infuses her like a volcano spewing hot liquid fire. Her legs feel like they’re made of jelly, and Callum…he’s moaning, or else there is a ghost in this room with them.
Isla presses her palms to Callum’s chest as she pulls back, not because she wants distance, but because if she doesn’t create space, she’s not sure she’ll remember why she should stop at all. His heartbeat is wild beneath her hands. Too fast. Too hard.
Matching hers.
For a suspended moment, neither can talk.
The storage room is cold, stone walls sweating damp into the air, dust clinging to everything like it’s been waiting, but heat coils low in her belly, sharp and unwelcome and undeniable.
She tells herself it’s adrenaline. The shock of being trapped.
The simple physics of too much tension and too little air.
That lie lasts exactly two seconds.
She can still taste him.
She steps back first. Just one space. Enough to breathe again.
The room comes back into focus slowly.
Wooden shelves. Old trunks. Cardboard boxes stacked in uneven towers. A single bulb overhead that flickers like it’s debating whether to stay alive.
“So,” Isla says, folding her arms tight across her chest, “this is awkward.”
Callum huffs a laugh.
The sound startles them both.
“That’s one word for it,” he says.
Isla’s brows lift. “You’re remarkably calm for someone who just trapped us in a dungeon.”
“It’s not a dungeon,” he replies automatically. “It’s a storage room.”
“With one exit,” Isla points out. “Which is currently refusing to acknowledge our existence.”
Callum turns and grips the handle again, just to be sure. It doesn’t budge.
He tries the lock. The key turns, but the bolt doesn’t lift.
“Old mechanism,” he mutters. “Humidity. Settling. Trapping us together.”
“Of course,” Isla says dryly. “Because nothing says welcome home like Victorian death traps. Did you plan this?”
Callum leans back against the door, arms folding. “Absolutely. I wanted to spend my day trapped in a storage room, with a woman who is hot one second and cold as an iceberg the next.”
“There’s a reason for that,” she returns. “When you’re pulled in all directions, you usually go a little crazy.”
A chuckle escapes from him. “If it helps, this isn’t how I usually host guests.”
Isla snorts. The sound surprises her, laughter arriving uninvited, like a stranger who ignored the “no visitors” sign.
“I should put that in the guestbook,” she says. “Five stars. Excellent acoustics. Kidnapping potential slightly higher than expected.”
His mouth twitches, and for a moment, the tension loosens, just enough for her lungs to expand fully.
The silence returns, but it’s less suffocating now, more… charged.
Callum’s gaze flicks to her mouth. Back to her eyes.
Isla clears her throat. “We should probably ration something.”
“Ration?” Callum repeats.
She gestures vaguely. “Time. Oxygen. Sanity.”
A short laugh shakes his chest. “We’re not buried alive.”
“Yet,” Isla says. “Give the castle time.”
He pushes off the door and steps farther into the room, as if movement will keep him from doing something reckless again.
“We’re fine,” he says. “Someone will notice eventually.”
“Who?” Isla asks pointedly.
He opens his mouth, then closes it.
She lifts an eyebrow. “Exactly.”
“Well,” Callum says, buying time, “you could scream.”
Isla considers. “I’m a professional musician. If I scream, it’s usually on purpose, and people pay for tickets.”
“That’s… unsettlingly fair.”
She gestures toward the shelves. “Besides, if I’m going to lose my mind, I’d like to do it productively.”
“By digging through my mentor’s secret hoard of unresolved emotional trauma?”
“Exactly.”
Callum laughs again, a real laugh this time, and it fills the small space and echoes off stone. Isla freezes, staring at him.
The laugh surprises her more than the kiss did.
It’s easy. Unforced. Like something he doesn’t allow himself very often.
“What?” he asks, catching her look.
“Nothing,” Isla says quickly. “I just… didn’t expect to enjoy hearing your laughter. It’s not something we’ve experienced in our short time together.”
“Funerals have a way of stifling laughter,” he admits. “Haven’t had much cause lately.”
Something shifts then. Not romantic. Not safe. In fact, the tension between them has shifted into a sexual energy, one she’s trying to ignore.
Isla nods once, as if accepting that they’re both more frayed than they want to admit.
She moves toward the shelves. “Help me.”
They kneel, side by side, and Isla becomes painfully aware of how close they are again, his knee almost touching hers, his shoulder brushing hers when he reaches for a box.
She opens the first one and finds a tangle of cables.
She holds up the mess like it might bite her. “What is this?”
Callum squints. “I think that was an attempt at organized chaos.”
Isla drops it back into the box. “Ah. A family tradition. Put it in a box if you don’t know what to do with it.”
“That was Keir. The original hoarder.”
Callum laughs, really laughs, hand braced on his knee. Isla laughs too, surprised and helpless, the sound bubbling up before she can stop it.
When the laughter fades, they’re both still smiling.
Still kneeling too close.
Callum wipes his eyes. “I forgot he was ridiculous sometimes.”
Isla sobers slightly. “I never knew.”
The weight creeps back in, softer now, but it doesn’t crush. Not when laughter has cracked the seal.
They move to another box. Isla lifts the lid and recoils.
“Oh no.”
“What?” Callum asks.
She pulls out a jacket that should never have existed: sequined, shredded, aggressively eighties.
“Please tell me this is not real.”
Callum groans. “Oh God. He wore that onstage once. I remember my father giving him shit about dressing like he was Elvis.”
“Once?” Isla demands. “This thing should come with a warning label.”
“He said it ‘captured the era.’”
“It captured a crime,” Isla says. “Enough sequins to explain several questionable career choices.”
Callum bursts out laughing again, loud enough that it echoes around them. Isla laughs too, covering her mouth with her hand, shocked at herself.
For a moment, she forgets she’s locked in a room. Forgets the castle. Forgets the will. It’s just her and Callum locked together, having fun.
Then her laughter dies, and the truth slams back in.
Keir is dead.
And all she has are boxes.
Isla drops the jacket back into its box and presses her hands against her thighs to steady herself.
“Okay,” she says, voice tighter now. “What else did you hide, Keir MacLaren?”
Callum shifts beside her. “If he’s half as dramatic as he liked to think he was, this won’t be subtle.”
“Good,” Isla mutters. “I’m not in the mood for subtle.”
They open the next box together.
At first, it’s harmless: old programs, laminated backstage passes, crumpled set lists. Isla flips through them, recognizing venues, dates, the shape of a life lived in motion.
Then her fingers catch on something thicker.
A bundle wrapped in tissue paper.
Her stomach tightens, instinct warning her before her brain catches up.
She unwraps it carefully.
Photographs.
Not glossy publicity shots. Not images meant for fans or magazines.
Candid.
Private.
Her breath catches as she lifts the stack, fingertips brushing curled edges and brittle corners. The paper is thicker than modern prints, the colors slightly faded.
A life preserved.
She sinks to the floor without realizing she’s done it, legs folding beneath her. Callum shifts, crouching beside her, close enough that his warmth touches her in the cold air, but he doesn’t reach for her.
Doesn’t rescue.
He just stays.
Isla flips the first photo.
Keir, younger than she has ever seen him. His hair darker, his face less carved by exhaustion, his smile, God, his smile is easy. Real.
His arm is slung around a woman with dark hair and sharp eyes.
Alisa.
Isla’s chest tightens. She hates how her first instinct is to search her mother’s face for power even in a photograph. Alisa is smiling. Radiant. Triumphant.
Keir is looking at her like she’s the center of the room.
Isla flips to the next.
A wedding photo.
Formal. Bright. Her mother in a gown that glows against the darker background. Keir in a suit that looks like it cost more than Isla’s first apartment.
Alisa’s smile is wide, shining, almost victorious.
Keir looks… different.
Not distant. Not lost. His gaze is fixed on Alisa with something like awe, as if he can’t quite believe she’s real.
Isla stares at it longer than she means to.
“He looks happy,” she says, the words slipping out before she can stop them.
Callum studies the photo. “He was,” he says quietly. “For a while. My father said they were in love, until Keir’s demons got in the way and Alisa had enough.”
The quiet agreement in his voice is oddly destabilizing. Not defense. Not blame. Just fact.
Isla nods, throat tight, and turns the photo over. Another slides free beneath it.
Alisa again, standing alone in a garden, one hand resting protectively over a barely rounded stomach.
Pregnant.
Isla’s breath shudders. She studies her mother’s face, the way she stands, as if she already knows she’s holding something the world will have to orbit.
And suddenly, Isla sees herself not as an abstract child, not as a future, but as a possession.
A gift.
A weapon.
Her fingers tighten around the photograph.
She forces herself to keep going.
The next picture steals the air from her lungs.
Hospital room. Harsh lighting. A narrow bed.
Keir sits on the edge of it, shoulders hunched, cradling something small and wrapped in white. His face is turned downward, reverent, stunned.
In his arms—
Isla.