Chapter 21
The walk to Keir’s bedroom feels longer than it should.
Callum has lived in this castle long enough to know every shortcut, every stair that creaks, every corridor where sound carries. None of that matters now. The distance stretches anyway, elastic and resistant, as if the house itself is trying to slow them down.
Behind them is breakfast, unfinished coffee, crumbs left on plates, the echo of laughter that had surprised Callum with its ease. Behind them is music, shared without effort, notes folding into one another like they had always been meant to meet.
A shower filled with lingering touches, soft kisses and promises of time later spent in the bedroom.
Ahead of them is a letter. A letter that he fears. Isla has suffered enough heartache. If he could, he would keep this from her, and yet he knows that whatever is inside that letter could also help her heal.
Callum watches Isla as she walks beside him. Her posture is different. Not guarded exactly, but braced. As if she’s learned that joy comes with a cost and she’s already preparing to pay it.
He hates that he recognizes it.
Keir’s bedroom waits at the end of the hall, the door ajar.
Light spills across the threshold, softening the sharp lines of the stone floor.
The room itself is neat, restrained. Keir had never been a man who let chaos linger in his personal space.
Chaos belonged in music, not in the places where he slept.
The envelope sits on the bed, untouched since they last stood here.
White. Ordinary. Heavy.
Isla stops just inside the room.
“This is it,” she says.
Callum nods. “We don’t have to rush.”
She lets out a breath that sounds suspiciously like a laugh. “If I don’t do it now, I won’t do it at all. I’d like to put this behind me.”
She crosses the room and picks up the envelope. Her fingers tighten around it, then loosen again, like she’s testing how much pressure it can take.
“I don’t want to read it,” she says suddenly.
Callum turns toward her. “All right.”
“I want you to,” she continues. “I need to hear it. I don’t think I can… absorb it if it’s my voice.”
Callum hesitates. He understands the request instinctively and the danger of it.
“If I read it,” he says carefully, “you need to know I won’t soften it.”
She meets his gaze. “Don’t.”
He takes the envelope from her. The paper is cool beneath his fingers. He breaks the seal slowly, deliberately, as if that might somehow blunt what’s coming.
Keir’s handwriting fills the page.
Callum recognizes it immediately. Tight, slanted, precise. The handwriting of a man who rewrote every sentence twice before allowing it to exist.
He clears his throat.
Isla,
If you’re reading this, then I didn’t make it back. I always believed I would have more time.
Isla’s breath hitches. Callum forces himself to continue.
I’ve written and destroyed this letter more times than I can count. Every version felt inadequate. None of them explained why I stayed away in a way that felt honest enough.
Callum’s chest tightens.
I want you to know first and foremost that I wanted to come see you. Not once. Not occasionally. All the time.
Isla turns away, pressing her hand flat against the window.
I followed your career the only way I was allowed. Reviews. Recordings. Programs I wasn’t supposed to have. I knew when you debuted in Vienna. I knew when you changed your repertoire. I knew when critics finally started using the word “fearless.”
Callum’s voice wavers despite his effort.
You are extraordinary. I don’t say that because you’re brilliant, though you are, but because you built yourself without any of the support you deserved. You found your voice without anyone guiding your hands.
Silence presses thickly around them.
When you turned eighteen, I told your mother I was coming. I believed adulthood changed the rules. She told me it didn’t.
Callum glances up briefly. Isla hasn’t moved.
She told me she had photographs she would release to the press if I showed up. Pictures from my worst years. Pictures I was never proud of. She said she would make sure the world saw exactly who I was.
Isla lets out a sharp, incredulous laugh.
I should have come anyway. I know that now. I tell myself I was protecting you, but the truth is I was afraid. Afraid I’d damage your life. Afraid you’d see me clearly and regret knowing me.
Callum swallows hard.
I imagine playing music with you more times than I can count. You at the piano. Me trying not to embarrass myself. I imagined you rolling your eyes when I missed a beat.
Isla squeezes her eyes shut.
I told myself someday. I told myself I would earn the right.
Callum lowers the letter slightly, breath unsteady, then forces himself to finish.
If I’m gone, then I ran out of time. That is on me. I am so sorry I didn’t stand up to your mother. I am so sorry I chose absence when you deserved presence. I loved you from a distance because I didn’t know how to do it any other way.
The room feels hollow when he finishes.
Callum lowers the letter.
Isla turns slowly.
Her expression isn’t grief.
It’s fury.
“So he knew,” she says flatly. “He knew, and he still didn’t come.”
Callum takes a breath. “Isla—”
“He knew she was threatening him,” she continues, voice rising. “He knew she was controlling everything, and he stayed away anyway.”
“He was terrified,” Callum says, unable to stop himself. “Of hurting you. Of ruining you.”
“And instead he abandoned me,” Isla snaps.
“He didn’t abandon you,” Callum says.
Her eyes flash. “That’s what everyone keeps telling me.”
“Because it’s true,” he replies, immediately wishing he’d chosen different words.
She steps closer, anger radiating. “It’s convenient. It makes his silence noble.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“It’s exactly what you mean,” she says. “You’re defending him.”
Callum holds her gaze. “Yes.”
All the hurt and anger she’d held onto since she was a child seems to bubble to the surface.
“He should have come,” Isla says. “He should have chosen me.”
Callum’s voice is low. “He thought choosing you meant staying away.”
“That was wrong,” she fires back.
“Yes,” Callum agrees. “It was.”
“Then why are you defending him?”
“Because I knew him,” Callum says. “And I know what fear does to men who already believe they’re dangerous.”
Her voice cracks. “And what about what it did to me?”
The question guts him.
She turns away, pacing the room, hands fisted.
“He watched my life from afar,” she says. “He read about me instead of showing up. He loved me like a stranger.”
Callum watches her, heart pounding. “He loved you the only way he thought he was allowed.”
“That’s not enough,” Isla says. “It was never enough.”
She faces him again.
“Stop turning him into a tragic figure,” she demands. “He was my father.”
Callum exhales slowly. “And he was a man who believed the damage he could cause outweighed the good he might bring.”
She shakes her head. “That’s cowardice.”
“Sometimes,” Callum says, “it’s fear masquerading as mercy.”
The room tightens around them.
“This changes how I see you,” Isla says suddenly.
Callum’s chest tightens. “How?”
“You defend him,” she says. “You see his choice as a sacrifice. I see it as abandonment.”
He nods slowly. “Both can be true.”
“I don’t know how to live with that,” she says.
The letter crumples slightly in his hand.
Isla turns and walks out of the room. Callum stands there, not knowing what to do.
The truth has done what it always does.
It hasn’t healed them.
It’s split them, just enough to hurt. Their fragile beginning seems to be unraveling, and that frightens him.