Chapter 22
Callum doesn’t go after her right away.
The door closes somewhere down the corridor, the sound swallowed by stone and distance, and he stands there in Keir’s bedroom with the letter still in his hand, the words blurring on the page.
He tells himself she needs space. That chasing her now will only make things worse.
That if he gives her time, they’ll find their way back to each other once the initial shock settles.
He tells himself a lot of things.
The truth is simpler and harder to face.
He doesn’t know what to say that won’t make this worse.
The letter lies open on the bed, the paper creased where Isla’s fingers tightened, where his own grip faltered. Keir’s handwriting stares up at him, controlled, deliberate, written by a man who believed that if he chose his words carefully enough, he could manage the damage.
Callum folds the letter slowly and places it back into the envelope, not sealing it. Nothing about this feels finished. He sets it on the desk, straightening it as if order might bring clarity.
It doesn’t.
The castle feels different now. It did last night too, but then it was softened by warmth, shared music, shared breath, the sense that for once something good wasn’t about to be taken away.
Now it feels watchful.
Callum leaves the room and moves through the corridors without direction at first, following instinct more than thought. He hears voices somewhere below, staff going about their day, unaware that something fundamental has just shifted.
He finds Isla in the music room.
She’s sitting at the piano bench, hands resting flat on the closed lid, not playing. Her shoulders are tight, her spine rigid, like she’s holding herself together through force of will alone.
Callum stops just inside the doorway.
For a long moment, he says nothing. He watches her breathe, the slow rise and fall of her shoulders, the stillness that feels anything but calm.
“You always run when you’re overwhelmed,” he says quietly.
Isla doesn’t turn around. “And you always stand still and call it patience.”
The words land clean and sharp.
Callum steps into the room, careful not to crowd her. “I didn’t want to chase you.”
Her laugh is humorless. “I didn’t want to be chased.”
They sit with that truth for a beat, two instincts colliding without canceling each other out.
Callum shifts closer, stopping a few feet away. “I didn’t want to make you feel trapped.”
She turns then, slow and deliberate, arms crossing over her chest like she’s holding herself together.
“I can’t do this,” Isla says.
The finality in her voice makes his chest tighten. “Do what?”
“This,” she snaps, gesturing between them. “This pattern.”
“We don’t have a pattern,” Callum replies, though even as he says it, doubt flickers.
“Yes, we do,” Isla says. “I let myself feel something good, and then it’s immediately reframed into something I have to justify or forgive.”
Callum takes a breath. “You can feel good things without punishment.”
She tilts her head, studying him. “Can I?”
She stands abruptly and begins to pace, one step, then another, like motion is the only thing keeping her upright.
“Last night,” Isla says, voice tight, “I let myself be open. I let myself want someone without bracing for loss.”
Callum’s throat tightens. He felt it too, the choice, the trust, the way she let herself be held without armor.
“And today,” she continues, “we open a letter, and it’s the same story again. Men leaving. Women controlling. Love turned into a justification.”
“I’m not asking you to forgive him,” Callum says.
“You keep defending him,” she fires back.
“I keep insisting he was human,” Callum replies. “And afraid. He made mistakes. We all make mistakes.”
“And I keep insisting that fear doesn’t excuse disappearing,” Isla snaps. “Do you hear me? He disappeared.”
Callum exhales slowly. “He thought he was protecting you.”
“That’s what I keep hearing,” she says bitterly. “Because it’s convenient.”
The word hangs heavy between them.
“It turns his absence into something noble,” Isla continues. “Instead of a choice he made.”
Callum opens his mouth to argue and then closes it again.
Because she’s not wrong.
The realization settles heavily in his chest, tangled with something else he doesn’t want to name yet.
He has the disorienting sense that he’s standing at the edge of something he doesn’t know how to survive losing.
Not Isla.
The certainty.
The castle has always been a constant. Even before he understood what it meant, before he knew its history or the weight of its name, it had been there, walls that didn’t move, a roof that didn’t vanish, a place that did not ask him to earn his right to exist within it.
After his father died, everything else became conditional. His mother’s love, suddenly rationed. Her patience exhausted. Her attention redirected. Her love redirected to another man.
The castle never asked him to adapt.
It held him while he was angry. While he was silent. While he was closed off, difficult, and impossible.
Now Isla stands before him, asking him to choose.
The request terrifies him more than he wants to admit.
Not because he doesn’t love her.
But because love has never been the thing that kept him safe.
Stone did.
Routine did.
Staying put did.
Isla represents movement. Change. Risk. A future that doesn’t come with instructions.
He understands, suddenly, why Keir stayed away.
Not because Keir didn’t love her.
But because loving someone that much makes you realize how much damage you’re capable of causing. For the hurt that loving can cause and when the love ends, you get sent to a boys’ school.
Callum hates himself for understanding it.
“Do you know what scares me the most?” Isla asks quietly, pulling him back.
He shakes his head.
She looks at him then, really looks at him, as if memorizing something she doesn’t trust herself to keep.
“It’s not that you love this place,” she says. “It’s that it loves you back.”
He frowns. “What does that mean?”
“It means the castle doesn’t ask anything of you,” Isla replies. “It doesn’t need reassurance or compromise or honesty. It doesn’t get angry when you hesitate.”
Callum stiffens. “You think I’m choosing the castle because it’s easier.”
“I think you’re choosing it because it’s safe,” she says gently. “And I don’t blame you for that.”
The gentleness devastates him more than anger would have.
“I grew up with love that came with rules,” Isla continues. “With expectations I didn’t get to negotiate. My mother decided what was best for me and called it protection. My father stayed away and called it mercy. The castle shows neither.”
Her voice tightens. “Both of them took something from me and told themselves they were being kind.”
Callum’s chest aches.
“I can’t live inside that again,” she says. “I can’t love someone who needs me to soften myself so they don’t have to decide.”
“That’s not what I’m asking,” he says hoarsely.
“But it’s what you’re doing,” Isla replies. “Every time you hesitate.”
She steps closer now, close enough that he can feel the pull of her.
“I love you,” she says quietly. “But I will not become negotiable. We support one another, or we walk away.”
Silence stretches between them, thick and charged.
“And I won’t stay here within these stone walls,” Isla finishes softly.
Callum’s heart pounds.
“Say you choose me,” Isla says, voice trembling. “Say it without flinching.”
He wants to.
God, he wants to.
But the castle is not just stone to him. It is the place that kept him when no one else did. The only thing that never left.
His silence lasts a heartbeat.
Two.
Isla’s face stills, all emotion draining into something quiet and devastating.
“There it is,” she whispers. “You choose the castle over me.”
“I love you,” Callum says, the words tearing out of him.
Isla closes her eyes. When she opens them, she looks wrecked.
“I love you too,” she says. “That’s the problem.”
She turns toward the door, then pauses.
“I don’t regret last night,” Isla says quietly. “I don’t regret choosing you.”
Callum swallows hard. “Isla—”
She looks back at him, eyes shining. “No, it’s more than that. It’s a place that teaches me to disappear.”
And then she leaves.
Callum follows her only as far as the doorway.
He watches her walk down the corridor, her back straight, steps steady, already carrying the weight of a decision he doesn’t yet understand.
The castle swallows her, and Callum understands too late what she sees when she looks at it. It belonged to her father, and her father left her. In her mind, the walls and the silence are the same thing, both reminders of how love can vanish without warning.
Callum stands there long after she’s gone, the echo of her words reverberating through him.
I won’t stay somewhere that teaches me to disappear.