Chapter 22 #2
“If he doesn’t welcome you back, then we’ll build our own home somewhere else.” Her voice was firm. “We’ve got money now. We’ve got each other, and we’ll figure it out. Together.”
The simplicity of it—the absolute certainty in her eyes—made something in his chest tighten.
“I love ye,” he said. “More than I thought I could love anything.”
“Good.” She smiled. “Because you’re stuck with me now.”
He kissed her then, slow and deep, tasting salt and hope and the future they were about to claim.
Two days passed in a blur of preparation.
After they’d had a hot bath, he took Maddie shopping for new clothes that didn’t reek of smoke and ash—practical traveling gear purchased from a merchant who made everything from stolen fabric and asked no questions about where his customers were headed.
Supplies for the voyage north—dried meat, hardtack, a few luxuries like soap and a comb.
And most importantly, the careful conversion of a few gemstones to coin through a fence who charged too much but made the transaction possible.
Enough for their passage and to get them back to his clan.
Brodie walked Port Royal’s streets with Maddie at his side, showing her the taverns where he’d drunk with the crew, the docks where he’d worked, the corners where fights broke out nightly.
It felt strange being back here not as a captive or a crew member, but as a free man with coin in his pocket and a future ahead of him.
That afternoon, they went to the merchant ship, the Mary Catherine, preparing to sail for Glasgow on the tide.
The captain was a Scotsman named MacPherson, weathered and practical, who agreed to take them aboard when Brodie showed him coin for proper passage. Not working for their keep like cargo—traveling as passengers, with a small cabin and meals included.
It felt surreal.
“Glasgow,” MacPherson confirmed, studying the coins Brodie had laid on the table between them. “We’re carrying sugar and rum. Six weeks if the weather holds, eight if it doesn’t. Ye’ll work if I need extra hands, but mostly ye’ll stay out of my crew’s way and keep to your cabin.”
“That suits us well,” Brodie said.
MacPherson’s eyes flicked to Maddie, then back to Brodie. “She your wife?”
“She will be, once we reach Scotland.”
“Fair enough. I run a Christian ship. No whoring, no stealing, no fighting among the passengers. Break those rules and ye swim the rest of the way. Understood?”
“Understood.”
They shook on it, and just like that easily, their passage was secured.
The morning of our departure arrived with clear skies and a steady wind from the south—perfect sailing weather.
I stood at the rail of the Mary Catherine as the crew prepared to cast off, watching Port Royal slowly recede behind us.
The town that had seemed so overwhelming two days ago now looked almost quaint from this distance—a jumble of buildings clinging to the coast, smoke rising from chimneys and smithies, ships crowding the harbor like seabirds jostling for position.
Jamaica was disappearing behind us. The island where so much had happened, where I’d found Brodie and love and a future I never could have imagined in my careful, controlled life back in my own time.
Home. The word felt strange now. My apartment in the future had been safe and comfortable and utterly empty. This—a ship bound for Scotland with a man I’d known for only a few months—this felt more like home than anything in my old life ever had.
“Are ye certain?” Brodie asked, voicing the fear I could hear in his voice even as he tried to hide it.
“Scotland’s hard and cold. Ye’ll be a stranger there.
My brothers might not welcome me back. I abandoned my clan for a woman who betrayed me.
Cameron and Connor might not—” He stopped, the old wound still raw.
“Then we’ll make them understand.” I turned to face him, taking both his hands in mine. “And if they don’t, we’ll build our own home somewhere else. We survived Rose Hall, the awful widow and her evil son. We can survive anything as long as we’re together.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.” I leaned against him, his arms coming around me as the ship began to move, the crew hauling on lines as the sails filled with wind. “I chose you. Not Scotland, not your family, not some perfect future. You. Wherever you are is my home.”
His chest rose and fell with a deep breath. “I spent four years believing I’d never trust anyone again. Never let anyone get close enough to hurt me. Never risk the kind of love that could destroy me if it turned false.”
“And?”
“And then ye fell through time, barefoot and bewildered, and taught me that love isn’t about certainty. It’s about choice. About showing up, day after day, and choosing each other even when it’s hard.” He pulled back enough to look at me, his gray eyes serious. “Especially when it’s hard.”
“Good thing I’m not going anywhere, then.”
“Good thing.” He smiled, and it changed his face—the hardness softening, the shadows lifting. “I love ye, Maddie Carter. More than I thought possible.”
“I love you too.” I tilted my face as he kissed me there on the deck with Port Royal disappearing behind us and Scotland waiting across an ocean.
When we broke apart, the Mary Catherine’s crew was working with practiced efficiency, and the coastline of Jamaica was nothing more than a dark line on the horizon.
“Ready?” I asked.
Brodie looked back one last time at the island—at the place where he’d been sold, where he’d survived, where he’d found love and freedom in equal measure. At Jamaica, with its jungle and its heat and its memories both bitter and sweet.
Then he looked ahead at the open water, toward Scotland and his brothers and whatever welcome or rejection waited there. Toward a future that was uncertain but ours to build.
“Aye,” he said. “I’m ready.”
We stood at the rail, hand in hand, as the ship carried us north toward home.