Chapter 11 #2
Later, as we were leaving the Fairchild mansion, Béatrice Brigitte had one more comment for me.
“Well. I guess there’s a slim chance this might work between you two.
But, Maisie, darling, why don’t you work on your etiquette and have Grayson explain our lifestyle more thoroughly before you visit again?
I really couldn’t tolerate a repeat of this evening. My nerves are quite delicate.”
Beau seems to understand my need for silence to compose myself as I enter back into present time. His gaze is steady and calming. Without pulling away, he gives me room to decompress, making space for my emotions and further words if I need.
The fire crackles, one last log collapsing into embers. I change positions, and the movement stirs the candle’s glow across the floor. Time settles in slow layers between us, unhurried, while shadows sway gently along the walls. The weight of my story floats in the room between us, like muggy air.
Finally, he says simply with an empathetic tone, “I’m sorry Gray did that to you. Sorry they did that to you.”
I nod, wondering if he’ll say more, or if he’ll let the pause stretch, giving room for thoughts neither of us have spoken yet.
Beau stays quiet for a beat longer. I hear the fire settle as if it’s listening too. Then he exhales slowly and scoots an inch closer to me, voice low.
“I was with someone, once. We met through music, late-night writing sessions, and arguments over which lines hit hardest. She had a voice that demanded an audience and an insatiable yearning for fame.”
He runs a hand over his jaw and sips his now lukewarm cocoa.
“We connected over rhythm, lyrics, the way a song can carry more truth than a conversation ever could. I thought we had something special.”
He waits before sharing more, and this time it’s my turn to simply listen, allowing space for him to shape his history the way he needs to.
“I composed a song,” he says, tone even. “She made it famous. It made her famous. But she left out the part where it was never hers to begin with.”
He rubs his thumb against the seam of his jeans, a nervous gesture I haven’t seen before.
“I wrote it totally on my own. Every word. Every chord. I was getting ready to collaborate with her, to invite her to shape it vocally. Maybe add her own vibe to it.”
His voice drops, slower now. “But before I got the chance. Before I ever played it for her the way I meant it, the way I heard it in my mind. She took it. Recorded it with her own spin and released it.”
A pause. Then: “By the time I heard it on the radio, it was already too late.”
His words twist in my chest.
He doesn’t name her. His eyes have gone somewhere far off, a place I know better than I want to admit.
“I never craved the spotlight,” he says. “But I didn’t expect to be erased from my own song.”
I nod slowly. “That…wasn’t about music. That was theft.”
His eyes meet mine, raw with vulnerability, and shadowed by grief of some sort that I can’t quite figure out. I can tell he’s feeling the sting all over again. And somehow, I know he’s grateful I’m here.
The silence that follows isn’t unnerving. It rests between us as if we inhaled but forgot to exhale. It doesn’t press or pull. It just hovers there, soothing, significant, and holding potential. We’re not filling it, just letting each other exist inside it. At least that’s how it feels to me.
“Yeah,” he finally agrees. “It was.”
I think he might say more. But he stops there. And I don’t ask for anything else.
It’s not the moment that needs no words, but the meaning inside it. More explanation would only dull what’s coming alive between us, something felt more fully in the breathing space. More words would shrink what we already understand by being here together. Not alone in our memories.
Later, when the fire is down to ashes and my thoughts are spinning too fast, he stands. “Want some air?”
I nod, thankful for the excuse to leave the cabin.
We walk to the footbridge over the Little Kilchis River.
Twigs crack under my boots as we stroll.
My fingers brush the hem of his flannel once, not meaning to.
The fabric is worn thin at the edge, threads fraying just slightly where it’s been tugged and shrugged on too many times to count.
It smells faintly of woodsmoke and something clean. Soap? Deodorant?
I’m a little jealous of the shirt, honestly. It gets to be close to him without overthinking it. I don’t try to create distance, not even when we stop side by side in the middle of the bridge.
The moonlight spills across the wooden planks in silvery streaks, reflecting across the rippling current below. The air rings with the symphony of night—tree limbs rustling, crickets singing in the shadows, the distant call of an owl echoing through the trees.
Water tumbles over rocks with the sound of restrained applause, a kind of hush that invites you to listen harder. I wonder if Beau hears it the way I do, or if the overlapping sounds around us are inspiring a melody in his mind.
But when I glance over, his focus isn’t distant or drifting.
His eyes absorb me, and he doesn’t look away.
No one’s ever looked at me this way before.
I think this might be what it feels like to be consumed by someone’s gaze and feel safe inside it.
His attention seems tuned to something deep in me, an emotional frequency only he can hear.
He adjusts his stance, as though he’s about to say something, then hesitates. Instead, he caresses the back of my hand, slowly, intentionally. His touch mirrors the way he’s watching me, only this time, through his fingertips.
When I turn to look directly into his questioning eyes, something in my expression must answer what he isn’t asking aloud. Not a nod, not a word. Maybe the way I stand, fully present and still. Or maybe the way I look up at him and let him see that I’m not afraid.
His fingers reach up, purposefully, gently, and he lifts my chin with the barest touch. My heartbeat stumbles. My body trembles. But I hold his gaze. He leans in, not rushed, not hungry. Tender. As if I’m something sacred.
His lips press to mine with a kind of aching patience, as though he’s trying to memorize their shape with his own.
The world narrows to the soft press of our mouths and the night song around us.
He pulls me to him, and I let myself savor it.
The closeness. His solid, warm chest. The way we’re anchored now by a current of understanding, heightened by the intimacy of telling our stories out loud, stories shaped by rejection, but no longer ours alone.
When his lips finally release mine, his eyes don’t drop away. They meet mine steadily, searching and a little wide. Something tells me he’s wondering if I felt it too. Whatever just passed between us. Whatever this suddenly is. Or if he just dreamed it into being.
Back at the cabin, neither of us mentions the blanket wall.
Instead, we grab the same blankets from the night before and wordlessly roll them into a long, lumpy tube down the center of the bed.
It’s not the barrier it was. It’s more of an emotional seatbelt, keeping us facing forward instead of veering into whatever wreckage might occur if more than a kiss were to happen.
Because whatever that kiss meant, it took us somewhere we can’t quite come back from. This isn’t pretend anymore. Something’s changed, and I’m scared to admit I might actually want where this is headed.
Even though he’s the one who kissed me first, I don’t know if Beau wants to go beyond that. And I don’t just mean physically. I mean emotionally. I mean moving toward a relationship that would make the matchmakers brag. The kind that lasts.
Part of me wants to take the blanket tube and whop Beau over the head with it, a makeshift jousting sword to knock him off the “I’m not explaining myself” horse he’s riding.
Maybe start a rousing pillow fight. Or better yet, grab his hands and make him jump on the bed with me.
Be wild and stupid and joyful, just for the fun of it.
But I don’t.
I tuck the idea back into the closet in my mind where I keep the loud, impulsive parts of myself—the ones I’ve learned not everyone wants to see. Sometimes staying completely on my side of the bed is the only way to protect my heart.
Beau builds the fire up again. I crawl under the quilt and lie there with my heart still racing.
I tell myself it was just a kiss. A gesture of growing fondness.
But it wasn’t. It was more.
My skin still buzzes where he touched me.
But inside? I feel like a brittle petal, beautiful and breakable. Not because of how I was cast aside before. But because of hope. Because Beau doesn’t only make me feel accepted. He makes me feel wanted.
And that might be the scariest part.
Because tonight, the voice Gray left behind is whispering again. Not loud. Not cruel. Just persistent enough to make me wonder if this is another setup for heartbreak. Beau’s kiss didn’t take the fear away; instead, it cradled it carefully, like it understood the ache Gray left behind.
But what if?
If I fall for Beau and he lets go, I’m not sure I’ll know how to bloom again.