Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
MAISIE
The light weight of her taid’s painting of this very beach sat in her lap, a cool breeze swirling through her hair. Maisie didn’t know why she’d found her way here this evening, but she hadn’t been able to focus since lunchtime, dragging herself through work when she should’ve taken the already wasted time to do nothing and rest. She would rather that than produce work for her clients that was under par.
But had she listened to her own advice? No.
The postcard painting she kept upon her mantlepiece with her taid’s words had been her guide to the seafront tonight after FaceTiming half her family with no news to give on Vera’s secrecy – the woman was like a vault locked up tight.
If you ever miss home, find your way to the water. The man was onto something with his advice twenty years before his time.
She was alone out here in the fading light. A few locals walked their dogs along the beach since it was the off-season for tourists, others headed up to the seafront pubs and the bar for happy hour. Her legs dangled over the edge of the sea defence wall that stretched all along Marine Terrace – the promenade – her toes too far from the sand to swish the grains back and forth. This was one of only a couple of sections of the north beach not guarded by white railings, but rather a lot drier than sitting on one of the wooden steps down to the pebbles and sand. On any other day, these unobstructed views might have given her a little clarity to the thoughts that swirled in her mind ever since she’d returned from Manchester.
A heaviness sat in her chest that Maisie couldn’t put a name to. Loneliness? Though some would argue how she could be lonely when her grandma, who she loved more than anything, and all of Vera’s hiking friends were within a one-mile radius of where she lay her head at night?
No, it felt more like regret, only without a reason why.
She was here in Wales for a purpose, and so far that purpose wasn’t working.
She’d left everyone behind only to find herself still lost. Like the tide lapping in and out upon the rocks, a part of her wanted to keep on moving, but she didn’t have an end in sight. No home base to anchor herself to. For the last few nights, she’d wanted everything to be as it was three months ago, before everything had changed.
“What are you doing out here, Daffy?”
“Shit—” Maisie slapped her hand to her chest and nearly broke her neck spinning to find the source of that voice. “Iain …”
Ten yards back, Ted strained his lead to get to her and Iain let him go. He galloped full pelt, and Maisie had a lightning strike of fear that she would end up in the sand until Ted ground to a halt on the concrete paving.
“Hi baby!” She tried to catch him as he wiggled around her, but he wouldn’t stay still enough for more than an awkwardly placed pat.
“You spoil him,” Iain chided, bemusement in his voice behind her.
“Someone should,” Maisie rebuffed. Eventually Ted settled with his head in her lap, grains of sand falling from his doggy moustache to her corduroy overalls. They were embroidered with fairy mushrooms today, one of her favourite pairs.
In those few seconds, Iain had moved. He stood above her, his eyes pinched as though she were a sign too far away that he tried to read. It was rather off-putting this time to be under his study with such a great distance between them. Seriously, how did a person come to be built like him?
“I haven’t heard from you this week,” he said, his voice like a gentle nudge.
Maisie’s lack of communication hadn’t been on purpose. Though maybe it had, a little.
Iain came to her calmly, which is more than what she could say for how she’d stormed away from him on Saturday night. She’d felt flirty and maybe that was the alcohol’s fault, but one mere suggestion that he could ever like her and he’d flipped.
She’d had all night and the resulting days to think about why he’d closed himself off, how reminding him that his engagement had failed had come so casually. Maisie already knew that he believed it was his fault, and inadvertently, she supposed, she’d made that point hit home. But there was another reason, too. “Not just that,” he’d said. She just hadn’t learned what it was quite yet.
“Things have been busy with work. Nain keeps asking me to do things with her too.” She sighed and tipped her head back to see him, hoping Iain might know an answer to one of her multiple problems. “How do I politely tell her that she can’t just show up and demand for me to do something with her whenever she likes?”
So much guilt coursed through her veins for wanting to know such a thing. She should be glad that she was lucky enough to still have her grandmother around, one who wanted to spend time with her. But the timings just weren’t fair anymore.
Iain angled his head like the answer was written on her lips, his beard scratching the collar of his coat. “Have you thought about how maybe she just wants to make up for lost time?”
“More so that she’s making up for time we’re losing,” Maisie muttered.
“Don’t think like that.” Iain’s tone firmed, his presence looming behind her. “If she wasn’t well, she would tell you. And I don’t think that woman is going anywhere just yet.”
“We’ve taken more boxes of stuff to the charity shops this week. Ronnie is glued to her side. What else am I supposed to think?”
Iain exhaled, and the next thing she knew he was sitting beside her, dangling his own legs off the wall. He didn’t need to say anything, Maisie didn’t need him to, either.
Somewhere in the last weeks she’d become content in their silence. When he’d helped package her products for her online orders – other than to ask for instructions – he’d let her be whilst she’d tried to manifest her cramps and pain away.
This moment, sitting here together at the endlessness like the start of the world, felt no different.
How could she not be content when the view was this spectacular even on its gloomiest days? It’d be brighter when spring was more fully underway; in April and May when the evenings were longer, when the skies made the ocean tide a more teal shade of blue.
“How is your friend’s bakery doing?” Iain’s quiet question, reverent of the view, was a fraction startling in the silence.
“As good as she hoped,” Maisie answered, wiping flyaway curls from her face. “They’ve sold out every day this week. Now that the kitchen’s running, Faye’ll have the doughnuts and pastries being made constantly. Bash is going back to London this weekend, so she’ll have more work to do without him.”
“He was very protective of you all.”
That opinion explained a lot of the tension Maisie felt Bash giving off that night at the bar.
“We’ve known each other for a decade. He’s really good to all of us. You didn’t meet Freddy, but he’s just the same.”
“So you’ve always just been … friends?” Iain sounded like he spoke through his back teeth.
Yes, they had – a decade’s worth of friendship. They’d been on holidays and even lived together at the end of university at one point, and— Wait, was that…
Maisie gaped. “Iain Howell … is that jealousy?”
“Curiosity,” he corrected her, but the truth was in the way he didn’t look at her when he said it, how his jaw rolled under that well-groomed beard as he adamantly stared out to the farthest reaches of sea.
Maisie wasn’t sure how she was supposed to feel about him being jealous over Bash. That sort of thing had never happened to her before.
She hummed doubtfully, her lips willing into a smile. “Yes. Just friends. Bash has only ever had eyes for Faye, and they finally got together at Christmas.”
Was it just her opinion, or did Iain relax to hear so?
She hadn’t properly looked at him tonight. The sprinkling of grey in the cropped sides of his hair was more prominent, the curls on top less defined. His beard was longer, yet everything else about him was the same. The kind crinkles at the corners of his eyes and the stern lines in his brow that she recognised more and more were just because he took the world so seriously. Maisie didn’t know what had happened to make that outlook his default setting.
“Did Bash tell you what he does for work?” she continued, working towards the thought she’d had in the back of her mind all week.
“He mentioned it.”
Good. Because Maisie had figured out the connection between Iain’s job in showroom sales and Bash’s job in designing spaces. There were areas where the two would cross, and since Iain hated the work situation he was currently in, she thought she could do a little prompting.
“He’s an interior designer – a luxury one. His business partner, Bennet, handles the sourcing and installation side of things. If it’s something you’d be interested in, I could talk to him?”
“They’re based in London?” he assumed, an eye creeping to spy at her.
“Yes …”
Iain’s ardent focus snapped forwards again. “I’m not leaving Wales.”
Well that was a little bit of a problem, but nothing that couldn’t be worked around.
“He might know of some jobs going closer to here,” Maisie said in hopes that he might take the bait. She hadn’t spoken to Bash at all about anything, but he was easy enough to wrap around her finger. Failing that, she’d use Faye as his greatest weakness.
“I appreciate the offer, but no, thank you.”
She’d only wanted to help. Offer up an idea that he might not have thought of. Ultimately it was Iain’s decision, but he didn’t seem to be doing much to help himself, and Maisie didn’t want to see him spiral out, fall from the ledge of misery he appeared to be balanced on.
Within a few breaths, the crease in his forehead flattened. “You never answered my question,” he said, another one of his vocal nudges.
Ah – the one about what she was doing out here sitting on the edge of the promenade at seven at night, though the darkened navy sky looked closer to eight now, since the sun faded fast in the far distance of the Irish Sea.
Stroking her hand over Ted’s wiry back as he sighed in her lap, her shoulders sagged. “I was out here being introspective, if you must know,” Maisie said softly.
“Hm. I got that feeling.”
She didn’t expect for him to ask her what she was ruminating over, exactly, but the gentle air between them tonight left enough space for Maisie to open up anyway.
“Seeing everyone at the weekend …” she began, feeling that heaviness in her chest worm closer to the surface again, “it just made me miss them all. Miss being able to go to each other’s flats so easily, meet up at random hours ... miss London .”
That was the crux of her troubles, and perhaps the reason that her heart ached, too.
Did she even really exist out here? Both of her jobs kept her within her flat. Only her nain , the hiking group, and her need to buy groceries to live ever really brought her out of her own space. It was a loneliness that Maisie wasn’t used to at all.
Silent for a moment, Iain’s eyes fell to his hands. “Do you want to go back?” His question was weighty like a stone.
“I can’t just yet.”
“But do you want to?” He looked up at her then, his eyes searching far deeper into hers than they had done before.
Caught off guard by the ball of honest disappointment in her throat, Maisie croaked, “I have no idea where I fit in anymore, Iain.”
Wherever she belonged, she’d like for it to be pointed out for her on a map with a giant red pin, because her heart had no idea anymore. Their trip to see her friends at the weekend had only sharpened the tip of that obviousness. She’d made London her home for her entire life, except for when she’d visited Vera and her taid here. God, that’d been so much fun. How many children could say that they did their homework on a beach? Or learned to swim in these waters right in front of them?
There had never been any worries here. No stress. Just comfort and family and a peace that, as a grown up now, Maisie realised she couldn’t ever replicate being in the big city. It wasn’t just the landscape but the whole town. People saying bore da to each other on the streets. The sense that no one was in a rush. The woman who worked in the art supplies shop now knew her by name. God, she felt like she could breathe …
She guessed that she’d forgotten how to do that.
Iain watched her for a long moment, but Maisie drew away first. “We don’t have to spill our darkest secrets,” he’d said. He wouldn’t have changed his mind in a few measly days where they hadn’t even spoken to each other once since he’d returned her home.
We don’t have to spill our darkest secrets.
Okay, maybe she was still a little bitter about the way he’d said those words – how he’d shut her out and built a wall between them in a snap. How else was a girl supposed to feel?
Iain went too silent. She’d said too much, revealed one of these secrets that he didn’t want to hear. If openness was too much of a task for him then she should just haul herself up and leave. Enough men had played pretend with her for her to see the signs for when to back out. Leave before she was rejected for having basic needs that were never listened to anyway.
“I grew up on a farm.”
Maisie’s head spun from where she’d turned away.
“It’s where I worked until I was twenty-six,” Iain said. “I left school at sixteen and went back to the farm with only a few bad GCSE grades to my name.”
Shock that he’d spoken about himself like that had parted Maisie’s lips. She was careful to not sound insensitive when she asked, “You didn’t go to college?”
Iain shook his head, notably pressing down on the knuckles in his lap. “I worked that farm since I was old enough to pick up a shovel. That was all the qualification I needed in my dad’s eyes.”
It was the first time he’d ever said anything about either of his parents. Maisie knew he had two brothers and that they didn’t speak much at all. She didn’t know what she’d assumed about his life before this town, but from the downturned look on his face and the pain creased in his brow, there was a lot more to his story than she could’ve imagined.
She kept quiet, averting her eyes so he might not feel pressured to continue, though she was more than eager to hear what he had to say.
Giving up on the knuckle breaking and shoving his hands into his coat pockets – the waxy one he always wore on hikes – Iain drew in an uneven breath. “My da … he was never the greatest to me. I hated being on the farm. I was always going to leave after I turned eighteen, which made him angry.”
Maisie’s pulse shot up in her throat. “Did he hurt you?”
His lips drew inwards. “Not physically.”
Oh, Iain … Her eyes prickled with tears all of a sudden. When was the last time he’d told this to anyone? Had he ever said these things out loud?
“Words can sometimes hurt just as badly,” she said, sniffing unexpectedly. “Maybe worse.”
He looked at her, their elbows brushing. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For whoever hurt you.”
The apology for pain he’d never caused hit Maisie right beneath her sternum, knocking something out of place, or maybe back to where it always should have belonged. All she could do to not shed a tear was to scoff out a half-hearted laugh. “It’s fine,” she said, willing away the tickle in her nose. “You don’t grow up with a body like mine and not hear things spoken about you. I’m lucky that I grew up before social media really became a thing, and that my parents have always been incredibly supportive. My brothers were the ‘cool’ ones at school, so I think that helped too.”
There was more than that, though, things she felt too ashamed to tell him. Only Faye and Sienna knew the real reasons why; as bold and expressive as she was, the prospect of having to start all over again with a man when she’d been burned by a string of them before was at its last tether.
She had all of this body that she loved and strived to adore – a body she knew deserved to be cherished like a goddess – but when it came to that time, she couldn’t. Not as spontaneously or frequently as her exes had demanded and grown bored of the wait.
That was what hurt more than anything else she’d felt before.
The thing that Iain’s tenderness just then hinted could be healed.
A hand slipped into hers, cold skin upon cold skin balancing each other out in a blink. Heart soaring, her eyes cut to Iain’s – always waiting for her – his attention spreading warmth to Maisie’s bones as if a bonfire roared before her on this chilly night.
“Your fingers were trembling,” Iain rasped. The growing comfort of his palm engulfing hers as he averted his gaze filled Maisie with the sharp feeling of wanting to be held completely, tightly. Her body wrapped up in someone else’s. That someone hadn’t had a face for a while in her mind … but it was starting to. One outlined by dark hair and a thick beard with eyes like emeralds.
“I hadn’t noticed.” It was terribly unladylike, but Maisie wiped at her nose with her jumper’s sleeve before those thoughts got too carried away. “Sorry. You were saying, about your dad?”
Iain might not have moved closer – she’d disappeared in her mind for a second in which she wouldn’t have noticed – but it felt like he was. That or the sea breeze air had grown warmer.
Their gazes held for a moment, and he looked … different. More open; the openness she’d been craving from him a minute ago. And when he began to talk, he looked as though he actually wanted to speak.
“He had a way with words that beat a young lad down. Pushed me to a limit I shouldn’t have had to reach. My brothers are older, and they never complained, so our dad never treated them the way he treated me. He saw us as workers, not sons. We were all rugged, getting into trouble and petty fights. It’s why he worked us so hard on the farm and put us into the local rugby team so we could work out our frustrations on the field.
“But Rhys and Lewis were always going to stay on the farm and take over from him someday. Me … he liked to knock me down and make me feel as though trying to leave the middle of nowhere was a dead-end dream. I nearly gave up on it so many times.” Iain blinked slowly, his thumb and forefinger going to the outer corners of his eyes and dragging inwards, his hold on her hand staying tender. “It took twenty-six years to leave.”
So much pain … If Maisie could reach out, if she could hold him like he deserved, it wouldn’t make up for those years, but it would be something. There was no doubt now: her shoulder and ear were Iain’s whenever he wanted them, darkest secrets or not.
“And … here you are,” she said.
“Here I am,” he uttered. “Still feeling like that boy in the middle of nowhere.”
“You didn’t deserve that.” His rough skin pressed against Maisie’s palm as she squeezed. “I take it you don’t speak to your dad much either?” Iain’s silence was answer enough. “What about your mum?”
“She’s still there,” he said, threads of guilt in his voice as if he’d wanted for her to escape too. “Miserable. Blaming my dad for pushing me away. The last time I spoke to him …” He shook his head as though urging himself out of deterring that thought. “I walked to your flat that night, right after the phone call.”
Maisie didn’t want to analyse why. “You should’ve knocked.”
Meeting her eyes, he cocked his head with another smile’s ghost passing by. “I didn’t really know you back then.”
“I would’ve opened my door to you anyway,” she said. “I know I can talk a lot, but I like to think I’m good at listening too.”
One degree at a time, his head began to shake. His eyes so … vulnerable in the waxing moonlight. “I don’t think I’ve ever had somebody truly listen to me before you, Maisie.”
And that sentiment broke her heart.
It didn’t make sense at first glance. He was so much man , so independent – not to mention his gruff demeanour. But he’d proven her right tonight; there was so much more beneath him that hurt and ached and grieved just like she did.
He confused the hell out of her, and this whole fake dating situation that she’d thrown them both into didn’t help matters at all. How was she supposed to pretend to be growing close to him without actually growing close to him?
The answer didn’t matter. It was too late.
Like her own body propelling down the cliffside, chasing something she never should’ve caught, the ball was in motion towards having feelings she should not have. And the only way it would end was with her being stung in a bed of nettles, yet again.
But even in Iain’s grumpiest of moods, he didn’t scare her off.
“I’m sorry for the way I acted at the bar in Manchester,” he said. “You were being kind, and I shut you down.”
“I’ve noticed how you do that … a lot.”
He mulled on an answer. “I guess when people let you down for all your life, you become an island. Build a wall.”
“Sarn Gynfelyn,” she said.
Iain looked across at her, curiosity in his brow.
“A lost kingdom.”
His mouth twitched in the corner, a shadow of a smile under that thick moustache of his. “I was only trying to say that maybe you don’t know where you fit until you make a home outside of the mould you were cast into.”
The ocean could be up at her feet and Maisie wouldn’t notice for the way that Iain held her entire attention. The bump in his nose and texture to his skin around his beard were so endearing.
“Have you ever found it?” Her voice was scratchy with emotion.
“For a while,” Iain murmured. “Then she broke my mould, and I started again.”
The corner of Maisie’s mouth raised in a sad sort of smile, finding solace in his eyes.
“When you asked if I wanted children,” he said, “what I should have said was that I didn’t want to give her what she wanted and then turn into my father. I wouldn’t … I couldn’t resent a child because I didn’t want them.”
Maisie nudged his shoulder with hers. “If it makes any difference, I think that following your heart is always the best choice.”
“Are you following yours?” Iain asked.
She drew in a slow breath. “I’m starting to.”
He gazed at her, and she gazed at him, and something so infinitely new changed yet again.
Ted squirmed in her lap and shifted his position.
With a clearing of his throat, Iain drew his hand out of hers, yet Maisie wanted to plead for more, just another minute. It could be pretend – it didn’t have to be real – she just didn’t want to let him go.
Realising that this moment was coming to an end, Maisie got ahead of the disappointment. She rubbed her palms over her thighs and said, “I should probably go home. I have pre-orders to pack.”
Iain inhaled. Turning his face out to sea, he said, “I think I might stay here for a while longer.”
“Okay.” Maisie shimmied back from the edge and took the hand that Iain offered to help her onto her feet. It was strange being the one looking down on him for once. “See you tomorrow?”
He bobbed his head in a nod. “Tomorrow.”
She took one step and turned back. His eyes were still upon her, and in all this darkness, knowing he wasn’t going to look away was the safest she’d ever felt.
“Nos da,” she said.
Those mossy eyes sparkled with the moonlight’s reflection from the water as his lips tipped in a smile. “ Nos da i chdi, Daffy.? * ”
* ? Goodnight to you, Daffy