Chapter 18
Chapter
Eighteen
Iwake to grey light and a familiar ceiling.
Except…it’s the wrong kind of familiar. I’m staring at the low, whitewashed plaster of my own bedroom, the slope of the wall where Effie’s wardrobe stands shadowed in the corner, the gauzy curtains pulled across the window facing the bay.
It’s the ceiling I’ve been waking up to for almost a month, and this morning it’s all sorts of backwards because…
Didn’t I fall asleep at Alasdair’s castle last night?
I lie still under the quilt and try to put last night back together.
I remember the roaring fire, the Spanish wine.
The dining hall, and the tapestries with their blue-dressed women watching me eat his fish.
His mouth at my throat. The four-poster bed.
The post under my forehead. I have you now.
I remember falling asleep against him. I remember the rain hammering the windows.
I remember the flash of his eyes in the middle of the night.
But I don’t remember leaving.
The pillow under my cheek smells like the lavender sachet I tucked into the linen drawer last week. The quilt is Effie’s. But I think I’m wearing one of Alasdair’s shirts? It’s a man’s shirt, far too big, soft old cotton, the cuffs frayed…
And I’m wearing nothing else. My hair’s dried in damp tangles. From the rain, maybe? From whatever the fuck happened between the bed I fell asleep in, and the bed I woke up in? There’s a low ache between my legs from him, but at least I do remember how I got that.
I just don’t remember being moved.
I sit up, my body aching. The wood stove’s been tended to, the warmth of it flowing softly underneath the bedroom door.
I eye the window and the salt that is still there, undisturbed, in a thick line.
Which, of course, means nothing. Those are Effie’s superstitious habits, not literal protections.
A line of salt isn’t going to stop a grown man from walking through a door.
Because he did walk through the door. He’s here.
Alasdair is inside the cottage, I can tell.
The air has weight to it now. The wood stove smells the same, the radiator ticks the same, and the fridge hums the same, yet the whole house has tilted a degree on some axis I can feel under my skin.
The walls and the floorboards all seem to scream, he’s here.
I get out of bed, and cautiously pad to the bedroom door in his shirt and bare feet. I push it open and look down the hall.
He’s in the kitchen.
He’s standing at the window with his hands curled around a steaming mug, his gaze on the bay.
The early light coming through the glass showcases his profile—the way his dark wet hair shapes his jaw, the glint of blue in his eyes, the firm, sculpted planes of his bare back, shoulders, arms—because of course he’s only wearing pants.
He’s heard me; he knows I’m there from the way he’s gone still, like a predator does when it thinks it’s been spotted. But he doesn’t turn to face me. He keeps his focus on the water, as if he’s looking for something.
“Uh, hi?” I say, throwing an arm out to get his attention.
“Good morning,” he replies. Gradually, he turns his head and looks me over and something like a smile ticks at the corner of his mouth. “My shirt looks good on you.”
I just stare at him. “That’s all you’ve got to say? Your shirt looks good on me? Your shirt that I don’t fucking remember putting on?”
Now he’s fully facing me, leaning against the wall beside the window, one ankle crossed over the other, looking utterly at ease and at home in a way that shouldn’t infuriate me but does. “You didn’t put it on. I did. The clothes you wore to my place seemed too uncomfortable to be dressed in again.”
I shake my head, and when no sense appears, I press my fingers into my temples as if that might make everything come together. It doesn’t. “How did I even get here?”
“I drove you home.”
I blink rapidly. “In my car?”
“Aye,” he confirms with a nod before having another sip of his drink. He’s drinking out of my second favorite mug too, the one with the sailboats painted on the side.
“You drove my car,” I repeat, my voice rising.
“You were dead on your feet, foxglove. I would have taken my own car, but I knew you’d want yours anyway.”
“And if you got into an accident, the car rental insurance wouldn’t count. I’m the only approved driver!”
He frowns at me like he has no idea what I’m talking about, and I realize that car insurance formalities are the least of my worries right now.
I continue, getting back on track with my million questions. “Why did you bring me back here? Why not let me, you know, stay in bed and wake up in the castle like I did the other day?”
Another twitch of his lips. “I didn’t have coffee.”
My brows raise. “Pardon?”
“You wanted coffee the other morning.”
I cross my arms over the borrowed shirt. The cotton smells like him, and I hate that I’m breathing it in and noticing it despite everything.
“Yeah, and?”
“Well, I noticed,” he murmurs, clearing his throat.
“You came down for breakfast and I’d put out tea and the food and you ate and drank.
And you smiled and said thank you but…you’d wanted coffee.
I could see it on your face. You were disappointed and, well, I suppose I didn’t want to disappoint you again. ”
I open my mouth. Nothing comes out of it.
“I don’t usually drink it,” he goes on. “So, there’s none in the castle, and I’ve not had a chance to go into town for any.
And I knew you’d want it.” He eyes the wood stove, where the kettle’s quietly going, then the counter behind him where I notice my French press and the bag of coffee I bought in Fort Williams open beside it and the mug I drink out of every morning—chipped and overlaid with thistles—is set out with a spoon laid across the rim. “And, well, you have it here.”
I stare at him for a moment, having a hard time comprehending it.
“You brought me home because of coffee?”
“You looked so disappointed when you drank the tea, foxglove. You were polite about it. It bothered me that I haven’t had the time to get you some, so I thought this was a simpler solution—albeit an intrusive one. Sorry if you had a fright this morning.”
I don’t know what to do. I want to laugh.
I want to cry. I want to push him out the door and lock it and salt the threshold and have a quiet sit-down with myself about what kind of woman I’ve become in three weeks at this cottage, that the answer I noticed you wanted coffee strikes me as both the most romantic thing a man has ever said to me and something that has the hair up on the back of my neck.
I’m quite disturbed by his actions, yet fucking swooning at his attentiveness. Is the bar in hell?
He’s watching me work through it.
“Iris, I…”
“Give me a second.”
“Aye.”
“You woke up in the night and decided for us to move and you…dressed me in your shirt? While I was asleep, somehow without waking me? Then carried me downstairs and outside then drove my car in the dark in the rain…and let yourself into my house. How? It was locked.”
I locked it to stop people like you.
“The keys were in your pocket,” he explains. “The car key and house key. I let us in.”
Don’t let him in.
I push that voice out of my head, because I don’t want to think about that right now. “And put me in bed,” I continue. “And started the fire. Because I drank tea yesterday morning, and you could tell I wanted coffee.”
“Aye.”
“That isn’t…Alasdair. That isn’t normal.”
“No,” he agrees, “I suppose it’s not.”
“You should’ve woken me up, at the very least.”
“I tried, lass. I asked if you were all right, and you said ‘mm’ and put your face against my neck. I made the call.”
“What if I’d woken up and panicked? What if I’d called the police?”
He looks at me a long moment.
“Then I’d have stood at the window and waited for them.”
I exhale shakily.
“That isn’t comforting.”
“I’m not going to tell you a thing is something when it’s not.”
His voice is low and careful and doesn’t bend even when bending would be the more normal thing. He just hands me the truth and doesn’t care what I do with it.
He takes one step toward me and stops, a strange look coming over his eyes.
“I’m not going to manage staying away now, Iris. Not after last night. You should know that going in. I tried it for weeks across the bay, and I won’t manage it any longer. I’m telling you what I’m like so you can decide what you’re going to do about it.”
Once again, I can’t seem to find the words.
I can’t even find the thoughts. The way he’s so easy and accepting of his many red flags—the fact that he dressed me and drove me home while I was sleeping, the fact that he’s saying he can’t stay away from me.
And, of course, the numerous other red flags that have popped up since the first day I saw him.
That damn dick of his waving around from across the bay should have been a red flag in itself.
And yet…
I like that he’s a walking red flag. You’d think after Ryan I would want someone safe; someone who didn’t carry any toxic traits.
But the difference is, Ryan painted all his red flags green.
He kept them hidden, making everyone believe he was this perfect husband, when, in reality, he was an asshole.
Alasdair lies to me too—I’m not stupid, I know he does.
He’s evasive about half of everything, he won’t give me a straight answer about what he is, and I barely know the man.
But there’s a difference, and it took me until now to put my finger on it.
Ryan lied about who he was. Alasdair only lies about the facts.
He’s never once pretended to be gentle when he wasn’t, never faked being safe, never dressed himself up as a good man—if anything he keeps warning me he’s the opposite.
He hides what he is. He’s never hidden how he feels about me.