Chapter 23
“Here she is. My baby.” Eiley wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting him to drive, but it wasn’t the old, weathered Transit van parked at the base of Macaskill Ridge. When he patted the faded red bonnet with bizarre reverence, Eiley considered asking if he wanted some alone time with it-slash-her.
“She’s very …” She couldn’t even pretend she knew how to compliment such a sturdy vehicle, settling for, “robust. Are you going to tell me where you’re taking me?”
She hoped it wasn’t the craggy trail up to Macaskill’s peak: she wasn’t nearly motivated enough for such a climb today, as lovely as the view of the loch was from the top.
“Not far, I promise.” He opened the passenger door for her, but she wasn’t quite ready to sit inside yet, twirling the tan hairband around her wrist nervously.
She felt like a fool for breaking down in front of him – again.
She wondered why he was still here, still putting up with her and all of her big, overwhelming feelings.
Most people would have run a mile by now.
“Isn’t it a bit late to start caring about your safety?” he quipped when she didn’t move.
Defiantly, Eiley climbed into the passenger seat, fastening her belt with a challenging glare.
He smirked. She hated it.
And, secretly, loved it.
They drove with none of the awkward silence or forced small talk of their last journey the night of the flood, the pine air freshener and gentle warmth leaving her relaxed and lulled.
With the town nearing, she assumed their destination was Belbarrow, and a flutter rose in her chest at the idea that he might be taking her to his house, or even just a place he knew better than her.
He’d spent hours in her haven, yet she didn’t even know where to find him when he wasn’t on duty or helping her out.
She wanted to. Wanted to see who he was when nobody was looking.
Just before the welcome sign, he turned left, leading them away from the woods and the loch to the rolling hills and farmland that divided them from the next hamlet over.
As a teen, she’d often hiked over the paths forking off the main road with Cam.
The landscape was steeped in a nostalgia that hadn’t embraced her in a while, memories of summers past drifting by in shades of green.
It was easy to forget there’d been a life before the children and Finlay, but once, she’d just been a girl stumbling over dirt paths, wellies splashing through puddles and thorns tearing her clothes, eager to get home and read.
“I used to feed the horses in these fields as a kid,” she said with a smile. “We used to come up here to tire out our old dog, Roger, when he was a pup. And there used to be an abandoned farm up here where Cam always wanted to play hide and seek.”
Warren’s smile was serene, as though he was right there in the memories with her. Considering the way he’d snapped at her earlier, she found it surprising, how easy he was to talk to.
She lifted her brows when he turned at the signpost for Galbreath Farm, leading them down a narrow lane overgrown with bramble and blackberry bushes. “Oh, I don’t know if you can go much further. There’s nothing up here now.”
“I know. That’s the point,” he answered softly.
Only her earlier statement wasn’t true. For most of her life, the farm on the hilltop had been an empty, black patch of land save for a few crumbling walls and a collapsing barn left behind from a huge house fire.
Somebody must have finally decided to recover the land, because the ruins had been replaced by a construction site, scaffolding fringing the foundations of a new home.
“Are we allowed here?” She shifted nervously.
“There’s no one here to stop us, is there?”
While it was lovely to see new beginnings, what, exactly, was going to make her feel better up here? Construction noises? Another fire hazard lecture, a story about how the bookstore could end up like Galbreath Farm if she wasn’t careful?
He pulled up on the soft grass and clicked free from his seatbelt wordlessly. Eiley did the same, though she was wary to get out. Even if it was empty, this was clearly someone’s land. Weren’t they trespassing?
Warren hopped out of the van and opened the door for her, urging her to join him on the grass. Reluctantly, she took his hand, smoothing the wrinkles of her leggings as her trainers hit firm soil.
It was beautiful up here. A few cows grazed in the field below, and the fence sequestering the land was wreathed by sweet briar and rosehip. As she inched closer to the edge of the hill, she found a cluster of apple trees dropping their ripe red fruit, squirrels scuttling over the branches.
When she reached the fence, she gasped. Belbarrow lay in the distance, a cluster of red-bricked homes and winding lanes framed by hills of plush purple heather. “I forgot you can see the whole town up here.”
“Aye. It’s not a bad view.” Warren leaned beside her, his elbow grazing hers atop the wooden slat and gaze locked on the side of her face.
His proximity sent a bolt of lightning travelling up her arm and all the way down to her toes.
She wanted to be angry at him for all of his condescending fuss earlier, but she felt too free to feel anything but grateful.
How had he known that this was what she’d needed, even if she hadn’t herself?
How did he always seem to know?
“It’s beautiful. Reminds me how small we are.
” Main Street was nothing more than a thread of colour in the distance: proof that her world wouldn’t end when she returned later without the book bus.
There was a comfort in realising that, to the animals that grazed in the fields and the people who might come here to build the house behind them, her daily struggles meant nothing.
The wild shrubs kept flowering and the burned building would be replaced, and life, hard as it was, found ways to carry on over all sorts of obstacles.
She might have been stuck now, but maybe she was just waiting for her scaffolding, her petals, her season.
She could be patient. She could try again in the morning.
“Physically, maybe, but you have the ferocity of a giant.” Warren’s lip quirked, words pulling her from all of her ruminating.
She was glad for it. She wanted to be present, for once.
Wanted to notice the way his hair had formed a kink from the sweat of his workout, and how his T-shirt sifted in the breeze.
Wanted to notice his eyes on her, always on her.
She laughed, the small sound lost to the open space. Grass tickled her ankles, the smell of soil making her lungs feel fuller. “Believe me, I’m not usually so bad. You bring it out of me.”
“I’ve noticed.” God, he was handsome, head ducked and palms pressed into the fence, looking up at her through his lashes.
She edged closer to him, craning her neck to gaze over one shoulder at the house behind. “I didn’t know they were rebuilding the old farmhouse. It burned down a long time ago. I was too young to remember much, but it’s been empty since, as far as I know.”
He propped his black running shoe on the bottom slat, expression unreadable. “Aye, it has.”
“Sorry. I thought you were new to Belbarrow, otherwise I wouldn’t have been rambling on.”
“Don’t apologise. I like your rambling.”
Something unrecognisable crashed like waves against her ribs. She always felt like the least interesting person in the room, but not with him.
“Well, it’s your turn now. How did you find this place?”
“I lived out this way until I was a teenager, then moved to Inverness.”
“Oh.” There was so much she didn’t know about him, still. So much she wanted to find out.
As she opened her mouth to ask him, he spoke first: “Anyway, that’s not why I brought you here.”
“Then why did you?”
“To get out all this anger you talked about.” He tugged her towards the centre of the hill, where their view wasn’t shrouded by foliage.
Climbing on the fence, he hiked one leg over and then the other to land on the opposite side, where the hill stretched towards a craggy drop into the fields below.
“C’mon. Doesn’t work properly if you’re not near the edge.”
“Are we not going to get in trouble?” She looked around again, like somebody would be waiting to tell her off.
Warren snorted, hand outstretched. “For a minute, why don’t you stop caring about everyone else? Trust me, firecracker. Just once.”
So she did, climbing up the fence slats to take his hand. His palm was calloused, huge compared to her own, and she wasn’t sure if it made her feel safe or endangered.
Safe , she thought when his thumb rubbed over her knuckles. Safer than it ever should.
As she crossed over, he helped her down by the waist onto shaky legs, thumb digging into the crease of her hip and leaving her electrified all over again.
He gasped suddenly. “Oh, no. Someone’s coming!”
Eiley’s stomach dropped, and she whipped around – to find nobody there. She slapped him playfully as he laughed, husky and guttural, at her expense. “Not funny.”
“No, just fucking adorable.”
That word usually made her feel like a child, but from him, spoken in that low, syrupy voice, perhaps she wanted to be adored.
They trod closer to the edge of the hill, stopping when the grass was replaced by rough rock and the wind began to whip harder.
The overcast sky surrounded them on all sides, the clouds closer than Belbarrow.
Sun rays beamed through, lighting a patch of green-gold moorland in the distance, and she felt like she was discovering the world all over again.
Seeing how it worked from above instead of below.
“What now?”
“Now, we shout,” he answered as though it was simple, and then cupped his hand around his mouth to bellow into the wind: “Life is a beautiful, steaming bag of shite!”
Eiley was stunned into silence as his voice travelled over the Highlands. She waited, half-expecting somebody to pop their heads out of the grass and tell them to shut up. But after moments, the moo of a nearby brown cow was his only response.
“I feel better already,” he said. “Your turn.”
She laughed, dumbfounded and a little awed by his show of honesty. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Why? Nobody can hear you up here.”
He could. And somehow, it felt as though somebody was always judging her, a shadowed figure waiting in the wings.
She didn’t know where that insecurity came from, though she’d read that many autistic people felt as though they were being observed, always struggling with the pressure to mask their neurodivergent traits even when alone.
She’d picked up the books initially to help support and understand Sky, but there were a lot of things that rang true for her, too.
A lot of symptoms she’d tried to bury through the years because they made her feel more alienated. Wrong .
She would never, ever use that word to describe Sky, but it was what she felt like. She didn’t know her place, and every time she tried to discover it, it just left her more confused.
She couldn’t say it. Not in front of Warren, not in front of anyone. Maybe not even to herself.
Warren must have realised that she wasn’t going to shout with him, because he braced himself to do it alone again, chest puffed out and back arched. “I fucking hate that I can’t save everyone!”
When his voice cracked, Eiley felt like she was plummeting straight off the edge.
“What happened?” she prompted, as gently as she could over the roaring wind.
Warren’s lips pressed into a thin, downturned line. “A lad, barely twenty, came off the road last night. Crushed in his own car after hitting a wall. We spent all night trying to get him out, but we lost him in the end. All I could do was stay with him while he went. We were so fucking close, too.”
She couldn’t imagine witnessing such tragedies and still getting up in the morning. Still finding a reason to keep going. “How often do you have to deal with those things?”
“Most of the time, there’s at least a bit of a happy ending. We get them to hospital, safe and sound, or the fire is put out. But there’s always some jobs that feel like a test. And when I fail, I can’t help but feel … I don’t know. Too much. I should be used to it by now, but …”
“But you care so much,” she finished for him, because she’d seen it and only now understood what, exactly, it was. His obsession with rules and safety existed because his entire job was to respond to the consequences of accidents.
He hadn’t been harsh because he didn’t trust her. It was because he worried about her, like he clearly did everyone he worked with.
She had been so focused on her own issues that she hadn’t seen the reasons behind his actions.
There was only one way she could think of to tell him she was sorry.
“I’m tired of everything going wrong!” She’d never shouted so loud before; didn’t even know she could. And it was addictive, the release it brought, feeling the worst parts of herself scattering away on the wind like torn paper.
So she did it again. “I’m tired of feeling like a failure.”
Warren blinked in surprise, softening.
She wasn’t done yet. “It wasn’t supposed to be this hard!” Again. “I don’t know how to give my children everything they deserve!” She let out a sob and confessed, “I am so, so angry that he left me to do this alone!”
Finally empty of all those secrets, she deflated, sinking back into her body. With her words still ringing in her ears, the urge to apologise rose. She’d been too honest, shouted too much, and—
And she was pulled into him, suddenly, his arms wrapped tight around her, her head buried in his chest. Against her ear, his heart drummed an uneven rhythm that kept her grounded, kept her upright.
In the end, it was all that she’d needed: to be held, to be heard. And he must have known, because his lips found the crown of her head, and he didn’t let go. Not for a long time.
Not until she started to kiss him.