Chapter forty-one #2
The conversation drifts easily enough after that.
Stories from the week. Mud incidents. The canoe that spun in circles for ten minutes because the kids had both decided they were paddling right.
Laughter fills the room, hot chocolate steams gently in mugs, and all the while Rory does not look at me.
Not even by accident. Not even when Theo’s name comes up and I answer.
Nothing. It is, by this point, almost artful and ever so slightly painful.
Eventually people begin peeling away. One teacher yawns. A parent checks their watch and mutters something about an early start. One by one they drift out of the room, taking the conversation with them until the common room grows quiet in stages.
The fire crackles softly. The mugs sit abandoned on the low table.
I finish the last of my hot chocolate and glance up.
And suddenly it’s just us, surprisingly so.
I thought he would have made a run for it by now.
The silence stretches so tightly it almost has edges.
Then, of course, he stands first. Always the first to leave before things get difficult, before anything has to be said, before a moment can become a problem.
“Night,” he says, already turning toward the door.
Something in me snaps. “Rory.”
He stops. Slowly turns back. “What?”
The word is careful. Too careful.
“Are we going to talk about it?” I ask.
His jaw tightens almost imperceptibly. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
I laugh softly. Not because it’s funny. Because if I don’t laugh I might actually launch my hot chocolate mug at his head and then I’ll have to explain that to a headteacher. “Right,” I say.
He runs a hand over the back of his neck. “It shouldn’t have happened.”
The words land like a slap. For a moment I just stare at him.
“Wow. You kissed me.” I retort.
“I know.”
“And then today you couldn’t even look at me.”
His gaze drops briefly to the floor, which is almost worse, because apparently now we are doing shame and martyrdom and all the things I have neither the patience nor the emotional energy for.
“It was a mistake.”
Something hot and sharp flares in my chest. “A mistake?”
“Yes.”
The anger arrives suddenly, clean and bright and oddly clarifying. “You don’t get to decide that for me.”
He exhales slowly. “Freya…”
“No.” I stand. The space between us shrinks by half. My heart is hammering now, and I am aware, distantly, that I probably look slightly unhinged in a borrowed hoodie and thermal socks, but frankly he has driven me to it. “Stop telling me what I deserve.”
His head lifts sharply. “I’m not I…”
“You are.” My voice is quieter now, which somehow makes it more dangerous. “You kissed me like you meant it.” The fire crackles behind us. The whole room feels like it’s gone still. “And now suddenly you’ve decided it was a mistake because that’s easier than admitting you wanted it.”
Rory’s jaw tightens. “I’m trying to do the right thing.”
“For who Rory?”
“For you.”
I let out a short laugh. “Stop.”
He frowns. “What?”
“Stop telling me what’s right for me.” The words hang there, heavy and ugly and true.
Because that is what this has always been with Rory, hasn’t it.
Him deciding things for both of us. Him stepping back before either of us gets a choice.
Him acting like self-sacrifice is noble when really it is just fear in a nicer outfit.
“You don’t get to choose that for me, you don’t get to choose what I deserve.” I say.
“Freya, I’m trying not to make this worse.”
“Worse than what?” I snap. “A kiss? One day of you acting like I’m radioactive because apparently you’ve appointed yourself guardian of my best interests?”
“That’s not fair.”
“No, what’s not fair is you kissing me like that and then spending an entire day pretending I’m invisible.”
He looks away for a second and that tiny movement makes me even angrier.
“No,” I say. “Look at me.”
His eyes come back to mine. There it is. The thing he has been trying not to show all day, sitting right there under the careful voice and the distance and the self-righteous bullshit.
“You wanted it,” I say.
His expression shifts. Barely. But enough. “This isn’t about whether I wanted it.”
“Oh, good,” I say. “Excellent. Because for a second I thought we might be discussing the thing that actually happened rather than whatever noble fiction you’ve cooked up to avoid it.”
His jaw sets. “You deserve better than me making a mess of your life because I couldn’t control myself for five minutes.”
I laugh again, incredulous now. “There it is.”
“What?”
“That.” I gesture at him. “That ridiculous martyr thing you do where you decide what’s best for everyone and then act like I should be grateful for it.”
“I’m not acting like that.”
“You are, Rory.”
I take another step toward him. The firelight flickers across his face, across the tension in his mouth, the muscle ticking once in his jaw.
“You don’t get to kiss me like you’ve been starving and then turn around and tell me that’s it and it’s for my own good.”
He says nothing. Which is infuriating. Because silence from Rory has always had this way of feeling louder than actual words. So I keep going.
“Do you know what the worst part is?” I ask.
“It’s not even that you pulled away. It’s that for one stupid minute I actually thought maybe I’d imagined you wrong all these years.
Maybe you’d finally stop deciding things for me.
Maybe we’d actually just…” I exhale sharply. “I don’t know. See what happened.”
His expression changes then. But I’m too angry now to stop.
“Instead you spent all day acting like I’d thrown myself at you in the camp kitchen and now you have to nobly recover my dignity.”
“I did not act like that.”
“No?” I tilt my head. “Then what exactly was today, because from where I was standing it looked a lot like panic wrapped in good intentions.”
His eyes flash. “Fine,” he says, voice lower now. “Yes. I panicked.”
The admission lands between us with a force I don’t think either of us expected. For a second neither of us moves. Then he drags a hand through his hair and lets out a breath that sounds almost angry at himself.
“Happy?”
“No,” I say honestly. “Not remotely.”
The fire pops sharply behind us.
“I panicked,” he repeats, quieter now, rougher. “Because I kissed you and then I spent the whole night thinking about it and all morning wanting to do it again and none of that changes the fact that this could ruin everything and that I can’t have you. Not really.”
My heart stutters. But the anger is still there, hot and alive. “Then let it be my decision too.”
He looks at me. Really looks at me this time. “And if you regret it?” he asks.
I stare back at him. “Stop telling me what I might regret.”
The room has gone so quiet I can hear the shifting of the logs in the grate. He takes a step toward me then, finally closing some of the space, and the whole atmosphere in the room changes with it, the air between us pulling tight, humming with something that feels electric.
“I’m trying,” he says, and his voice is low now, frayed at the edges in a way I have never heard from him before, “not to be the kind of man who makes your life harder.”
“And I am trying,” I say, just as quietly, “not to scream every time you decide what I should feel before I’ve had a chance to feel it.”
He takes a deep breath. The firelight flickers across the room, painting everything gold and shadowed. Neither of us moves. But neither of us walks away either. And suddenly it feels like something is about to break.