Chapter Twenty-Four
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
When I see how dark the cabin is, I switch off my torch and head for the clearing. It’s a half-moon tonight and by the time I’m stepping out of the woods into long grass, my eyes have adjusted enough to the darkness to see that Ash is at the top of the hill.
‘Ash,’ I call quietly.
‘Hey!’ He jumps to his feet with surprise and immediately bounds towards me. When he reaches me, he clasps my face with his hands, almost as though he can’t believe I’m here.
‘Hello,’ I say, amused by his reaction.
‘I’m so happy to see you.’ He really does sound delighted.
‘I’m happy to see you too,’ I reply with a smile, bracing my palms on his chest.
‘Come. The grass is so wet.’
He takes my hand and leads me over to the rug. I feel the crinkle of plastic from the waterproof liner as I step onto it and then he sits down behind me, tugging me into the space between his legs and circling his arms around me from behind.
It feels like the most natural thing in the world to be completely wrapped up in him again.
‘How was your conference?’ I ask.
‘Boring as fuck,’ he replies.
‘What was it about?’
‘Estate management. My father makes me go to them occasionally.’
‘What do you call your parents to their faces?’
He always refers to them as his mother and father, never his mum and dad.
‘Mother and Father,’ he replies.
‘No, really?’ I ask with astonishment, craning my neck to look at him.
He chuckles and I feel the vibration move right through my body.
‘I didn’t use to,’ he says. ‘I used to call them Mama and Papa, but Celyn and Taran made fun of me, so I stopped.’
‘That’s so mean!’ I exclaim, trying not to laugh. ‘What did they call their parents?’
‘Mam and Tad – that’s Mum and Dad in Welsh. The thought of calling my parents something so informal seemed ludicrous. So, Mother and Father it is.’
‘What will you get your children to call you?’
He hesitates. And then he shrugs. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Not Mam and Tad?’
‘I don’t know,’ he says again.
‘You’re straddling two worlds.’
‘Stop with the two-worlds shit,’ he warns playfully, pressing his cheek against mine as we stare at the sky.
I feel so jittery being this close to him.
‘What did Taran look like?’
‘He was about my height and build, with short, dark hair.’
‘Did he look like Celyn?’
‘Like a giant? No. Taran was slighter, but who knows who he would have grown up to become. He was only nineteen when we lost him.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
His hold on me strengthens.
‘Are all those stars like our sun?’ I ask after a while.
‘Some are a hundred times bigger.’
‘Whoa. Do they have planets too?’
‘Most of them, but it’s hard to know how many.’
‘How do you even know they have planets in the first place?’ I ask with confusion. Surely they’re too far away to be able to see.
‘Most are detected by monitoring the light given off over time and looking for dips in brightness that may indicate an orbiting planet. And sometimes a star will wobble as a result of a planet’s gravity – usually a very large planet that’s in close orbit. We’re talking super-Jupiters.’
‘Jupiter’s our biggest planet, right?’ I remember that much from school.
‘Yep. If Earth was the size of a grape, Jupiter would be the size of a basketball.’
‘It’s incredible to think that there really are other worlds out there.’
‘Whether or not they can sustain life, though – who knows? Earth is pretty special.’
‘I remember you telling me that you liked space because it’s so big and it made everything you were experiencing at home seem smaller by comparison.’
‘Yeah.’ His voice suddenly sounds subdued.
‘Tell me about your bedroom in the Tudor wing,’ I request softly. ‘I’m sorry I shut you down last time.’
He releases a barely audible sigh, but I can feel it leaving his chest.
‘We used to have outdoor seating outside the Great Hall – tables for the café. My windows looked over them. When I was about five or six, I remember peering down at some kids in the courtyard: a brother and sister out with their mum and dad, having cake. The girl was about my age and her brother was probably a couple of years older, and they kept getting down from the table to play tag around the fountain. I liked the look of them, kind of wanted to go down and play with them myself, but then the boy looked up and saw me – I can still picture him so vividly. He pointed and squealed, “There’s a ghost!” And I remember his parents and sister looking up too, and his sister looked so scared. I just backed away into the shadows of my bedroom.’
There’s nothing funny about this story. I can hear in his voice that he’s still disturbed by it.
I rub his arm, encouraging him to go on.
‘The thing is, I felt kind of invisible, growing up. I used to wander the corridors and the staff would ignore me. I knew my mother loved me, but she was often out socialising or was distracted by other stuff that was going on, and I had a string of nannies and au pairs that I struggled to bond with. Hugo was the centre of my father’s attention, the only one worth devoting his time to. And Hugo had absolutely no interest in me whatsoever – he was seven years older and he idolised our father. He was like his shadow, following him around, copying the way he spoke to staff, ordering them to do what he wanted. That felt wrong to me, even when I was young. You think I’m entitled, but you should have met my brother.’ He sounds bleak.
‘I don’t think you’re entitled, Ash,’ I say seriously, wanting to right that wrong too. I’m ashamed for trying to make him feel small.
He rubs his thumb across my shoulder to show me that I’m forgiven.
‘That boy calling me a ghost completely did my head in. I began to wonder if, to some, I really was invisible. I stopped wanting to go in the gardens during visiting hours, just in case it happened again. Looking back, I can see that I became withdrawn, but my parents didn’t notice. I stuck to leaving the house in the evenings, and one day I ventured into the woods by the lake and bumped into Taran.’ He releases a small laugh. ‘He shot me with his Nerf gun. It was the start of a beautiful friendship.’
I smile and dip my head to kiss his hand.
‘I don’t know what would have happened to me, what sort of person I’d have become, if I hadn’t had Taran – and Celyn, and all the other estate workers – in my life. They more than kept me grounded. They taught me how to be human.’
My heart has expanded to breaking point. I turn my face towards him and brush my lips against his in the sweetest of kisses.
We pull back and stare at each other in the darkness for a long moment, and then we’re moving, turning to lie down and gathering each other closer: hip to hip, chest to chest, and finally, mouth to mouth. It’s gentle at first, full of love and longing. I’m trying to pour every ounce of care and compassion into this kiss.
And now we’re going deeper, escalating to skin-shivering, blood-warming intensity. His hands push into the hair at the nape of my neck, my fingers press against his jaw, his body moves on top of mine and my legs come around him, drawing him in as close as I can get him. We gasp into each other’s mouths as the need and want become impossible to resist.
‘Do you have anything?’ I ask breathlessly.
‘Inside.’ His voice is a guttural growl. He’s never sounded sexier.
A minute later, we haven’t even made it past his front door when my back is against the wood, my legs wrapped around his waist, his hands supporting my weight as our mouths come together. He releases one hand to cup my face and his hips take up the slack to hold me in place as we give everything we’ve got to our kiss, making up for lost time.
He lifts me away from the door and opens it, carrying me through and snatching up his wallet from the hallstand. Then we’re collapsing on the sofa and for a few delicious seconds the whole weight of his body bears down on me. He tries to push himself up to give me room to breathe, but I don’t let him go far – I like the feeling of his heart thudding against mine.
The wood groans and creaks beneath us and he laughs against my neck.
‘This sofa is so old. Let’s go upstairs.’
He has to wrench himself away from me because I do not want to move from this position.
But now he’s kicking off his shoes, so I sit up and remove my own and he takes my hand to lead the way to his bedroom. I feel edgy but in the best possible way, my breathing erratic and choppy as I try not to lose my footing climbing the stairs.
It’s dark in his room and he leaves the lights off as we kiss each other at the end of his bed. When his mouth moves to my jaw and then to my neck, I look up and see stars twinkling back at me. There’s a giant window in the ceiling, I realise, and then I’m not thinking about the sky because he’s drawing my T-shirt up over my head and I’m turning my attention to the buttons on the front of his shorts.
We’re completely naked when we fall down on the bed, and the shock of feeling so much of his warm skin against mine makes me gasp out loud.
He slowly runs his hand all the way down my body from my throat to my waist, our lips still connected. I slide my palms along the ridges of his broad shoulders and down his back, pulling him closer, and the sensation of him pressing against me with no barriers between us makes me feel like I’ve been spun in a circle.
He breaks away to grab his wallet and for a dizzying few seconds I’m glad one of us is thinking clearly.
When he’s ready, he returns to his position above me and stares down into my eyes. I can’t see the light in them – it’s far too dark – but I can tell that his expression is serious.
Reaching up, I brush my thumb over the straight line of his mouth and his lips part, his teeth capturing my thumb between them, his tongue stroking the pad as his hips slowly surge forward.
I cry out, overwhelmed by how much I’m feeling, not just physically but emotionally.
‘Are you okay?’ he asks roughly, stilling.
‘Don’t stop,’ I beg.
His eyes rest on mine as he sinks fully down. And then our mouths come together again and we begin to move, unhurriedly at first, and then more urgently as we lose ourselves in each other, just as we did all those years ago.
I wake up at the crack of dawn, when daylight seeps through the giant skylight in the roof of Ash’s bedroom. He’s sleeping peacefully beside me and I feel a rush of joy as I realise that I can stay here like this, with him. It’s my turn on the rota this weekend so I have today – Friday – and Monday off. Sian will assume I’m having a lie-in, so she’ll head to work without expecting to see me.
An enormous modern white telescope sits beneath the window – about ten times the size of the older-looking one downstairs. I stare at it with interest before my bladder gets the better of me and I climb out of the warm bed, grabbing Ash’s hoodie to put on as I hurry downstairs in the chilly morning air.
When I come back from the bathroom, he’s awake.
‘Sorry there’s no en suite,’ he says with a sleepy smile as I rush back under the covers and into his arms, my heart skipping at seeing him again. ‘One day I’ll make a whole bunch of alterations to this place.’
‘One day?’
‘When it’s mine. My father won’t let me touch it now. He doesn’t know about that, though.’ He nods at the skylight. ‘I figured it was worth the risk.’
‘That’s some telescope.’
‘He doesn’t know about that either.’
An idea comes to me and I turn to look at him. ‘Have you thought about doing stargazing evenings? You could host them, teach people about the stars. Ooh, maybe you could even have schools or Scout groups come in! You’re so good at speaking to people who know next to nothing.’
He looks thoughtful for a moment, and then his eyes cloud over. ‘Maybe. One day.’
One day …
‘Is it hard to work with your father?’
He gives me the smallest of nods, his jaw clenched, then he reaches for a small battery-operated alarm clock and checks the time.
‘Do you have to rush back?’ he asks, a twinge of hope taking the edge off the darkness I saw on his face a moment ago.
‘No.’
His face breaks into a grin and I suddenly know exactly what we’re doing this morning.
The sun hasn’t yet risen over the Berwyn Mountains and the dim light and cool morning air make the Pistyll Rhaeadr seem almost other-worldly as it tumbles over the edge of a cliff eighty metres up in the air and pours into the circular pool at our feet.
The walls around it are alive with bright green plants, long, trailing grass and furry moss that makes me think of the Initiation Well in Sintra. There’s even a natural rocky bridge a little way up that the water has carved over time. It’s absolutely beautiful – and there’s not another soul to be seen.
We climb right up to the edge of the water, and it’s invigorating, a cold spray carrying in the morning breeze to kiss our faces.
‘Have you ever swum here?’ I ask Ash.
‘Once,’ he replies, grinning. ‘It’s really cold.’
He crouches down by the crystal-clear pool, trailing his hands through the water before scooping some up to splash his face.
I kneel down on the smooth, flat rock beside him, wanting to do the same, but as soon as my fingers sink into the ice-cold depths, I sharply retract them.
He laughs and flicks a little water in my direction.
‘Don’t you dare,’ I warn, making him chuckle.
Behind him, the water continues on its journey, bubbling over rounded boulders on its way to the river down in the valley.
He straightens up and pulls me to my feet, taking my face in his hands. I lay my palms on his chest and we gaze at each other, our lips tilted into small smiles. At the edge of my vision, I can see a long strip of brilliant white, considerably higher than Niagara Falls, crashing down the vivid green rock face. The sound of the waterfall drowns out my shallow breathing as Ash bends down to claim my mouth in a long, slow kiss.
Afterwards, we hike up a mountain track to watch the sun rise over the valley.
‘Thank you for bringing me here.’
We’re sitting side by side on the gnarled root of an old tree, sheep nibbling at the short grass around us.
Ash tucks a lock of hair behind my ear and presses a kiss to my cheekbone before asking, ‘Where do you want to go next?’
‘Wherever you want to take me.’
‘Bed?’ he asks hopefully.
I think I smile the whole way back to his bike.