Chapter 46
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
MAISIE
The icy waters of the tide foamed over her toes, drawing in and out as the sun rose on the horizon. Maisie turned her chin up to the breeze and let it kiss her cheek. It was a frigid March morning, but where the sun hit her was just warm enough to take the edge off.
Ever since her talk with Vera, her body’s aching, tightly wound reaction to the last week had settled. Standing here, she felt empty of pain; her chest was the lightest it had been in days.
She filled her lungs with the salty air of the first good morning in weeks.
No one else was around, which wasn’t surprising considering how early it was. Maisie had no idea what had compelled her to jump out of bed and make her way here at dawn, other than an impulse that this was where she was meant to be.
Last night, she’d called each of her brothers, her parents, and her friends to tell them all the news that she’d decided to stay in this town. All of them had been surprised, but none had asked her to explain herself. She didn’t know how to put into words that she didn’t want to leave.
‘If you ever miss home, find your way to the water.’
Every time she’d craved to go back home, she’d set her sights in the wrong direction.
This was it. This is where she belonged. So long as she could find a place to live, at least. Her probationary tenancy at the bookshop flat would be up in a few weeks. But that didn’t matter just now – it was a problem for tomorrow’s Maisie to start figuring out.
Someone’s dog barked in the distance behind her. The shallow tide rose up and tickled her feet, her toes shifting and pressing into the sand. She’d left her shoes and a towel a few paces back where the water wouldn’t get to them, but something else clearly had – an ankle boot landed on her foot and made her snap it out of the water with a yelp.
“Ted?” The unexpected wiry body wiggled and danced on the water-soaked pebbles, a dopey grin on his face as if he was happy to see her. “What are you …?”
“I quit my job.”
Maisie’s body went still midway to grasping Ted’s collar. She hadn’t heard that voice for six days, and still it sent a quiet wave of longing thrumming through her.
He’s here. Standing behind where her feet were rooted in the shore. Days of no contact, and of all the times and places, he had found her .
“What?” she asked airily since her brain hadn’t processed his words beyond their sound.
“I quit.” That voice said again behind her. “My boss … he was trying to give me a way out that wouldn’t be a mark against my name this whole time.”
He quit. He wasn’t fired; he’d made the choice to leave that place.
“Decide what you want, Iain. And if that’s not me then tell me before you break my heart.” Well, he’d told her alright. Words weren’t needed with how he’d handed her the box with the crocheted penguin and walked out of her door. He couldn’t have made himself any clearer.
Maisie raised her eyes that had begun to water to the ocean. “What are you going to do?” she asked whilst trying to keep her voice from showing just how affected she was for feeling his presence so soon.
Iain at least sounded happier when he spoke, and despite how much she had cried over the image of his back as he’d walked out through her door, she was glad for him.
“I’m going to do the tours for that photography couple next week,” he said, “and then I was going to ask if maybe you wouldn’t mind helping me set up a website?”
“Of course I will. You would be amazing at it,” she said with a wobble in her voice that tried to hold back the emotions tightening in her chest.
He’d come to her for help when she didn’t think he’d ever gone to anyone when he needed them before. If she cared about him less, then she wouldn’t have agreed. But she couldn’t push him away. Her heart physically couldn’t fathom being apart from him – even just as someone hired to help get his life back on track.
Ted sat himself beside her and leant his body against her leg. Her fingers drifted down to scratch between his ears, the familiar feeling comforting.
“I was thinking of enrolling at the college for a first aid course,” Iain continued. “And I’ve been reading about qualifications for becoming a walking leader across different terrains. There’s a short list of requirements and a couple of forms to fill in, but the Welsh training base isn’t too far from here. I think I could do it.”
Maisie tried to discreetly wipe away the tear that escaped from her eye, raising her gaze through her lashes as if that could stop her mascara from running. “Of course you could,” she said truthfully. “You can do anything, Iain.”
“It won’t be enough to pay the bills during the off-season, so I’ll have to find something else to do in winter.”
“You don’t need to know right now. We’ll figure it out.”
His voice warmed. “ We , Daffy?”
“Yes. Because I bloody love you.” The words ripped from Maisie like a caged bird that had finally been released. “I don’t need a massive house. I don’t need expensive things. I don’t need luxury holidays or a flashy car. I just need you holding me at night, walking with me, making me laugh. Loving me . That’s all I could ever need from you.”
Iain’s silence made the light, fluttering feeling deep in her chest swirl with worry.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?”
He didn’t for a beat.
“Turn around.” The low tone of his voice that she’d missed went straight to her veins.
Maisie didn’t want to. What if what she found wasn’t what she wanted to see? What if when she turned, he only walked away again? She didn’t think that she could handle the way her heart – a heart she’d put on hold for so long – would rip apart again if he did.
“Maisie, look at me. Please.”
She held her nerve to face away for as long as she dared – until the need to see him again became too overwhelming.
The tension in her brow softened. Wearing his grey chequered fleece and those tactical trousers that fit him so well, Iain held a plastic tray of blueberry muffins, a bouquet of real wildflowers like the ones she always kept in her living room, and something crocheted …
“Daffodils,” she whispered softly, the word barely escaping her lips.
“ Ydyn ? * , Daffy, they are.”
“You first called me that at Vera’s party, when I wore the …”
The yellow dress.
Iain’s mouth curved. “I was wondering how long it’d take you to realise.”
Maisie met his eyes – eyes that looked more full of life than she’d ever seen them.
All this time . She’d stopped giving it much thought every time he called her Daffy. The nickname had become so natural to her that the why didn’t really matter anymore; she just wanted to hear him calling her that once again.
Maisie sniffled to stave off her next wave of tears. Something clearly must be in the air – no one ever cried so much as her at a beach.
“So, is all of this a parting gift?” She pulled the sleeves of her jumper over her hands and gestured at the muffins and flowers – her favourite flowers. “Something to ease the goodbye?”
“I was told it’s called a grand gesture.”
“And who told you that?”
Iain gazed at her with an expectant softness, the rising sunlight touching the shine in his forest-like eyes.
“Vera,” they both said at the same time.
Of course it would be her. The woman had been out of hospital for barely a day and already she stirred up trouble again. This time though, it was the good kind. The right kind of meddling.
It caught up to Maisie on a delay just what Iain was giving a grand gesture for, and her lungs expanded in a silent gasp.
“She was right about those books,” he said with a lopsided smile beneath the moustache he’d neatened up since the last time she’d seen him.
Lips parted, Maisie nodded, then she confessed, “I’m not going back to London.”
Iain tilted is head, and out of the corner of her eye she saw Ted’s do the same. “You’re not?”
She wasn’t. To stay might’ve been the easiest decision she’d made in a long while. Iain was right: home is wherever you made it. Mould or no mould.
The breeze picked up the hem of her long skirt and pushed it against her calves like it ushered her towards his safe arms.
“I’m making this my permanent home,” she said proudly. “It turns out Vera never needed me after all. Being here … it’s not where I need to be, but it’s where I want to be.
“I want these views every day. I want the quiet, slow life. I want Sunday dinners at my nain’s, and Saturday walks through valleys I will never be able to pronounce.” Iain cracked a chuckle, and Maisie grinned, her cheeks stained with tears. “I want this scruffy mutt”— she ruffled both her hands in Ted’s fur, and he lolled out his tongue — “and I want you . I want you, Iain.”
His broad chest expanded. “That’s grand. Because it’ll make asking you to come on a date with me a little less awkward.”
Maisie’s heart leapt up towards the sky. “A date?”
“Mhm.”
She narrowed one misty eye playfully. “A real one?”
“A real one,” Iain confirmed after quietly chuckling. His eyes softened as he looked at her. “Because I bloody love you too.”
Maisie’s chest rose with a slow breath. He was too far away for her to touch if she tried, but it couldn’t happen anyway; he’d just said that he loved her, and that stunned her to her spot. The look she now knew as utter adoration in his green eyes warmed her all the way to the tips of her toes – toes that would maybe fall off if she didn’t step out of the water soon.
“I know I’ve got a hell of a lot to make up for with how I left things the other afternoon,” Iain said. “The whole day had been too overwhelming, and I couldn’t think straight. The things that I said … they felt true at the time, but they’re not anymore.” He took one step to meet her, pebbles crunching under his boots. “I said I didn’t know what I wanted, but I do now. I was so scared of losing everything again that I didn’t even consider what could happen if I didn’t, if I suffered those storms in my life so that I could get to you.
“I saw you and felt like I’d met someone who would be a drop of yellow in my world of grey, Daffy. Imagining a life that we spend together doesn’t scare me, what scares me is losing you.” Iain tilted his head in the most heart-achingly tender expression. “You can have all of my darkest secrets, Daffy. I’m not running from them anymore.”
Maisie’s heart ached with how full it was. She reached into the pocket of her skirt and drew out the pebble that’d been there the entire time. “I believe you.”
Iain’s eyes bounced up from the freckled stone, lips parted and his brow softening as if he’d expected for her to have thrown the gesture out to sea. Maybe she would have. Maybe that’s what she’d subconsciously been here so early this morning to do? But she would never know, because this tiny, perfect pebble that he’d searched the beach for was forever going to stay right where she was.
Where they were.
He wet his lips. “I found that after we sat out here together, and I kept it because I think a part of me already knew even then what you would mean to me. I’d just hoped that you wouldn’t forget what it meant.”
“I didn’t forget,” she told him. “You’re allowed to be unsure and scared, but the second that feels too much, you have to tell me.”
Iain wet his lips again, his breathing as gently choppy as the sea. “Does this mean that …”
Maisie threw her head back and laughed. “ Yes , you big ol’ fool. I want to date you. I want to be with you.”
“I don’t have much?—”
“I don’t need anything more than this. Us .”
His smile was indulgent. “What I was going to say?—”
Maisie let out a quiet “Oops.”
“—was that I don’t have much, but you’ve helped me realise that I am enough. Neither of us needs to change.”
The grin that broke on Maisie’s lips as she twisted her fingers together to resist jumping on him was full of pride. To hear such self-belief coming from his heart caused hers to pound against her ribs so hard with happiness that there was a good chance she might be the next one to faint.
Iain held out the tray of muffins. “Could you hold these for me?”
“Why?” she asked, even though she took them.
“So I can do this.”
He swept forwards and cupped her head within his entire warm palm, crashing his lips upon hers. Maisie’s lungs filled with the sea spray and spiced scent of him as she poured her heart out into returning his kiss.
Ted woofed with excitement, his tail thwacking her legs as he danced around them.
The flowers Iain brought crushed under his arm where he wrapped it around her tightly – the epitome of safe.
It was the most perfect moment of Maisie’s life – the moment she’d waited twenty-nine years for. Iain was right: all the storms they’d endured in love were worth it to reach this point, together, at the start of their new story.
“For the record,” Iain said with their lips still pressed to one another’s, his nose brushing along hers, “all of the time that we spent together – it was real to me.”
“Me too.” With her one hand that clutched him, Maisie tightened her grip on his back and smiled through a chuckle against his lips. “Here I am, falling for you again, Iain Howell.”
“Good.” He tightened his arm around her body, bringing her impossibly close against him. “Because this time I’m ready to catch you in my arms right where you belong.”
* ? Yes