Page 77 of A Scot in the Storm
“When I was little. On a beach.” A smile ghosted briefly across her face.
“He kept making me try until I got one to skip three times. Said you couldn’t quit a thing until you’d done it once properly. He’s the only person who ever really thought I’d be okay after our parents died.”
“What’s his name?”
“Sam. He’s twenty-five. Lives far away from here.”
There was something in her voice. The same carefulness she used when speaking of things too close to the bone.
“He’s been ill for a long while,” she continued. “And I’m waiting to hear whether the news is finally good.”
“Is he going to heal?” Rory watched the wind pull a bit of her hair loose.
Abigail was quiet a long moment.
“I don’t know.”
The honesty of it settled heavily in the cold air.
“Ye miss him.”
“Every day.”
Rory looked back out at the sea.
One brother lost beneath black water. Another brother far beyond Abigail’s reach.
He bent and picked up a flat stone from the path.
“Show me,” he said.
She laughed, then they walked down the path to the still water.
Rory missed twice. The stones struck the water and vanished.
“I’m a captain,” he muttered. “Not a small boy on a beach.”
“That’s your problem. You’re overthinking it.”
Her own stone skipped four times.
Rory counted aloud as it bounced over the water.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Abigail laughed, bright, startled, and completely unguarded.
Rory found himself watching her instead of the sea. The wind had loosened more strands of hair around her face. Her cheeks were flushed pink from the cold. The blue-grey shawl wrapped around her shoulders made the gold in her eyes look brighter somehow.
Alive.
She looked alive in a way that caught painfully somewhere beneath his ribs. For one reckless moment he had the strange thought that he might have known her in another life, that they were meant for each other. The idea passed as quickly as it came. But the ache of it lingered.
