Page 13 of Fierce Highland Longing

“Me?” For a moment he looked surprised to be asked. “I’m used to the quiet. That’s all.”

I wanted to ask what he heard in it, but my throat closed on the question.

Instead, I watched the fire and tried to work out my own shape by the shadows it threw. I could feel him beside me, the weight of his presence pulling the room off-balance. The urge to say something reckless, to name the thing that lay between us, sat on my tongue like salt.

I asked, instead, “Do you ever wish you were somewhere else?”

His answer was immediate: “No.” And then, after a beat, “Not even once.”

My hands twisted in my lap. “I think about leaving all the time. Doesn’t matter where I am. I used to think it made me a coward, or just unfinished.”

“Maybe it makes you restless,” Tavish said. “Or maybe it means you’re meant to be moving.”

The silence grew again, but this time it felt less sharp, as if we’d sanded down the edges and could sit with it a while.

My body relaxed, wanting the exchange between us to continue. I’d shown him my real, true self and that seems okay.

I caught myself glancing at his hands—square-knuckled, nails bitten to the quick, the skin along his inner wrists marked with pale lines that looked like the memory of rope. I wondered what it would feel like to reach out and set my hand over his, pin those scars to the table and ask what story he’d never told.

Instead, I wrapped my own arms around my knees and tucked my chin down, feigning a yawn to hide my face. “I’m going to miss this place,” she said. “Not the weather, but—something.”

He didn’t answer, but when I risked a look, I saw he was watching me, the blue of his eyes nearly black in the half-light.

I wet my lips. “Does it—hurt?” I blurted. “Being here, I mean. On land.”

He set his cup down and turned, resting his forearms on his knees. His sleeves were pushed up, the pale scars along his forearms catching the firelight. I’d seen those scars a dozen times in the last few days and never really looked at them until now.

He followed my gaze to his arms, then back to my face. “Sometimes.”

“And you’ve been doing it for nineteen years.”

“Aye.”

I swallowed. “That’s… a long time to be in pain.”

He studied me for a moment, something unreadable in his eyes. Then he pushed up out of the window seat and crossed the room in three long strides.

He stopped in front of my chair, close enough that I had to tilt my head back to meet his gaze. My heart did something unhelpful in my chest.

“Not all of it was pain,” he said, his voice lower than I’d heard it before.

I opened my mouth to say something clever and came up with nothing.

His hand lifted, slow, like he was giving me time to stop him. He didn’t touch my face. He didn’t have to. His fingers hovered just beside my jaw, close enough that I could feel the warmth of his skin, the faint roughness of old calluses.

My breath caught.

“Mara,” he said, and my name sounded different in his mouth, softer, like he was testing the sound of it with his Scottish accent.

The space between us tightened. The fire popped. Somewhere above us, a board creaked.

He didn’t kiss me.

He didn’t have to.

The air between us did the work, pulling taut until I could feel it in my ribs, in my throat, in the place low in my stomach that had gone quiet six years ago and was suddenly, terrifyingly awake.

Then he pulled back, just an inch, and the moment broke like a wave on stone.