Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 146289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 731(@200wpm)___ 585(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 146289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 731(@200wpm)___ 585(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
And maybe it’s the fullness that does it. This comfort that has now become easy between us. Or maybe it’s the damn emotional rollercoaster I’ve been on for the last two months finally evening out at the end.
And maybe it’s because I’m nosy, and I don’t forget things and I don’t want him to forget them either.
“So,” I begin, clearing my throat. “Two nights ago. In the chapel.”
“Mm.” He’s leaning back against the bow bags; eyes half shut against the sun.
“You were telling me why you’d never stand for Effie, and you said—and I’m direct quoting here, because I’ve thought about it a million times since—you said you’d felt the thing inside you close your hand on the woman you love.” He stiffens slightly. “And then you just kept going, like it was a fact you’d mentioned. Sea’s cold, castle’s old, love this woman, yadda yadda yadda. And it occurred to me, out here, that everything you said back then, the glamour was still doing its thing.”
I keep my eyes on the horizon, because I’m brave, but I’m not that brave. “Soooo I find myself curious how the fact is holding up. Now that it’s just you in there. And me here.”
The boat lifts on the swell and settles.
“Look at me, foxglove.”
I look at him. And even though I’ve looked at him countless times before, sometimes as this otherworldly creature, sometimes as this incredibly handsome man, all I can think is that it’s him and he’s beautiful and no matter what he says next, he is, in some way, still mine.
“I love you,” he says, and my ribs seem to contract around my heart, or maybe now my heart is too big for my ribs. The feeling is so immediate and all-encompassing I can barely breathe.
“It held,” he goes on, when it’s apparent that I’m speechless. “It was the first thing I checked inside me. I went looking for it the way you’d go looking for the one thing you’d want out of a burning house, and it was there, and it was mine. No lure in it, no pull, no creature’s wanting wearing my face. Just a man’s love, the ordinary kind, the kind that dies when I do or perhaps lives on in the stars.” He says it steadily, plainly, like coordinates. “I love you, Iris Galloway.”
I’m grinning at him like a fucking loon.
“And you…?” he prods, and is that a touch of red on his cheeks?
“I love you too,” I say, though I would rather drag it out for drama. “I have no idea when it started. Somewhere between the kippers and the binding, in one of those moments in between. But it’s mine too. I checked the same as you did, that whole horrible day you didn’t come back. I stood in my kitchen with all the glamour gone and went looking for what was left, and it was all still there, Alasdair. It turned out that I loved you, and there was no one else to blame for it.” I wipe my face with the heel of my hand, because of course I’m crying now like a sap. “So, there it is. Verified on both ends. Love, the ordinary kind.”
“The ordinary kind,” he agrees, but it’s the voice of a man agreeing to a miracle.
And then he crosses the boat to me, carefully, mortally, one hand on the gunwale because he can drown now and we both know it, and he kisses me in the middle of the bright water, and there is nothing in the sea but fish, and nothing in the man but the man, and nothing in the kiss but us.
Chapter
Thirty-Five
The snow comes in the second week of December, which delights me because I’m one of those weirdos that love snow. But Alasdair seems to take the cold personally.
It’s not even proper snow; just a light dusting overnight, the kind that sugars the heather and lies in the seams of the drystone walls and is gone from the road by noon. But it’s enough that he stands at the back window with his tea, glowering at it like it owes him money, and announces, “It’s inside my feet, Iris. The cold. It’s gotten inside my feet.”
“That’s called poor circulation. Wear the socks I bought you.”
“I survived the bloody plague.”
“Not in this mortal body, you didn’t. Wear the damn socks.”
He wears the thick wool socks I picked up at the Torridon gift shop, and the second jumper I bought for him when we went to Inverness for a few days, and he’s developed a relationship with the wood stove that borders on courtship—feeding it, tending it, angling his chair toward it. Not to mention every single day this body of his presents him with some fresh outrage, like hunger at inconvenient hours, or a crick in his neck from sleeping wrong, and every single day he files his complaints with me like I’m his manufacturer. The thing is, he likes to complain. He delights in the action, but he also—secretly—delights in having a mortal body, even if he’s slowly turning into a grumpy old man.