She shrugs. “Exactly.”
“You guys aren’t making any sense.”
“My selfish motives don’t make sense to you?” Luna asks.
I give her a pointed stare. “You, I perfectly understand.”
“We’re here,” Gavin says, interrupting. “You’ll want to look out the right, then you’ll see it come into view.”
We all lean to look through Luna’s window where a dark stone castle is nestled in the trees up on a rise. The roof is missing and the walls are jagged and broken. A lone tower rises on one side while parts of the others show a clear outline of what it once was.
Gavin pulls off the road and down a bumpy road, parking on the side. We all file out and walk toward the castle, taking in the beauty of the structure and surrounding landscape. It’s undescribable. I snap photos of it to send to Bekah, but they don’t capture the grandeur of the valley or the moody brilliance of the ruins.
“It’s hard to express through a snap, isn’t it?” Gavin asks.
“None of these angles really capture it.”
“Do you want me to take one of you?”
“Sure.” I hand him my phone and step closer to him so I can have the whole castle in the background. When I look for my family to see if they’ll jump in with me, they’re nowhere to be seen. They must have walked around the back. I pose, he takes it, then he hands back my phone. “Selfie?”
Gavin wrinkles his nose. “I’ve never been very good at those.”
“I’ll take it. Just smile.”
His chest presses against my back, and I get a heavy whiff of his sandalwood and amber, making me feel all warm and lean into him more.
“Say cheese,” I tell him.
“No. Instead, you sayNollaig Chridheil.”
I hit the picture button just as he says that, snapping a photo of Gavin speaking and me looking utterly confused.
“What did you say?”
“Nollaig Chridheil. It means Merry Christmas in Gaelic.”
I twist my neck enough to see into his blue eyes. It’s truly incredible how many things he remembers from my bucket list when I only shared it with him once. Two turtle doves, three french hens, and an entire army of lords are leaping around in my stomach right now.
“Nollick Tree-ill.”
Gavin suppresses a laugh, which I feel against my back. “Noll-ack Chree-al,” he says, slowing it down for me.
“Nollaig Chridheil,”I try again.
“You’ve got it. Shall we try again?”
I say it three more times, and Gavin only has to correct myChridheilonce. My cheeks hurt from smiling so hard. I lift my phone, the camera open, and realize I’ve been recording thatentire thing. I turn off the video, switch it back to camera, and frame us with the castle in the background.
“Ready?” I ask.
“Aye.”
“Nollaig Chridheil,” we say together as I snap the picture.
I step away and take a photo of the castle with the moody sky. “Bucket list, check.”
He nods to my phone. “Will you send that to me?”
