‘Is that why you went quiet on me?’
Rae nodded.
‘It sounds like maybe you’re in burnout. I’ve seen Struan get like that before, when he was working jobs that exhausted him. Some of my students, too.’
‘How do I get out of it?’
The corner of Martha’s mouth took on a solemn quirk. ‘Not by finding another thing to fixate on, for starters. You never bloody stop.’
Rae wasscaredto stop. What if she discovered that it wasn’t her who was off-kilter, tumbling, but the ground she stood on? If she kept moving, she wouldn’t have to notice just how weak her grasp was on the world around her – the farm, her relationships, even her own mind and body. She’d seen how quickly the latter could turn on you, how quickly Dad had become sick out of nowhere, and it terrified her.
Now more than ever, because it wasn’t just bad things she had to fear. It was good, too. The unexpected tenderness that had come with Struan’s kiss,the bottomless plummet every time he made her laugh. The way she couldn’t harness her desire around him despite having done it her whole life. Every movement he made turned her inside out. Even now, missing him made her muscles knot and twist andhurt.
‘I just want to go back to before, when it didn’t feel this hard,’ she admitted. ‘I’m losing my grip on everything. And if I don’t go back, if I throw this all away, I’m failing. But equally, if I do leave, I could lose the one place that has kept me upright.’
Martha tutted, her arm sweeping over Rae’s shoulder in a tight squeeze. ‘You’re not failing. You’re resting. If it were me wanting to take a break from teaching, what would you say?’
‘I’d say which tropical resort are we going to first, and how many swimsuits should I pack?’
‘No, you wouldn’t.’
‘No, I wouldn’t.’ Rae’s smirk was wobbly. She didn’t much like holidays, or organised fun in general. ‘I would be glad for you, though. I would tell you everyone is allowed some balance.’
‘Exactly. We’re almost thirty, now.’ Martha shuddered. ‘We need to live for more than just our careers. You deserve to take a breath, Rae. If you lose your grip, maybe the things you were holding on to were never meant for you.’
‘You’re very wise.’
‘I know. That’s why I’m a professor. It’s basic physics.’
Rae laughed and did what Martha had said: took a breath. She let her muscles relax, let herself sink into Martha’s warmth.
Nothing bad happened. The river kept running, and the birds kept tweeting, and the mountains stayed exactly where they’d always been. A tear trickled down Rae’s cheek, two hours earlier than her scheduled crying time, and a dam didn’t burst. She didn’t collapse. She was fine, mostly. Just tired, and grateful, and afraid, but those feelings weren’t new.
At least she felt themhere, in a place that was safe with a person who knew her almost as well as she knew herself.
‘I haven’t told you I love you nearly enough recently,’ Rae said.
Martha held her tighter and replied, ‘It’s okay. I love you too. We always remind each other eventually.’
27
Sweetbriar was almost unrecognisable when Struan arrived on the eve of Harper’s wedding. Martha had assigned him to tent duty with Vik while she and Rae ran around like headless chickens, carrying everything from mason jars to chiffon curtains to, currently, a box of fairy wings.
‘Whimsy!’ Rae barked at Doug, who was decorating all of the wooden fences with strings of faux leaves and sunflower heads. ‘We need more whimsy!’
Struan paused midway through hammering a nail to grin, watching Rae march towards the small storage shed with hips that swayed ferociously. She made mayhem look beautiful, albeit scary, her scowl stormy and instructions husky. Earlier, she’d shouted at Struan for forgetting his toolbox. He didn’t dare tell her that he didn’t actually own one, especially not while she’d wielded Doug’s screwdriver like a weapon.
Fuck, he missed her the way he would a lost tooth: he knew it was gone, like it should be, but his tongue kept teasing the gap, remembering the before. Her absence left his smile a little more hollow, though he’d been trying to distract himself. He’d even agreed to fill in for his instructor on a Mountain Rescue course at the end of the month so that he wouldn’t have to deal with Martha’s matchmaking.
‘I can see why she and Martha get along so well,’ said Vik on the ladder above him.The comment doused his heated thoughts in cold water.
‘They’re dangerous when they’re in the same place together,’ he agreed, leaning against the ladders. Rae had emerged from the shed again, stopping to pet a curious Roderick. The cat’s spine curved happily as he brushed against Rae’s ankles, tail twirling. That gentle smile she wore when she thought she was unobserved made his stomach swoop.
The ladders almost tipped. Vik squealed, clutching onto the marquee’s unsteady frame.
‘Shite, sorry!’ He anchored his foot on the lowest rung so it wouldn’t happen again, hands curling extra tight around the rusted metal. ‘You all right?’
‘Other than the fact that my soon-to-be-brother-in-law wants to kill me?’
