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He grinned. “Then I should probably mention the part where he falls to his knees in a vineyard and begs forgiveness in a very interesting manner.”

Jenn laughed—but her voice caught a little in her throat. “You keep catching me off guard.”

He reached for her hand, tentative but sure. “Good.”

The storm raged outside, but in the cottage, everything else went still—the air warm with candlelight, the scent of ginger, cinnamon, and chocolate, the slow curl of something blooming between them. No rush this time. Just the slow, inevitable pull of something real.

Jenn leaned back, watching him over the rim of her mug. The firelight gilded his profile—the slope of his nose, the curve of his jaw, that familiar serious expression with just enough mischief tugging at the corner of his mouth. It was too easy, this moment. Too warm. Too comfortable. Too dangerous.

She looked away first, down into her mug. “I’m still not used to this.”

“Used to what?”

“The calm,” she said after a pause. “The space. Everything here feels… slower. Louder somehow. Like I can hear my own thoughts again.”

Ruairidh didn’t say anything at first. The fire cracked gently in the hearth.

Then he spoke softly. “Is that a good thing?”

Jenn hesitated, cradling her mug. “I think it’s supposed to be.”

“But?” he said gently.

“But sometimes it feels like I don’t know what I’m doing with it.” She let out a breath, eyes flicking to the window. Rain lashed sideways across the glass. “I came here to stop spinning. But now that I’ve stopped… I’m not sure what comes next. It’s strange, I usually have the next adventure brewing in my mind.”

She hadn’t meant to say that. Not really.

Ruairidh’s gaze didn’t shift, didn’t press. Just stayed unwavering. Present. Supportive.

“You don’t have to know yet,” he said eventually. “That’s the thing no one tells you. You don’t have to have a bloody plan.”

Jenn blinked. “Even you?”

“I work out flight routes and tide charts,” he said with a small smile. “Not five-year life plans.”

That made her laugh—a low, quiet thing. She glanced at him, found him watching her again, and this time didn’t look away. There it was. The flicker. That heat beneath the stillness. The silence stretched just a little too long to be innocent. Morag, curled at Ruairidh’s hip, gave a faint disgruntled noise and rolled over, breaking the moment.

“Place suits you, you know. Hellisay.”

Jenn’s breath caught for just a second.

“Yeah?” she said, trying to sound casual. It wasn’t supposed to suit her. Peigi had strong-armed her here for a year-long breather, not a full-blown life reset.

He nodded, swirling the mug between his hands. “You’ve got that… settled look. Not bored-settled. Rooted. Like you’ve got a rhythm here. Like you’re not waiting to leave anymore.”

Jenn stared at the fire, its flames low and flickering. The wind howled again outside, shaking the windowpanes. She liked that it couldn’t touch her in here.

Jenn swallowed. “Yeah. Maybe I have.”

But she didn’t just mean the yoga classes or the cat or the fact that she now knew how to make proper tablet from scratch. She meant this. The stormy quiet. The flickering fire. The way he looked at her now.

Something in her shifted. Not rushed. But real. For one reckless heartbeat, she wondered if she could actually stay—here, in this borrowed calm that felt dangerously like home. Then, before the thought could take shape—before it could feel like something true—she pushed it aside. Best not to get daft ideas.

The silence stretched, but not in a way that needed to be filled. It hummed. Soft, steady. The kind of silence that came only when the world outside had been stripped back—no electricity humming, no phones buzzing, just the fire crackling, the flicker of soft candlelight, and the wind pressing against the glass.

Jenn shifted slightly on the sofa, pulling her feet beneath her. She could feel the heat of the flames on her cheeks, the warmth of the cocoa in her belly. And him. Just there. So relaxed, so present, so… solid.

Ruairidh was still watching her. Not intently—not in that way that made her feel under a microscope—but like she was something familiar and newly noticed all at once.