Total pages in book: 47
Estimated words: 43714 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 219(@200wpm)___ 175(@250wpm)___ 146(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 43714 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 219(@200wpm)___ 175(@250wpm)___ 146(@300wpm)
As great as all of this was, it’s coming to an end.
Far too soon for me to be comfortable.
I look out of the window in Finlay’s bedroom, leaning my head against the glass.
The beautiful view will be gone soon. Or, rather, I will be.
I will be flying so many miles away that all this will become nothing more than a dream.
I think of my grandmother, and how she talked about the Scotland of her youth. She was always full of longing for a place that no longer existed anywhere but in her head. Something that had stopped being how she remembered it so long ago with no chance for her ever to get back to it again.
It’s sad to think of Barnbraw becoming that way to me now. Something I will dream of when I’m old, even though I can never recapture the place. And it isn’t even really the place that holds my heart.
“You look serious,” Finlay says, coming out of the bathroom to stand beside me.
I try to smile, though I find my face isn’t quite as obedient as I want it to be.
“I’m just thinking about the trip home.”
Finlay leans against the glass beside me, his forearm above his head. “You don’t look happy about the idea.”
His tone is so open that I feel a surge of honesty coming over me.
If I say it and he balks, what difference will it make? I’m already planning to leave. He can’t make it any worse.
“No, I’m not. I would rather stay here.”
“For how long?” Finlay asks. He’s looking out at the grounds, not at me, but his voice holds a strange, almost tight quality to it.
I clear my throat.
It’s now or never.
My last full day in Scotland is tomorrow. After that, I will be flying home. If I don’t say it now, I will never have the chance to again.
“I don’t know,” I mutter. “I don’t think I would like to put a time limit on it.”
Finlay turns to me. “How about forever?”
I look at him, my breath catching in my throat at the intensity in his eyes.
“Is that an offer?”
“Yes,” he says. Pure and simple. Just like that.
He makes the offer to stay with him forever, as easily as if he were offering me a slice of toast.
I don’t need to ask him if he’s sure because of the way he said it – it’s as though it’s the most natural and normal thing in the world for me to stay.
“I would like that,” I murmur, the fear that he might run for the hills running through my head leaves me.
From the look on his face, I suspect the same thoughts had been running through his head as well.
“It’s fast,” I say because one of us has to point that out at least, right?
“I don’t care,” he says. “Do you?”
“No,” I whisper.
I look back at the estate through the window. I can see his reflection in the glass.
This place already feels far too much like home. Then, something comes over me, a pure feeling of such intensity that I can’t ignore it.
All I can do is give it a voice.
“I love you.”
There’s a pause, a beat. I look at Finlay with the sudden thought that I might have said too much, gone too far.
But he isn’t upset.
He’s looking at me with wonder in his eyes.
“I love you, Alana,” he replies.
“Then,” I say and take a very deep breath because I don’t want to bring reality into this, but it will come whether we want it to or not. “What do we do now?”
And I’m not prepared for the seriousness of the look that falls over Finlay’s face.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Finlay
There is only one way forward that I can see.
Alana is an adult woman, strong enough to make her own choices. But that isn’t the whole story because she has family and friends back home. Plans that now will go unfulfilled.
I’m asking her to stay here, which means everything she might have dreamed of before is gone.
Everything except the children she’s told me she wants, which I will take great joy in giving her.
Still, the next move is obvious. It just isn’t one I particularly looked forward to.
“We have to call your parents,” I tell her.
Because if I owe anyone the respect of talking it over, it has to be them.
Alana winces.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, are you going to just stay here without telling them?” I ask solemnly. “I’m guessing at least one of them was going to meet you at the airport when you planned to fly home.”
Alana flushes which means yes.
“My dad,” she admits. “But, I just….”
“You can’t leave them in the dark,” I tell her.
A little uneasiness hits the bottom of my stomach. If she wants to go back in order to talk to her parents in person, I will have to agree that it’s probably the best course of action.