But we both know it wouldn’t have worked out that way?
“You miss him,” he continued. “I can see that.”
“Awo.”She sipped the wine. “For a long time, I couldn’t see past blaming him or blaming myself. Now I mostly just miss having him around. Something funny might happen or I’ll have some random thought and my first instinct is to find him or text him and tell him—and even after all this time it takes a second to remember that I can’t.”
A hand rested on her shoulder, cold, even through her layers of clothing. She flinched.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to give you a fright. How’s the hacking going?”
Jamie. It was Jamie’s hand, not...
So now you’re believing in ghosts?
“The program seems to be doing its thing,” she said, grateful for his change of subject. She’d been staring into nothing. Into a past that no longer existed. “But it could take many hours.”
He slid the plate of candles to the middle of the table, flickering shadows across the ceiling. “This is just like the eighteenth century.”
“Justlike it, apart from the laptop in the corner that’s hacking away at the password of the next leader of the free world.”
“Apart from that.” He returned to the kitchen and stuck his head in the pantry. “And electricity and plumbing.”
“And modern medicine, which I still haven’t seen you take.”
He planted salt and pepper shakers on the table, something flashing in his expression and fading again. A sea creature skimming the surface but not breaking through before it dived back into the deep. “And a curious lack of marching Jacobites and marauding Englishmen. Actually, the eighteenth century would have been a shite time to live in Scotland.”
“I like the twenty-first century just fine. Or I will, once I get to join it again. I’ve been stuck in 1999 for the last year.”
“Ah, 1999. I envy 1999. I’d be happy to have a do-over of the twenty-first century.”
“For you or the world?”
“Both.”
“What would you have done differ—?”
“I smell like a dead fish,” he said, clapping his hands together. “Would you mind heating up a frypan while I clean up, super quick?”
As the shower trickled in the next room, she found a pan and a tin of cooking oil. People must have stood in the same spot for centuries, preparing food. If she blocked out the glow from the laptop, she could imagine herself transported back in time, with a white-legged kilt-clad husband and countless wild children with shaggy hair. Cut off from the world. An introvert’s paradise.
And now she was imagining Jamie dirtied up and wearing a kilt. A Jamie who was currently naked, only a few meters away. They were alone, in a small space, not fleeing, not disguised. Her stomach knotted. They could live here for weeks.
The shower shut off, and the curtain rattled. If she were more courageous, she’d push open the bathroom door, sidle up behind him and slip her hands under his towel. He would turn and catch her cheeks, angle her head up for a kiss...
She closed her eyes, welcoming the desire skating up from her toes to her belly. She could enjoy that feeling, even if she didn’t act on it.
“Samira—are you okay?”
Her eyes snapped open. He was standing right beside her.“Dehnanay.”She swallowed. “Fine.”
“You were miles away.” He was sensationally bare-chested, a towel wrapped around his waist, just as she’d pictured. Yep, he’d look good in a kilt.
“Just...thinking,” she said.
“Don’t be scared to share your thoughts with me.”
Oh, not these thoughts.
“You don’t need to carry all this weight alone, you know. Talking can help.”
