Then one day, the headmaster calls him to the office.
A man stands there, tall, broad-shouldered, hair too long, eyes too bright.The staff treats him with a strange kind of respect and admiration, someone famous.His father’s best friend.
Keir MacLaren.
Callum recognized him instantly from the time he’d spent with his father, from posters, from television, from the way people said his name like it was a dare.A rock god.A disaster.A brilliant man who doesn’t belong to rules.
Keir looks at Callum like he is evaluating a guitar that might be worth fixing.
“So you’re the troublemaker,” Keir says.
Callum lifts his chin.“I don’t think so.What are you doing here?”
Keir smiles, sharp as a blade.“I’m getting you out of this place.”
Callum doesn’t believe him.
Not until Keir signs papers with a scrawl that looks like a signature and a warning.
Not until Keir walks him out past the locked gates, tosses his duffel bag into the boot of his car, and says, “Get in.”
No lecture.No pity.No promises he couldn’t keep.
Just action.
Structure.
Choice.
Keir had chosen him.
And now Keir is gone.
Callum’s hands ache on the steering wheel as the memory snaps back into the present.
The sky is the color of steel when he turns onto the narrow road that winds through heather and stone fences.Fog clings to the hills like breath.The land feels ancient and watchful, the kind of place that remembers everything and forgives nothing.
Then the castle appears.Home for the last ten years.A place where he’d found his passion and become a man.
Gray stone rising out of mist, stubborn and imposing, like it’s holding its ground against time itself.Ivy climbs one wall, uninvited.Windows stare out over the land like dark eyes.
Callum’s throat tightens so hard, it hurts.
This place, these walls, are home.
Not the place he was born.Not the life he lost when his father’s plane burned.Not the tidy world his mother built with another man and another set of rules.
Home is here.In the echoing halls where Keir’s laugh had bounced.In the music room where the guitars sit like sleeping animals.In the kitchen, where Keir had sworn at the kettle and made terrible tea and acted as if rules were optional but loyalty was not.
At the gate, paparazzi are gathered.A makeshift memorial stands there with flowers scattered everywhere.Left by hundreds of fans.All for the man who is now gone.
Callum’s chest aches with unshed tears for the man who’d saved him.
When the gate opens, he pulls into the drive and cuts the engine.For a moment, he can’t move.His hands are locked on the wheel again, like letting go will make it real.
He swallows hard.Forces himself out of the car.
The cold air hits his face like a slap.The scent of wet stone and peat and distant smoke fills his lungs.He stands there looking up at the castle, and grief comes in a wave so strong, it nearly drops him to his knees.
