Because she’s not wrong.
The realization settles heavily in his chest, tangled with something else he doesn’t want to name yet.
He has the disorienting sense that he’s standing at the edge of something he doesn’t know how to survive losing.
Not Isla.
The certainty.
The castle has always been a constant.Even before he understood what it meant, before he knew its history or the weight of its name, it had been there, walls that didn’t move, a roof that didn’t vanish, a place that did not ask him to earn his right to exist within it.
After his father died, everything else became conditional.His mother’s love, suddenly rationed.Her patience exhausted.Her attention redirected.Her love redirected to another man.
The castle never asked him to adapt.
It held him while he was angry.While he was silent.While he was closed off, difficult, and impossible.
Now Isla stands before him, asking him to choose.
The request terrifies him more than he wants to admit.
Not because he doesn’t love her.
But because love has never been the thing that kept him safe.
Stone did.
Routine did.
Staying put did.
Isla represents movement.Change.Risk.A future that doesn’t come with instructions.
He understands, suddenly, why Keir stayed away.
Not because Keir didn’t love her.
But because loving someone that much makes you realize how much damage you’re capable of causing.For the hurt that loving can cause and when the love ends, you get sent to a boys’ school.
Callum hates himself for understanding it.
“Do you know what scares me the most?”Isla asks quietly, pulling him back.
He shakes his head.
She looks at him then, really looks at him, as if memorizing something she doesn’t trust herself to keep.
“It’s not that you love this place,” she says.“It’s that it loves you back.”
He frowns.“What does that mean?”
“It means the castle doesn’t ask anything of you,” Isla replies.“It doesn’t need reassurance or compromise or honesty.It doesn’t get angry when you hesitate.”
Callum stiffens.“You think I’m choosing the castle because it’s easier.”
“I think you’re choosing it because it’s safe,” she says gently.“And I don’t blame you for that.”
The gentleness devastates him more than anger would have.
