Keir had lived by desire and recklessness.
Callum will do better.
He will live by choice.
He slings his bag over his shoulder, then stops and looks around the room one last time.Keir’s room.Keir’s castle.Keir’s ghost, always there, always watching.
“I’m not repeating you,” Callum says quietly, not sure who he’s talking to.Keir.Himself.The castle.
Mrs.Grant’s gaze softens.“Good.”
Callum walks out of the office and down the corridor without looking back.Each step feels like tearing something loose from inside his ribs, but the pain is clean, purposeful.
At the front door, he pauses.
The castle seems to sigh, deep and old, as if it recognizes what’s happening.
For years, it has held him.
Now it tries to keep him.
Callum rests his hand against the cold stone beside the doorframe.
“Thank you,” he murmurs, surprising himself.
Then, because he finally understands what Isla understood before he did, he adds, “But you’re not enough.”
He pulls the door open and steps into the morning.
The air bites.The world feels too wide.
And for the first time in his life, that doesn’t feel like danger.
It feels like possibility.
Callum walks to the car waiting in the drive.Mrs.Grant already arranged it, of course, because this castle has always been full of people who do the right thing quietly.
He slides into the back seat and gives the driver the address of the nearest airport.
As the car pulls away, he doesn’t look back at the castle.
Not because he doesn’t love it.
Because he finally knows what love is supposed to do.
It’s supposed to move.
It’s supposed to show up.
And this time, Callum will.
Chapter27
The hotel room is too quiet.
Isla sits on the edge of the bed, her phone facedown beside her, the city humming far below the windows.New York has always made her feel powerful, anonymous, capable, surrounded by momentum.But today it feels distant, like she’s watching her life through glass.
She did the right thing.
