Denico probably hadn’t signed up for driving two drunk girls back from Oxford, but he had the good grace to look like he was enjoying our clearly formidable conversation and appearance that could not be called dishevelled, if you were kind.
Katie headed straight for her room, looking like she needed at least five weeks’ worth of sleep, leaving me to stumble out of the car and debate the walk back to the house.
“How was Oxford?” The low voice made me jump; the appearance of Killian surprising in the dusky evening light. “Judging by the number of bags by the door it looks successful.”
I smiled, resisting the overwhelming need to throw my arms around him and press myself close to his muscle and heat. “It was good. Can you give me a lift carrying them back?” We were still in the cottage; the low muttering of the twins and Nick audible through the heavy walls.
He materialised from the shadows: six feet three of taut muscle and sinew, dirty blonde hair and a thickening beard that would feel good between my legs. Sweatpants hung low, a tight t-shirt highlight every dip and valley. “No, we’re going back to your parents, happy-girl.”
I remembered the first time he’d called me that, after an informal law social when Max had been too busy to meet me so Killian had been his replacement. I’d talked and talked, recounting the whole evening, because when I was drunk I’d chat happily, so I’d been happy girl. “Do we have to walk?”
“We’re walking. Let’s leave Nick and Katie to it.” He took the bags from me and headed to the door, somehow managing to open it without dropping my shopping.
“Nick and Katie to what?” I said, smiling purposefully.
His eyes rolled dramatically. “Yeah, I know. Let’s get you home. Otherwise you’ll fall asleep on the sofa and no one will be able to move you for three days.”
“Slight exaggeration, K,” I said. “The last time I did that, I remember you carrying me up to my room and sleeping on the sofa. The love was still there, hey?”
“Do I need to carry you now?” he said, no denial.
“I can manage.” I followed him outside into the evening sunshine, the last low calls of the swallows breaking the silence. “Shall we sit for a while? It isn’t often we have nights as warm and still as this.”
He studied me for a moment and then nodded, leading us to an old bench Max and Jackson had made as something to do one summer. We sat there in silence, neither knowing what to say or to confess, the bench groaning under mainly Killian’s weight.
I felt his eyes on my skin, caressing every inch and as powerful as his hands would have been. The dying sun had turned the sky shades of red and orange, an artist’s palate spilt across the sky.
“What are we doing, K?” I said, the wine and spirits no longer holding my tongue.
“Honestly? I don’t know. What I get though, is that this is the beginning of something and not the conclusion.” He stood up and went to the window, looking out over the fields. “Or I that’s what I want it to be.”
He was tense, his shoulders held tightly and I itched to put my hands on them and rub the tension away, but even after yesterday evening when we’d eaten together and kissed it didn’t feel right; it didn’t feel ready.
“Me too,” I said quietly, the effect of the alcohol wearing off quickly with the sobriety of the atmosphere. “But we can’t go back thirteen years. We’ve both changed.”
“I know,” he said, turning around to face me, his size blocking out most of the dying day from the window. “But what hasn’t changed is how I feel about you.”
“Does it scare you?”
He laughed quietly. “It shouldn’t, given ten years in the military but it does.”
“Me too.”
I sipped the hot tea in silence, wanting to talk but not knowing where to begin and knowing somehow, that now wasn’t the right time. Kilian’s expression was thoughtful, unaware of the present as if he was reliving an old moment and had somehow slipped back to that point.
“Did you have other boyfriends at university?” he said, his words coming from nowhere.
I smiled into my mug. “No. I focused on school. There wasn’t anyone who I was interested in. You kind of ruined me.”
“Good.” His words were firm, definite. “I used to think that maybe you met someone else and at night, when I was first deployed, I tortured myself with who you might be with.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, because I was. I never wanted to hurt him. “I didn’t want that. I used to half hope you would move on from me quickly because that kind of made me feel better, that I wouldn’t have hurt you that much…”
He interrupted me with a laugh. “I didn’t think you meant to hurt me, Claire. I knew you too well for that. Shall we go?”
I nodded and stood up, stretching. The night was still and warm, the bushes and shrubbery at the side of the path rustling with night life. A crescent moon hung in the sky and cast half shadows that were still from the lack of wind. It was a perfect summer’s night, the air full of sweetness and promise.
We walked side by side in quietness rather than silence, my bags carried in one of his hands as if they were nothing. Our hands brushed together and I felt his fingers grasp mine, our pace slowing. A fox ran across the path a few feet ahead, its quick feet lending us only a fleeting appearance and for a moment, I mourned what we could’ve had if I had been honest with Killian back then, where we would be now. Of course, there was a chance we wouldn’t have worked, that it would’ve been puppy love and we would’ve outgrown each other. Maybe it was always meant to be this way.
