“We’ll hide. This is a big country. Really exhaustingly huge, actually,” I add with an only-half-joking stretch of my back. “So forget the Campbells. We canhide in a cave somewhere if we have to. I found you across hundreds of years. I’m not leaving you now.”
“But you love your time.” Though Callum is trying to talk me out of it, his guard has dropped. When his eyes meet mine, I see the hope he’s trying to hide, his expression so raw, I know what he’s really asking.
You love your time. But do you love me?
The answer is already written in my bones. But saying it out loud would make everything final. If I admit how completely he’s changed me, this isn’t about finding a way home anymore—it’s about choosing a life. A future. And the weight of that confession, here when we’re running and desperate and everything feels impossible… What if I lose him anyway?
“I love my world,” I say carefully. “But I also love…”
You.
So much that saying it out loud would change everything. I swallow the words and deflect instead. “I love this place, too.”
I recognize the truth of my words. In spite of the weather and the food, despite taking sponge baths instead of showers, or using salt for toothpaste, there’s a way in which I’m happier here than I’ve ever been.
Even on the coldest mornings, my walks to the castle are a joy. There’s no constant hum of traffic, no sirens, no twenty-four-hour news cycle. Yet the silence here is full. The wind has its own music, rustling through leaves, carrying distant voices, amplifying birdsong.
Life is richer here. Slower. There’s just Callum and me. The miles we’ve walked, the nights spent in the kitchen, completely focused on each other.
In this world, where the stakes are so high, even the smallest gestures carry the deepest meaning. Here, even the most basic things aren’t easy. Something as simple as Callum fetching me a cup of water demonstrates his complete awareness of me. His caring and intent.
Scotland of 1622 has slowed me down, taught me what matters. It’s opened my eyes to life.
“What of your grandfather?” he asks quietly.
“You said it yourself, he probably doesn’t even know I’m gone. I can…” My throat tightens. “I can live with that. For now. Because we will find a way. Eventually.”
“Aye, we will.” He snatches my hands in his. “We’ll figure it out, Rosie-love. You’re right—together, there’s nothing we can’t do.”
We’re quiet after that. At first, it’s a thoughtful quiet, but as the temperature plummets, it becomes our way of enduring, heads tucked low as we slog ahead. Though it makes our gait awkward and slow, Callum keeps one arm wrapped around my shoulder and holds his other arm in front of me, bearing the brunt of the wind.
Just when I think I can’t go any further, Callum stops.
I’m shivering uncontrollably now, jaw sore from chattering. The moment I stop walking, my core temperature feels like it drops ten degrees, and I hop on the balls of my feet, my body automatically twitching and spasming to keep warm. “Are we lost?” There’s no water in sight, just the same shabby snarl of landscape that I’m beginning to resent.
“Och, I’m nae lost. Loch Long is through the trees, just there.” He points at something, but it all looks the same to me—more trees silhouetted in shadows.
“If you sayso.”
With a low laugh, he pinches my chin, and his fingers are warm on my freezing skin. “Have you so little faith?”
I forget the loch and snatch his hand instead. “How come you’re always so warm?”
“Losh, woman. How are you always so cold?” Chafing my hands in his, he leads me to a massive rock. He slides the threadbare blanket from his shoulders and unfurls it on the ground. “Bide here a wee bit.”
“But you’ll freeze,” I protest. “That was your cloak.”
“The bare bird hops farthest,” he says with a wink as he guides me down. “I’ll be fine.” He squats and gives a final chafe to my arms. “I’ll make a fire, and you’ll have a warm wee burrow in a trice.”
The rock breaks the wind, and with the extra layer of wool, I’m already warmer. I huddle into myself, watching as he deftly sets up camp.
“’Twas brilliant of you to fetch my sporran,” he says, and my pride is almost enough to warm me through. He opens it and fishes something out. “It means I’ve my tinderbox.” He gathers fallen branches, leaning the larger ones against the side of my rock as a windbreak. The smaller ones he uses as kindling, arranging them into a tiny cone which he encircles in a ring of stones.
Soon a small fire is blazing. It warms my cloak and finally my muscles.
Sighing, I gaze up, humbled by the trillions of stars spattered across the boundless, blackest-black sky. “I had no idea there were so many stars.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve no stars in the future.”
