I type quickly.
Freya:Relax. I’m alive.
Three dots appear immediately.
Clara:That’s not a denial.
I shove the phone back into my pocket before this escalates further.
“They’re going to interrogate me tomorrow,” I mutter.
“Looking forward to that,” Rory says.
“You’re not the one they’ll interrogate.”
“Oh I absolutely will be.”
We turn onto our street. Oakwood is quiet at this hour, most houses dark except for the soft glow of lamps behind curtains. The walk back is only ten minutes but it stretches pleasantly, neither of us in a hurry to break the moment. His arm stays around my shoulders. My hand has slipped into his pocket without me noticing. At one point he squeezes my shoulder slightly.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“You’ve gone quiet.”
“I’m just… thinking.”
“That’s dangerous.”
I smile faintly. “Just about how strange it is that we’ve lived in the same village for years and somehow never ended up walking home like this.”
Rory breaths a quiet laugh. “Yeah.”
My house comes into view at the end of the street. The porch light is still on from earlier. I stop at the gate and turn toward him.
“Well.”
“Well,” he echoes softly.
There’s that same moment of stillness that seems to keep happening between us lately. That small, suspended pause where something deeper sits just under the surface.
“Do you want to come in?” I ask. The words come out more quietly than I expect.
Rory studies my face for a second. “Yeah,” he says.
Inside the house everything is calm and still, the familiar quiet of a place where a child isn’t currently racing through the hallway asking for snacks. I kick off my boots and hang his jacket over the back of a chair before turning toward him. For a second, we just stand there in the soft kitchen light looking at each other.And suddenly the whole evening feels like it’s narrowing down to this moment.
Rory steps closer and his hand comes up to brush a loose curl away from my face, fingers lingering briefly near my cheek.
“You’re quiet again,” he murmurs.
“I’m thinking.”
“Still dangerous.”
I smile slightly. “You realise this is the point where people usually panic.”
“Do they?”
