“God,” I say softly. “You can actually see the stars here.”
Rory glances up.
They’re everywhere. Tiny sharp pinpricks of light scattered across the sky in a way you never see back home where the streetlamps and houses wash everything out.
He lets out a quiet breath. “Yeah.”
The fire shifts with a small crack as one of the logs collapses inward. Rory crouches beside the pit and nudges the embers with a stick, pulling them together so the heat concentrates again. The movement sends a brief flare of orange light up through the ash.
“You cold?” he asks.
“A bit.”
He studies me for a second before sitting down on the bench beside mine. Not touching. But close enough that I can feel the heat from him through the blanket.
“Blanket helping?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
For a while neither of us says anything. The night has its own soundtrack. The soft rustle of wind through the trees. The distant call of something in the forest that I choose not to identify. The slow breathing of sleeping children beyond the firelight. It feels oddly peaceful. Then Rory says something that pulls me straight back through time. “Remember the woods behind Mrs Carters house?”
I turn to look at him. “Oh my god.”
He smiles slightly, still watching the embers.
“We used to build those ridiculous dens.”
“With the blue tarpaulin your dad gave us.”
“And the rope that absolutely wasn’t strong enough.”
I laugh softly. “And the biscuits.”
“Always biscuits.”
“Your mum packed those chocolate digestives.”
“And you ate half of them before we even started building.”
“That is slander.”
“That is fact.”
I shake my head, smiling. “I’d completely forgotten about that place.” I lie.
“Me too,” he says quietly. He’s definitely lying too.
I look around the clearing again. The trees. The fire. The quiet circle of darkness beyond the glow.
“It feels a bit like that,” I say.
“What?”
“The woods.”
He follows my gaze slowly, taking in the field and the forest beyond it. “Yeah,” he says eventually. “It does.”
