“The one where you deflect everything with a joke.”
I consider that. “Maybe I’m tired.”
“Maybe.”
I watch the embers glow and fade. “Or maybe I’m just not fighting it tonight.”
“Fighting what?”
“The fact that this is nice.”
The words sit there between us. Rory doesn’t respond straight away. But the air shifts and feels instantly softer.
“Yeah,” he says eventually. “It is.”
The blanket slips slightly off my shoulder and before I can adjust it he reaches out and pulls the edge back up. His fingers brush the fabric near my collarbone. He doesn’t touch my skin but he’s close enough that I feel the warmth of him anyway.
“Don’t freeze,” he says.
“I’ll try not to.”
We sit there a little longer, the fire slowly collapsing inward, the sky growing darker and deeper above us. Nothing happens. Just two people who have known each other most of their lives, sitting beside a dying fire while the world sleeps around them.
Eventually Rory stands and nudges the last of the embers together with the toe of his boot. “I should probably make sure this is safe before we go in.”
“Responsible.”
“I’m full of surprises.”
He scatters a little dirt over the edges of the fire pit before turning back toward me. “Night, Frey.”
“Night, Rory.”
He hesitates for a second like he might say something else. Then he doesn’t. And I stay where I am for a moment longer, wrapped in the blanket, watching the final glow of the fire fade slowly into the dark. Nothing happened. But the quiet humming feeling in my chest tells me something shifted anyway.
Chapter thirty- nine
Rory
Morning at the campsite begins the way mornings always begin when thirty children have slept in tents and woken up convinced they are suddenly wilderness experts. Loudly. Someone is already shouting about missing socks before the sun has properly climbed over the treeline, a tent zip tears open somewhere behind me with the enthusiasm of a chainsaw, and the smell of damp grass, smoke and instant coffee drifts across the clearing like a slightly depressing perfume. I’m sitting on one of the wooden benches beside the fire pit when I spot Freya. She’s standing near the long folding table where breakfast will be thrown together, mug in both hands, shoulders tucked into that thick jumper she wore yesterday, her hair twisted into a loose knot that is already falling apart. Last night is still sitting somewhere at the back of my mind like a half-remembered dream. The quiet. The fire burning low. The way she looked wrapped in that blanket with the stars above her and the whole clearing asleep around us. The way she spoke about us and our past. And the worst part is that I hadn’t expected it either.
“Dad!” Isla crashes into me with the sort of enthusiasm that suggests she has been awake for at least twenty minutes already and has been saving that energy for impact.
“Morning,” I say, catching her before she topples the bench.
“We’re doing orienteering today!”
“Yes,” I say. “I heard that somewhere around the fourth time you mentioned it last night.”
“We get maps,” she continues, ignoring this. “And compasses. And we have to find checkpoints in the forest.”
Theo appears beside her. “Mum says we have to stay with the instructors,” he announces.
Freya walks over then, coffee still in her hands, the faint pink in her cheeks probably from the cold rather than anything else.
“Correct,” she says. “No wandering off to build your own settlement in the woods.”
Theo looks disappointed by this limitation.
