Ava went still. He could hear his own breathing. He could hear hers, too. The ugly weight of his confession sat between them. She got too far inside him. She made him want too much. She made the life he had built feel unstable in his own hands.
“I was never supposed to…” He stopped, his jaw set, and began again. “I cannaethinkwith ye near me. I cannae keep any sense. I dance with ye once in front of yer father and spend the rest of the night half mad from wanting to do it again. Ye lie beside me for a comet, and I am thinking how to keep hold of yer hand. Yewalk into a room, and everything in me turns toward ye before I can stop it.” He looked straight at her. “Is thatreasonenough?”
Ava’s lips parted. The hurt had not vanished from her face. Something else had entered it and made it harder to bear.
They were close enough now that one step would close the distance between them. Close enough that he could see the flutter at the base of her throat. So close that he knew exactly how she would feel in his hands if either of them moved.
“There. Are ye satisfied?”
Ava stayed where she was on the coat, looking up at him with the comet still overhead. He stood over her with his own confession still raw in his mouth, and both of them breathed inside the wreck of the moment, too close to pretend they could go back to what they had been before.
Then she looked away from him and lay back down. The movement was small, but for some reason, it landed harder than if she had struck him.
“Ava, did ye hear me?”
“Aye,” she responded, her voice clear. “I did.”
“Are ye certain?”
“Go inside if ye want,” she muttered. “I am staying here.”
Ciaran did not move.
The loch lay dark at their side as the cold touched his face and hands. The coat beneath Ava had shifted when she turned, one edge dragging over damp grass. She looked up at the sky as if she meant to pull the whole night back to herself by force.
“I am nae leaving ye here alone.”
That drew her eyes back to him.
“Ye daenae get to decide every part of this,” she scoffed. “Ye have already done enough of that for one night.”
He felt the hit of it and swallowed. “Ava.”
“Nay.” She pushed herself up on her elbows. “If I wish to lie here and watch the comet, I shall do it. If ye wish to go, go.”
He stayed where he was.
She released a short, angry breath. “Ye hear one thing and turn it into a command. Ye feel one thing and decide to run away from it instead of confronting it. To hell with what I think. Ye daenae ask. Ye daenae wait. Ye simply choose.”
Ciaran went down on one knee beside her. For some reason, towering over her in the dark made the whole exchange worse. “I said I am nae leaving ye alone by the loch at night.”
“And I said ye arenae the master of every choice I make.”
He had no answer that would not turn the fight the same way again. He could feel that with full clarity. The old instinct to press harder sat ready in him. So did the newer, far more dangerous instinct to give in wherever she pushed simply because it was she who pushed.
Before either of them spoke again, Ava’s gaze lifted to the sky. The change in her expression stopped everything. Her lips parted, and her eyes widened, her anger forgotten.
Ciaran looked.
The comet was clearer than anything. It was magical the way it burned clean across the sky, pale and bright and steady enough that even he, who had waited for no such thing all his life, felt the force of it. The tail stretched long behind it, and the stars around it remained sharp. Even the loch caught a broken reflection of its light in the dark.
He saw the smile that settled on Ava’s face before the whisper escaped her lips. “I did it.”
The words reverberated through him.
She did not say anything else for a few seconds. He could hear her breathing. He could see the tears gathering again, not from the fight this time, though the fight still sat between them.
“I did it,” she said again, her voice barely audible now.
