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“That,” he says, “is the sweetest thing ye’ve ever said to me.”

“It was meant kindly.”

“I’m near overcome with emotion.”

Despite myself, despite everything, the corner of my mouth betrays me.

There’s no mistaking the change in him now. Nothing dramatic. Only a warmth that comes through the weariness and settles the restless edge he’s carried since I arrived.

I don’t quite know what possesses me. Perhaps it’s the way some of the tension has finally left him. Perhaps it’s the bruise that’s formed along his jaw, still dark and ugly against skin that shouldn’t be touched that way. Perhaps it’s his quiet admission that he had lain awake worrying for me, though nothing required it of him.

Whatever it is, I lift my hand.

I mean only to touch the cut near his brow. To see if it’s as bad as it looks. To prove to myself I can do such a thing without the earth splitting open beneath my feet.

My fingers barely brush his temple before he leans, almost imperceptibly, into the touch.

As though my tenderness caught him unawares, and he has no shield at hand against it.

“This is new,” he says, almost to himself.

My hand remains where it is, warm against his skin. His own rises as though to cover it, but stops short, suspended between us. Even now, he won’t take what I don’t freely give.

“What is?”

A slow, almost cautious look passes over his face. “Not long ago, you could scarcely bear me speakin’ to you.” A flicker of satisfaction crosses his face, followed by a smile that looks entirely too pleased with itself. “Now here you are. Seekin’ me out. Layin’ hands on me of your own accord.”

Fresh heat climbs into my cheeks. “Ye’ve been hurt.”

“Aye.” The word is quiet, but there’s no mistaking the feeling beneath it. “But I wasna laid out at death’s door. You could’ve stayed where ye were. Instead, ye came to find me.”

His gaze moves over the bank, then returns to mine, darker now, more intent.

I follow his glance. Only rough grass now. Seedheads. Summer-browned earth. No trace of the pale primroses that had spread across this bank in spring, and yet I see them all the same.

“Of all places you could’ve gone,” he says, voice gone low, “ye came here, kennin’ full well I’d be here. Ye came to me.”

I hadn’t meant to reveal that much. Hadn’t meant to let him see that some part of me had turned unthinking toward the place where this first began.

But of course he sees it. James has always had an infuriating habit of looking too closely when it matters.

“I told you… I needed to see how ye were faring,” I remind him, though the words sound weaker now than they did before.

I lower my hand at last. His fingers close lightly around my wrist—not to restrain, only to hold me there for the briefest breath, as though he can’t quite bear for the touch to end.

“What are we meant to do with it?” I ask, allowing myself to be vulnerable in the moment. “What we saw?”

He looks at me for a long moment, and I can see him reaching for the truth rather than the easy answer.

“I dinnae ken,” he says.

The admission ought to unsettle me further, but I find great comfort there instead.

Because neither of us is pretending there is any sense to be made of this.

He glances toward the far side of the field, where the land rolls away in quiet late-summer folds, then back to me. Some decision passes through him—not abruptly, but carefully chosen.

“Come away with me,” he says.