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I stare at him like he has truly lost his mind.

Then I laugh like I may have gone a little mad myself.

“Is that right?”

“Oh, absolutely,” he says, all maddening confidence, lowering his mouth to my ear. “If I’m lucky, it’ll be two.”

I push uselessly at his chest, trying to make enough room to look him in the eye. “Two?”

“Twins,” he says, as if he’s announcing something perfectly reasonable.

I scoff and swat his shoulder. “Have you lost yer mind? You mean to leave me here alone with twins? Two tiny, menacing copies of you runnin’ wild?”

“Your days would be filled with endless wonder.”

“I’d become deranged.”

He grins. “No, you’d have Maeve and Ellen to keep you sane.”

“You have truly lost yer mind, Alexander.”

“Maybe,” he says, nipping lightly at my ear, “but I think you love me more for it.”

I do.

That is the terrible, lovely truth of it.

So I wrap my legs around him and grin up at the man who has resolved our whole future while lying naked in a cabin bed, and instead of arguing, I kiss him.

He answers at once, smiling into my mouth.

And for a little while longer, we sink back into whispers and touches and laughter, speaking of impossible things as if they are already ours, while I let myself believe the future might be kind enough to give him back to me.

ENTRY FIVE

THE JOURNAL OF A YOUNG DREAMER

Keiss, Scotland, 16 September 1798

I think I was alone long before I knew how to name the feeling.

I was alone before meeting James and Alex. I was alone in rooms full of people, even among family, even beside Thomas, my brother, who I once believed stood closer to me than anyone. I loved them. But love does not always bridge the distance between one mind and another. And mine has always been a country difficult to cross.

So I was surrounded, and still I was alone.

For a long time, I thought there must be something shameful about that. Some failure of my own making. I thought the strangeness of my thoughts, the shape of them, the places they wandered, had set me apart from everyone meant to know me. And because of that, I learned to carry myself in silence. I learned what it was to be among my people and yet feel exiled from them.

But I am understanding that this, too, is bearable. This, too, is allowed.

It is acceptable to possess a mind that belongs wholly to oneself, no matter what those in power demand of it. It is acceptable to think in ways that make others uneasy. It is acceptable to be alone. And it is also acceptable, in that loneliness, to still long for the strength of your people. Those truths do not cancel each other. They live side by side.

Tonight proved that to me.

Without my asking, without even knowing the full measure of what I carried, the family I made for myself stood beside me. They gave me strength simply by being who they are, by answering something in me I had nearly let go dark. Sometimes people stand at your side before you have set aside your stubborn pride to ask them to.

I have spent so much of my life believing suffering was a room meant for one body only. That if I entered it, I entered alone. Perhaps that is still true in some ways. There are griefs no one can shoulder for you, but there is a difference between suffering alone and being abandoned to it. Tonight, I was not abandoned.

And now I find myself wanting to do something worthy of that gift.