Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 146289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 731(@200wpm)___ 585(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 146289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 731(@200wpm)___ 585(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
Then a pause.
Then nothing.
I can hear the wind shifting, and, beyond that, the long slow shush of the loch against the rocks. The cottage holds its breath just as I do.
The knock comes again.
Three knocks, lighter this time, like they’re reconsidering.
Slowly I creep through the sitting room and into the small front hall, where the air is colder than the rest of the cottage and I stop a foot from the door.
I am wearing leggings and a flannel shirt I stole from my brother, and my hair is in a knot at the back of my head that I’m pretty sure has gone sideways, so it’s not like I don’t look acceptable, but at the same time I’m not sure I want to look acceptable for whoever is out there.
You know who you want it to be, I think but quickly bat that thought away.
I put my hand flat on the wood. The grain of the door is rough under my palm, the old paint thick and slightly tacky in the cool of the evening. I can feel a faint draft seeping through where the wood has shrunk away from the frame and wish to god there was a damn peephole.
“Who is it?” I ask, my voice rising unnaturally high at the end.
“You don’t know me,” a man says. His voice is low, almost baritone, with a smoothness to it, a touch of Highland cadence underneath. “I came to apologize.”
Apologize? I scan my foggy brain trying to remember if anyone had slighted me since I got here, and other than an errant shaggy cow I encountered leaving the property on my second day, I can’t think of anything.
“I’m sorry, who are you?”
I hear a huff of amusement. “I startled you on the road, I think. Earlier.”
Oh.
Oh.
“You were the man in the loch.”
“I was.”
“Swimming.”
“Aye. It’s what people do in lochs.”
But do they?
“Naked? Is this is a Highlander tradition?” Though I wince as I say the words because I feel one shouldn’t say the word “naked” with a stranger, especially one standing outside your door at sundown.
A pause. “No. Not usually,” he admits.
“Did you swim here now?”
Oh god, is he naked out there?
“I drove.”
“And you live…where, the other side of the bay?”
“Aye.”
“Do you live in that castle?”
“I do.”
“That’s a long way around for somebody who could just swim it.”
“I’ve done enough swimming lately.”
“Right,” I say slowly. “And you drove over to apologize for that?”
“I drove over to introduce myself and apologize at the same time.”
“Alright. So…what’s your name?”
You know, introduce yourself…
“Alasdair.”
Though I’d never heard that name before, there was something familiar about it. It was also very poetic and mysterious and suited him immensely.
“Alasdair what?” I pry.
A pause. “Just Alasdair tonight.”
Tonight? Now I laugh. “That’s not how introductions usually go.”
“I’m aware. But it’s the name I would prefer to give you, if you don’t mind.”
I mean, I did kind of mind this stranger outside my door not giving me his full name, but something told me I shouldn’t push it. There’s something about the way he’s talking that feels surreal, let alone the fact that we’re having a whole conversation through a closed door.
Don’t let him in.
“You said you live at the castle.” I redirected, trying to ground myself against the peculiar feeling.
“I’m staying there.”
“Someone told me it has been empty for years.”
“Who told you that?”
“The shopkeeper.”
“Mhairi?”
Ah, well at least he seems to know her.
“Yeah.”
“She was not wrong.”
“Okaaaay. Then how—”
“Listen,” he interrupts softly, in a way that makes my breath hitch. “You don’t have to fear me. I’m not going to ask you to open the door. I came over to say that I was sorry I startled you on the road, and that if you ever needed anything, I’m right there as your new neighbor. I’d advise against swimming, but you can always drive or walk over.”
That strange feeling from earlier starts tugging at my ankles as if a heady fog is coming in from under the doorframe and wrapping around me. I’m starting to feel as if I’m not entirely sober and I’m moments away from opening the door and getting a good look at the guy I’m talking to. Probably a bad idea since he just said, you don’t have to fear me unprompted. Because who the hell does that?
I lean against the door, giving into the fatigue. I’m about to take a step back when I hear the sound of his weight shifting. He has not been against the door. He has been a foot or so back from it, with the considerate distance of someone who does not want to seem to be looming, someone who knocks politely and steps back to give someone room to answer.
But now, now, he comes closer. I hear him, the small soft sound of fabric and breath against the wood, and I freeze where I am.