Page 40

Patty was like the sun. Warm, glowing. He had a way of making everyone laugh. Of bringing light to an otherwise dark and empty room. His lips were perpetually frozen in a half smirk, something that always told Wolfe he had a secret he was just dying to share but couldn’t. He was strong and loyal. A doting father. A loving husband. Though Wolfe was five years older than him, Patty was everything he wanted to be.

“He was a prankster, to be sure. Always moving and hiding things. Putting salt in the sugar. Cook would holler his name from somewhere below and his laughter would follow. My ma barely knew what to do with him. My father, even less.”

Avery gave him a shy smile, pink lips curling. He had the most insane desire to touch her mouth, to allow his thumb to learn a curvature he had no business wanting.

“And you?”

“And I… Patty made the hard days bearable. I was always going to inherit my father’s seat. Some days were heavy, endless, but Patty never lost his sparkle. It made me think…” He trailed off, words rising and falling with the wind. “It made me think that maybe I could find a bit of it for myself.”

Avery stopped walking, boots sinking into the mud. The farmlands around his castle had changed over the years, holes in stone walls that had not been there before. The roads were wider now and lined in gravel. He saw them as they’d once been, narrow strips of dirt and clumps of grass. Stone walls that were strong and sturdy.

Time blurred, weaving images from the past and the present together.

He’d worried about what would become of Kilmorran once he died. Those first few haunting days he spent restlessly pacing the castle and begging his brother to see him were the longest of his life. Patty wasn’t ready for it. He didn’t have the head for figures, but he’d managed.

Wolfe had never been prouder of his brother or more devastated that he couldn’t be there for him.

When Patty got his footing, Wolfe allowed himself to breathe.

When Patty had his children, he could have wept.

Patty turned into a wonderful lord. Everyone in Bracken Bay loved him. He’d done a fine job of endearing himself to them over the years and now, all that time spent at the pub and hauling in fishing nets was coming to fruition.

“Did you?” Avery asked, ripping him from his thoughts.

“Did I what?”

Her grin turned lopsided, uneven. “Find a bit of sparkle for yourself.”

The answer was depressing. He’d died before he could ever fall in love. Ever lose himself completely to another. He died drowning in his own loneliness and the weight of what was expected of him.

His answering smile was small, sad. She nodded, lips pressed together.

She knew the shape of loneliness. She wore it draped around her shoulders. The weight could crush anyone. He ached to see her body begin to round underneath it.

Together, he’d said. We’ll walk it together.

He blamed two centuries of not being seen or heard for his lapse in judgement. Two hundred years of banging into doors and talking to himself wondering if one day anyone would ever answer him back.

Maybe he needed her as much as she needed him. Avery was a ghost in her own ways, drifting from place to place, fingers barely lingering on anything long enough to leave an imprint.

It was like she was meant for him. Meant for this place.

Maybe they could walk the path together toward something more.

They walked for a long time, only turning back toward the castle when he told Avery her nose was turning redder than a tomato. Had he been real, solid, their elbows would have brushed as they meandered the path back to Kilmorran. His shoulder would have bumped into hers. He would have reached around and tucked her hair back behind her ear.

He stopped along the pathway and plucked a pretty purple thistle from a patch of tall grass. It took him a moment to grasp it, fingers bumbling through the stem. He presented it to her with a flourish, winking between rays of sunshine. She blushed, cheeks darkening to a shade of red wine he wanted a taste of. Avery twirled the thistle between her fingers, green leaves catching the light.

“Very gallant of you,” she teased.

Christ, if she only knew.

He held out his elbow and she took it, hand finding itself in its crook. To the outside world, he was sure she looked ridiculous, hand suspended by her side. He felt the heat and weight of her through his shirt and beneath the wind. It felt like a vibration, like someone was strumming the chords to his soul.

“When you were alive…” She hesitated, kicking a rock down the path. “Did you ever…?”

Delight speared through him. Her downcast eyes. Her renewed blush.