Page 43 of You, As You Are

“You lost me athill.” After last time, Maisie didn’t think she could stomach the sight of another cliff.

Iain glanced back and forth around them and decided to unclip Ted from his lead. “It’s nothing like the coastal path,” he said as Ted wandered ahead along the desolate lane to where ground turned to concrete, crossing a quaint river via a road bridge. “All farm tracks and roads. No cliffs.”

No cliffssounded promising. Though the giant of a hill which took up the entirety of Maisie’s sight to her leftdidn’t.

“You’ve walked this before?” she asked.

“I used the internet.”

A fair answer. She’d seen the wooden trail marker when the minibus pulled up in the middle of the village, so the route they were going to walk had to be a recognised one.

If Maisie thought that they weren’t being watched again as they relaxed into their slower pace, then it was a lie. A few within the group glanced back at her and Iain before disappearing between hedgerows.

Her gaze wandered over to him too while they turned off the man-made lane onto a trodden footpath. He wore the same waxy brown coat as the last time she’d hiked with him, his trousers black today instead of olive-green. She couldn’t actually be certain if she’d seen a man wear tactical pockets and a multitude of zips so well until she’d met him, and as she mulled over her past life decisions, she found that the idea of the kind of man she wanted to marry one day might well be changing.

She didn’t need to develop a crush right now, but it didn’t hurt to look, right?

Squeezing along the trodden-down path where the hedges were as tall as Iain, Maisie followed the group to the edge ofwhere woodland began. She was glad that she was last so that no one had to watch her crab her way along while leaves and prickly things brushed her body.

“Are you ready, Maisie?” Ronnie asked her when the enclosed space began opening up, dressed in all of his navy walking gear, grey hair peeking out of his beanie.

“As I’ll ever be,” she said.

“This route is not like walking along the cliffs.”

Iain arched his smug eyebrow in an ‘I told you so’ look.

Pandering to his ego by admitting he was right would only charge the back and forth between them that Maisie was starting to crave a little too much, so she gave Ronnie her full attention as they dipped under the shaded darkness of trees. This ground wasn’t so easy to walk, boggy and squidgy from the rain that fell yesterday lunchtime. Even Ted with his adorable doggy shoes had to slow down.

Ronnie continued to tell her about the walk. “It’s part of a route calledGlyndwr’s Waythat starts on the border with England, right next to Shropshire, and comes all of the way through mid-Wales before heading back toward Shrewsbury.”

“That sounds … long.” Far too much walking for Maisie to handle.

“Yournainand I walked it a few years ago. It took us eleven days, but we’re old folk. You youngsters could do it in nine.”

“Oh,no—” Maisie laughed and looped her arm with his. “I’m right there with you, Ron. Iain and Ted can go off on their own.”

“Thanks,” Iain grumbled.

Maisie looped her arm through his as well and dragged him towards her, never expecting his large body to cave into hers. Just for a second, the length of Iain’s side from his shoulder to his hip bumped into her as his boots lost grip on the mud.

Maybe it was too soon to have done that. She’d hardly touched him at all except for when they’d been squished uptogether on the minibus, and she’d been without a man’s touch for far too long for her system to have no reaction at all.

When he managed to walk again, Iain gave her one of his stern ‘what are you doing?’looks. Maisie grinned in return, though her insides were having akicking, screamingmoment.

“I would never leave you to walk on your own, Iain Howell,” she said.

His gaze lingered on her, so she continued to smile, teasing out that ‘sunshine personality’ of his. It was there somewhere – maybe buried behind grey clouds and a threat of thunder. Because something had happened. She didn’t know what it was, but when she’d watched him cross the street in Aberystwyth this morning, head down like he was under a cloud of his own shadow, her need to figure him out had made her run – and Maisie didn’trun –to catch up with him.

Amongst the rest of the group, Vera turned with a sly look on her face, all the leaves overhead dappling her with light. “What’s going on back here?”

“I’m learning aboutgleam-doorway,” Maisie called through the forest.

“Glyndwr,”Iain rumbled.

She bumped him with her hip. “That’s what I said.”

“It really wasn’t.”

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