Page 105 of Of Heather and Thistle
“What are you afraid of?” he asked softly.
She looked up at him, eyes brimming with fear. “Getting too close. Getting hurt again. This place—Scotland, Glenoran—it’s so heavy. My mom, my dad… the grief is suffocating. This house feels like a tomb. I can’t breathe.”
Flynn’s gaze softened. He understood. Glenoran wasn’t just stone and timber—it carried echoes of everything lost. Her pain. Her history. Her ghosts.
He squeezed her hand. “I know. It’s not easy. Grief lingers—it doesn’t ask permission. But you don’t have to carry it alone.”
He paused, searching her face. “I want to help you heal.”
Heather’s voice cracked. “But what if I can’t? What if I’m too broken?”
Flynn’s half-smile was full of memory. “I knew you were the one the second you showed up at my door, soaked to the bone and covered in cow shite,” he said with a soft chuckle. “You looked completely out of place—and yet, somehow, stronger than anyone I’d ever seen.”
His thumb brushed her cheek. “I didn’t plan on you, Heather. But I knew, right then, you were meant to be in my life.”
Her heart twisted. Tears stung. “Flynn,” she breathed.
He leaned in, his lips grazing hers—not with hunger, but with quiet promise.
“I’ll be here,” he whispered. “No matter what.”
Heather searched his face, desperate for doubt. But there was none—only steady, unshakable certainty.
It scared her. But it also gave her the one thing she hadn’t let herself feel in a long time.
Hope.
Her breath caught. The walls she’d built around her heart—stone by stone—were starting to crack. And somehow, with him, that felt okay.
“I… I need to tell you something,” Heather said, voice trembling. She gripped Flynn’s hand tighter, grounding herself. “I’ve never really said it out loud. Not to anyone. But you deserve to know. Why I’m like this.”
Flynn didn’t speak. He just looked at her—open, steady, patient. His presence was a lifeline, the kind she hadn’t known she needed.
“My mother died when I was nine,” she began, barely above a whisper. “I remember the silence afterward. The way the house felt hollow. Like everything that had been warm in the world was just… gone.”
She stared at their joined hands, as if they held the past in their grip.
“My dad didn’t know how to grieve. So he drank. And when he drank, he got mean. It wasn’t just yelling. It was the way he said things—the things that stuck. I’d come home and never know which version of him I’d find. If I messed up—or even if I didn’t—it was always my fault. Everything was my fault.”
Flynn’s hand tightened in hers, silent and solid.
“He called me worthless. Said I ruined everything. And the worst part? I started to believe him.” Her voice cracked. “The words were like chains. They didn’t go away just because I got older.”
She swallowed hard. “When he got sick, the alcohol had already destroyed him. And when he died… I thought I’d feel relief. Closure. But it just felt like stepping out of a cage and realizing I didn’t know how to live outside it. I was free, but I was still numb. Still carrying it.”
Her voice went quiet.
“I don’t know who I am without that weight. And sometimes… I think I’m afraid to find out.”
Heather looked up at Flynn, his eyes dark with quiet ache. He was listening—really listening—but she still felt like she was sinking under the weight of it all. Her chest ached as the next truth clawed its way out.
“And then there was Ivy…”
She hesitated, gripping his hand tighter.
“She was my best friend for years. The loud one. The fearless one. She pulled me out of my shell, made me feel like I wasn’t completely broken. But then… she did something I can’t forget.”
This was different than her father. This wasn’t grief.
