Page 80 of Of Heather and Thistle
As the evening stretched on, she promised herself she’d stay focused. Glenoran needed her attention, her effort.
She had to stop thinking about Flynn—his laugh, his quiet reverence for Glenoran, the way he’d looked at her like she mattered. From the way he had looked at her when he promised to take care of her mother’s room like she wasn’t completely lost—the way he had looked at her when he promised to take care of her mother’s room.
And as sleep finally pulled her under, she let herself wonder, just for a second, what it would feel like to let that warmth pull her in completely.
Chapter 21
Heather woke before sunrise, yesterday’s weight pressing down like a boulder. She had slept, but not rested. The safety she’d felt the night before—that fragile sense of forward motion—already felt like mist dissolving in the morning light. Soon, she’d set off to the storage unit, leaving Byrdie behind at the inn. The cat had settled in nicely at the bed and breakfast, and Heather wasn’t sure she could manage the storage trip with her curious feline companion in tow.
As she pulled up to the unit, Heather was taken aback. Flynn’s crew had already moved so much of the furniture out that the place looked emptier than when she’d left it the day before. She could hear the buzz of their voices as they worked and the sound of furniture being shifted around. They were clearly on a tight schedule and moving faster than she expected.
Heather stood with her hands on her hips, eyeing the overstuffed storage unit Flynn had secured in town. Boxesstacked haphazardly, furniture wedged into every available space—one particularly rebellious trunk looked one sneeze away from toppling.
“This is your idea of organization?” she asked, eyeing the stack like it might explode.
Flynn, standing beside her, crossed his arms. “It’s all there, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, and I’m guessing if I pull the wrong box, the whole thing’s coming down like Jenga on a tilt.”
“You wound me, lass,” he said dryly. “That’s quality stacking there.” Heather snorted, stepping carefully inside—like one wrong move might trigger an avalanche of ancestral regrets and dusty secrets.
She ran a hand over the dust-covered edge of an old wooden cabinet—something about it felt faintly familiar. “Well, I hope you’re proud of yourself, Flynn. You’ve single-handedly turned multiple lifetimes of family history into a really sketchy game of hide-and-seek.”
He smirked, leaning against the frame of the roll-up door. “You’re just mad I got it done before you could supervise.”
Heather turned to face him, narrowing her eyes. “I will find something to yell at you about. Just give me a minute.”
“Take yer time, Campbell,” he said. “But if ye actually want to find anything, we might need to do this my way.” Heather arched a brow.
“And what may I ask is that?”
Flynn grinned, stepping forward and reaching past her to a box marked ‘fragile’ near the bottom of the stack. “Trial and error.” Before she could protest, he yanked the box free.
The boxes moaned under the sudden shift, a creak of pure betrayal. Heather took one step back. “Amazing. You brokephysics.”
Flynn barely had time to react before an entire stack of boxes wobbled and started to fall. Heather jumped back as an old framed portrait tilted forward and smacked Flynn square in the chest. He caught it instinctively, stumbling back slightly as dust exploded into the air.
Silence.
Heather pressed her lips together, watching him blink through two-hundred-year-old dust, the painting still clutched against his chest. Finally, she crossed her arms. “So, just for clarification—this is your way?”
Flynn batted dust from his shirt like it had personally insulted him. “Aye. Controlled chaos.”
Heather fought back a laugh. “Sure. Very controlled.”
She wasn’t sure when it started—this sharp, unfiltered banter with Flynn—but it unsettled her how natural it felt. She had spent most of her life learning how to be agreeable, smooth over rough edges, and blend in instead of standing out. With her father, silence had been survival. With Ivy, deference had been a habit. With past boyfriends, she had been soft, accommodating, and never the one to push back.
But with Flynn, something cracked open.
She quipped back without thinking, meeting his sarcasm with her own. It was unnerving, thrilling, and addictive. She should’ve felt off balance around him—but instead, she felt awake, sharp, like someone had finally spoken her language. Like some long-buried version of herself had been waiting for someone who could keep up. And Flynn kept up.
The strangest part? He didn’t seem surprised by it. Almost as if he had seen that side of her before she had even realized it existed. She remembered once trying to tell her father shewas afraid.
She was ten—old enough to recognize grief, too young to survive it alone. The TV was flickering in the dark and a liquor bottle was tipped on its side.
“Dad?” she’d said, barely above a whisper. “Can we talk?”
He didn’t even look at her. Just muttered, “About what?”
