Page 81 of Highland Hearts Holiday Bookshop

Tattie tilted his head back and forth at my words and then seeming to come to whatever conclusion he needed to in his head, he hopped off and bounced back to his toy, digging for more fish.

Tara’s call hadn’t upset me, but she had given me something to think about.

Was I really too black and white when it came to relationships? Maybe I was trying to slot emotions into neat little boxes like computer code, assuming that all things would line up correctly and make sense.

But what made sense in my head, didn’t feel so good in my heart.

I knew that Rosie had hidden something important from me.

But I also knew that I missed her. Desperately.

What I didn’t know was how to align the two things in my mind. I had no code for this, no roadmap, no way of knowing how to resolve the fracture point. And I think, that was the crux of it for me. Without a clear path forward, my brain just kind of shut down, leaving me in this endless loop of uncertainty, my thoughts spinning into nothingness.

There had to be a way forward, but the only way I knew was the one I’d tried last time my heart had been hurting.

Bury myself in work and a new project.

I had Tattie now, and more excuses to build a bigger enrichment area for him. Maybe I would just use that as my project to dive into in order to avoid the discomfortof having no straightforward way through my feelings.

A shimmer of white against the murky gray sky caught my eye and I straightened, my eyes widening.

Gently, so as not to startle Tattie, I eased myself to standing and out of the enclosure, walking across my yard until I stood at the top of a grassy dune overlooking the sea.

The snow buntings had arrived.

A sharp pang of longing hit me, and I blinked at the sky as the birds circled, their song like Christmas bells, a sharp reminder of a woman who had also once brought color and joy to my life. My mother wouldn’t want to see me like this, lonely with an aching heart, especially this close to Christmas. If ever there was a way to honor her, it would be by trying to find a path forward even if I couldn’t see it yet.

I never wanted to feel like a pawn in someone’s relationship game again. Tara had used me as a foil for her exploits, loving the highs and lows and the drama of it all. I hated feeling powerless, like someone was throwing firecrackers at my feet, when all I craved was predictability and a stable foundation with my partner. With Rosie, discovering she had actual magick and was using it to matchmake, well, it had thrown me back into feeling like I was constantly dodging explosions. Though the two women were night and day different, the surprise had led me to withdraw and do the one thing I’d finally prioritizedin my life—protecting myself.

When my phone buzzed in my pocket again, I took it out to see a two-word text message from Esther.

She’d gotten my number from someone and had been pestering me incessantly all week, most of which I’d ignored. But I couldn’t ignore this message.

We won!

Tell everyone I said congratulations.

Tell them yourself. We’ll be at the pub later.

But the pub wasn’t where I wanted to see Rosie. I needed to get things straight in my head and have a conversation with her, and I wasn’t about to do it in front of prying eyes.

I can’t tonight. Give everyone my best.

And then I turned off my phone.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Rosie

Our win had been overshadowed by Alexander’s absence. Even though I’d gone to celebrate at the pub, my heart hadn’t been in it, and I’d gone home early the night before.

You keep letting everyone else make the choices for you, but when are you going to make your own?

Alexander’s words rang in my head. I’d repeated them to myself over and over the last few nights, agonizing over his words, little truth bombs that I hadn’t been prepared to acknowledge. The fact of the matter was he was right.

I’d grown up allowing my mother to drag me everywhere, accepting when she’d forgotten about me half the time, waiting for her to come back and take mesomewhere else. Granted, I’d been a child, so the parent was in control, but it had established a pattern of accepting what life threw at you. Which wasn’t a bad mentality to have in the grander scheme of things, but when it came to being in charge of my own life, it clearly wasn’t working for me. I’d been so desperate for stability that I’d put the burden of building a foundation on my relationships instead of on myself. I needed to create my own life and my own safe space for myself. Nobody else could do that for me.

Certain that I’d found it here, in this bookshop and in the lovely little community of Kingsbarns, I knew I had to make a change.Icould be my own stable base and provide the comfort that I’d craved my whole life by providing myself with a career that I loved and friends that made me laugh.

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