Chapter 10
Briar
We were leaving at eight.
I was ready by seven-forty. Emrys came downstairs at seven-fifty with his shirt half-done and his collar open, the way he always was with anything that had buttons.
I walked over and did the top two without being asked. He stood still and let me, looking at the wall behind my head.
"There," I said.
He glanced down at it. Then at me, briefly.
We stood in the kitchen doorway for a second. Him in his shirt. Me in the dress. Morning light through the window over the sink.
I don't know what I thought I'd feel. But it was just this—him, and the kitchen, and the apple trees outside heavy with the end of the season.
He picked up his keys.
"Ready?" he said.
"Yeah."
Frost River crossed the road two miles east of town, and there was only one way over it.
The old stone bridge was single lane, built before anyone could account for. The tradition with it was older than the bridge. Wedding party comes through, you stop in the middle, you throw the first of the harvest into the water. A minute of quiet. Old days in the river, new ones ahead.
Emrys had a bag of apples in the back seat. I hadn't said anything about it. He just had them.
He pulled up and stopped in the center of the bridge, got out, grabbed the bag from the back. I stayed in the passenger seat and watched through the windshield.
He walked to the railing and started dropping apples in. One at a time. The water below was loud and fast, and the apples hit it and were gone.
He was on the second-to-last one when he glanced up.
He looked at the far end of the bridge. He went still for just a second—not long, just enough—and then he dropped the apple. He picked up the last one and held it.
I looked up too.
At the far end of the bridge, a car had stopped.
Dark, expensive, the whole line of vehicles behind it halted at the bridge's edge. The driver's window was already down.
Callum.
Suit, everything in order. His eyes moved from the truck to the passenger window and found me.
I waited.
That was the thing I hadn't expected—that I'd wait. Five years of training myself to read his face the second I saw it, to find the signal, to know where I stood. I looked at him now and I waited for the same thing to happen. Waited for my pulse to do what it always did.
It didn't.
There was something there—recognition, maybe. The weight of five years sitting between us through two windshields and forty meters of bridge. But the thing I'd always felt when I saw him, that specific pull, that reaching—
It wasn't there.
I sat with that for a second. Surprised by it.
In the seat beside him, Isolde turned to see what he was looking at.
That smile of hers—the warm, effortless one she'd been wearing since she was seventeen—didn't fall. It just stopped working. She sat there with it frozen halfway and it looked like nothing I'd ever seen on her before.
I looked back at Callum.
He hadn't moved. His hands were still on the wheel. He was looking at me the way you look at something when you've made a decision about it and then the decision turns out to be more complicated than you thought.
I was just looking back.
No calculation. No hope. No angle. Just looking.
At the railing, Emrys was still holding the last apple.
He turned around. He took in the whole thing in one sweep—both ends of the bridge, both cars, all of it. His expression didn't change. He looked at me through the windshield for one second.
Then he turned back to the river and dropped the apple in.
He picked up the empty bag and walked back to the truck.
"Okay," he said. He got in, put the truck in drive.
We pulled forward.
The bridge was one lane. One direction. We drove toward the far end, toward the line of cars stopped there, and as we got closer I kept my eyes forward.
We reached Callum's car.
His window was still down. The gap between the two vehicles was maybe two feet. I didn't turn my head. I didn't look.
On the driver's side, Emrys rolled his window down.
He said something. I was looking at the road ahead, not at him, and I didn't catch it. What I caught was Isolde's voice coming back across the gap—high, sharp, the sound cut off almost immediately as we kept moving forward.
Emrys rolled his window back up.
He drove at exactly the same speed as before. Steady. Not slowing down, not speeding up. Like there was nothing on this road except the road.
We cleared the bridge.
The fields opened up ahead, wide and quiet, morning fog still sitting low on the grass.
I exhaled.
And then—
The sound of a car door.
Emrys didn't look in the mirror. He kept both hands on the wheel and kept driving.
I looked.
Callum was out of the car. Standing in the road behind us, one hand still on the open door. Not moving yet.
Just standing there, watching us drive away.
Then he let go of the door.
He took a step.
