“You can either sit here or you can come look for rosehips and chestnuts and whatever else,” Jamie said, opening his door. “I’d suggest coming, though, because I wouldn’t know a rosehip if it bit me, so I probably shouldn’t go alone. Unless you want all your potions to become poisons, which is a perfectly reasonable choice no one would blame you for making.”

Mika almost fell right out of the car laughing, and gamely followed him off the winding country lane and into the tree line.

They talked as they worked, or at least Mika did most of the talking (about plant lore, why Northanger Abbey was a valid contender for Austen’s second-best work, and how to brew the perfect cup of tea) while Jamie did most of the listening, which suited him just fine because in spite of the dwindling light and the fact that even his eyelashes had gone numb from the cold, he could have stood out here and listened to her all day.

There was a recklessness in him, one that was partly down to the adrenaline of putting his past to rest at last and partly down to the novelty of being out here alone with her in the middle of fuck-off nowhere. And he knew it was utterly, catastrophically, fucking foolish, but right then, in that moment, he couldn’t bring himself to care.

“Do you ever think about going back to Belfast?” Mika asked him, and he was so used to her habit of saying whatever popped into her mind no matter what they’d been talking about before, he didn’t even blink.

“Sometimes. I’d like to visit. My father loved it, and I sometimes miss the sound of Irish voices.” The space between them had all but vanished, and he was very, very conscious of the fact that they were standing so close, he could see every freckle scattered across her nose. “But I’m not sorry I left. It got me to Nowhere House.”

She smiled. “Where you found a family.”

“I did.”

And now I’ve found you, his mind added silently. And entirely without his permission.

It was a stupid, reckless thought. He knew that this couldn’t end well.

Their eyes held a long, long moment. There was doubt and hope and wanting in her eyes, and it matched his so perfectly, his breath caught.

“Hi,” he said quietly.

Her smile broke the little willpower he had left. “Hi.”

He could feel himself coming undone, a shattering between the pieces holding him together. He searched the glossy, inky dark of her eyes, watched the golden afternoon light dance on her brown skin.

He took a shaky step forward. One hand tangled in her hair. She closed the rest of the distance between them and he ran his thumb over her lower lip. Her breath hitched. His heart stuttered.