Page 24 of The Guardian

Instead, he’d turned and ridden off without a destination, grief pressing against him from all sides like a crushing wall of rocks.

Finally, it was his horse that had chosen the destination, and somehow, they ended up at his parents’ door.

They’d said nothing at first. They didn’t need to.

Just Ailith’s name had been enough. His mother’s arms, loving and comforting, his father’s silence, solid and unyielding, had held him steady while the ground gave way beneath him. He stayed there until the ache dulled enough to breathe again. Until the pain reshaped itself into a man he no longer recognized. Until Hendry McNichol became something harder. Sharper. A blade instead of a heart.

And now, all these years later, he found himself in the same place again. Still bleeding for her.

Still loving her.

And she still didn’t believe in him.

He closed his eyes and leaned back in the chair, head tilted toward the ceiling, bottle once again in hand.

“I would’ve given ye everything,” he whispered into the dark.

But the silence only answered with the sound of his own breath.

And the slow, steady ticking of time that would not turn back.

The latch gave a soft click.

Hendry didn’t move.

The door creaked open behind him, cold air drifting in before it was shut with a quiet thud. A pause. Then the shuffle of boots across the wooden floor.

Liam lowered to a chair across from him. He said nothing, but his presence pressed gently against the edges of Hendry’s sorrow like balm on a burn.

The silence between them stretched, filled only with the pop of the cork as Hendry opened the bottle again and took another long swallow.

Hendry didn’t look at him. Just stared at the ceiling. “We are meant to be resting. We ride early to the village.”

“Aye,” Liam said simply.

A few heartbeats passed.

“The burden of the sentence is a weight ye must bear knowing it is a just punishment from what they’ve done,” Liam said, assuming the reason for his glumness.

He tried and failed to say something about what awaited in the morning. In truth, he’d accepted it. Swallowing, he said. “I have accepted it.”

“Then something else burdens ye. It is Ailith?”

The words landed like a blade drawn gently, not to wound, but to acknowledge that the pain existed.

Hendry swallowed, jaw tightening. His voice was hoarse when it came. “Aye.”

“Ye look like a man gutted.”

“I feel worse.”

He sat back and let the bottle rest on the table between them, then dropped his head into one hand, elbow braced on the worn wood. The fire still hadn’t been lit. He didn’t want it. Let the cold in. Let it numb him.

“I waited for her,” he murmured. “Even when I tried not to. And all this time, she thought I…” His voice broke, not with tears but with bitterness. “She thought I’d betrayed her. Believed it without question. That’s what cuts through me.”

Liam didn’t offer comfort. Didn’t try to soothe or soften it. That was what Hendry liked about his friend. He didnae mistake silence for weakness.

Instead, Liam spoke truth.