Chapter 23 - Then Stay

Ailsa had expected staying to end the conversation. Instead, Callum looked at the hand she had just removed from his and said, “Then stay.”

There was no triumph in it, which made the words harder to dismiss. Ailsa sat again. “So that’s it?”

“You chose.”

“You’re not going to ask why?”

His expression shifted. “Do you want me to?”

She almost said no. Through the glass wall, Exit kept moving around them: Mairi on a call at the far desk, the printer making its familiar grinding complaint, someone carrying a stack of intake folders toward reception. The suspended accommodation partnership was still suspended. The funding structure was still being finalized. Staying had solved none of that.

“Exit is still part of the reason,” she said. “The engagement still keeps the original crisis from closing around Eilidh again, and it keeps your family from treating Iona like an available repair.”

Callum nodded. “I know.”

“But it isn’t all of it anymore.”

He waited.

That was somehow worse than being questioned. Ailsa turned the ring once around her finger and made herself continue. “You used to make it very easy to be angry with you.”

“I can try harder.”

“Don’t.” The answer came too quickly, and his mouth closed on whatever he had been about to say.

Ailsa looked away. “I didn’t stay because I suddenly think this arrangement is harmless. Exit has already paid for it. I didn’t stay because I owe you for releasing me, and I definitely didn’t stay because I’ve changed my mind about marriage.”

“I’m not reading any of those things into it.”

She looked back at him. “What are you reading into it?”

“That you stayed.” He rested his forearms on the table, still giving her the whole width of it. “Not forgiveness. Not a relationship. Not permission to assume I get anything tomorrow that you didn’t choose today.”

Her throat tightened. He had found a way to make restraint feel more intimate than pressure ever could.

“You are becoming annoying in a new way,” she said.

“That sounds difficult for you.”

Ailsa laughed despite herself, then regretted how much easier the sound came around him now. “Fine. You want the part I didn’t have to tell you?”

Callum’s attention sharpened, but he did not move. “Only if you want to.”

She hated the escape route even as she recognized what it was. “I stayed because I didn’t want to stop seeing you.”

For the first time since she had touched his hand, his control slipped enough for her to see the surprise. He recovered quickly.

Callum could have made the admission easier by teasing her. Instead, he treated it with the same care he had given the decision itself.

“That is not a declaration,” she said.

“I didn’t say it was.”

“We are not dating,” Ailsa said.

“Agreed.”

“And the agreement is still the agreement,” Ailsa said.

“Yes.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Could you contribute something inconvenient instead of behaving perfectly?”

A brief laugh escaped him. Then his gaze dropped to the tabletop. “I wanted to ask you to stay.”

Ailsa went quiet.

“When you were deciding,” he continued, “I wanted to tell you what it would cost me if you left. I wanted you to know I didn’t want this to end.” He looked at her again. “I didn’t say any of it because then your exit would have come with an invoice you couldn’t see.”

The admission landed harder than any demand could have. He had wanted something from her and deliberately left it out of the bargain.

Ailsa stood because sitting had become impossible. “You realize this is not helping.”

“I was not aware I was supposed to.”

He rose a moment later. The table no longer separated them, but Callum stayed where he was while Ailsa crossed the space herself.

She stopped close enough to see the faint shadow of tiredness beneath his eyes. There were no cameras here, no family members studying their body language, no reporter waiting to turn distance into suspicion. The room gave them nothing to perform for.

“This is the part I don’t know what to do with,” she said.

His voice lowered. “Which part?”

“You, when nobody is watching.”

She had offered more than she intended, and Callum still did not reach for it. His hands remained at his sides.

Ailsa moved closer.

He did not meet her halfway.

That made the last inch hers too.

She could feel his breath now. Her pulse had gone fast, but there was nothing frightening in the distance between them. Only the fact that crossing it would belong entirely to her.

Callum lowered his head slightly, enough to make the question visible without answering it for her.

Ailsa almost did.

Then the absence of an audience became impossible to ignore.

“Stop.”

Callum froze before their mouths touched.

Ailsa stepped back. “There are no cameras.”

“I know.”

“No one needs that from us.”

His expression stayed steady. “No.”

“So if I kiss you here, I can’t call it part of the job afterward.”

“No.”

The honesty of the answer made her want to close the distance again. She did not.

“I’m not ready to decide what that means.”

Callum took a step back, giving her more space than she had asked for. “Then we don’t do it.”

He did not ask when she might be ready or turn her hesitation into another problem to solve. He reached for his coat instead.

Ailsa watched him, irritated by the sharp little thread of disappointment that came with relief.

At the door, Callum paused. “Are we all right?”

The question was careful enough to deserve the same in return. “We are exactly where we were five minutes ago.”

His mouth curved. “That sounds reassuring.”

“It wasn’t meant to.”

He opened the door and waited for her to leave first.

Ailsa walked past him without touching him. She did not need the almost-kiss to become anything tonight.

It had already changed one thing.

The next time she kissed Callum with no one watching, neither of them would be able to pretend the choice belonged to anyone else.