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He nods slowly.

"I'm trying to make sure it is."

I look back at him.

"I know."

The admission comes easier than I expect. I get into the car, and Ross closes the door before walking around to the driver's side.

On the way back to the house, the quiet between us feels fuller than it did that morning. Not awkward. Not uncertain. Just weighted with everything I still haven't said. I begin to wonder whether silence is actually protecting anyone anymore.

Chapter Thirty

Blaire

We return to the house as the last of the daylight fades behind the trees, and after hours outside, the warmth inside feels almost decadent.

Ross carries my coat upstairs while I go back to my room to freshen up. I take a quick shower, change into a soft cream sweater and dark trousers, and spend longer than necessary brushing out my hair before admitting that I’m stalling.

The day has left me unsettled in a way I hadn’t expected. Nothing dramatic happened. Ross didn’t push me, make demands, or try to turn every quiet moment into something significant. We simply spent the day together, and somehow that feels more intimate than everything I prepared myself for when I agreed to come.

When I make my way downstairs, dinner has already been laid out in the dining room. Candles burn along the center of the table, and the fire from the adjoining sitting room throws a warm glow through the open doorway. The house is quiet around us, with whatever staff had prepared the meal having already withdrawn for the evening.

Ross is pouring wine when I enter.

His gaze finds me immediately.

For several seconds, he says nothing.

The look is enough.

“You changed,” Ross says as he hands me a glass.

“So did you,” I reply.

He has traded the sweater he wore earlier for a dark button-down with the sleeves rolled back from his forearms. The top buttons are open, and his hair is still slightly damp from his own shower.

I take the wine before I spend too much time looking at him.

Dinner unfolds slowly. We talk about pieces we saw in the village, an absurd price attached to a painting neither of us particularly liked, and a restaurant Ross remembers from years ago that apparently no longer exists. The conversation never becomes serious, but it doesn’t need to. We have spent the entire day talking, and there is something unexpectedly comfortable about not needing to fill every minute with another revelation.

What I notice instead are smaller things.

The way Ross looks at me when he thinks I’m focused on my plate. The way his fingers brush mine when he passes the wine. The slight roughness in his voice after the second glass. I notice because I’m doing the same thing.

By the time dinner ends, the restraint I’ve carried all afternoon has begun to feel increasingly artificial.

We take the rest of the wine into the sitting room.

The fire has burned higher while we ate, warming the room enough that I slip off my shoes and curl one leg beneath me on the sofa. A thick wool rug covers most of the floor in front of the hearth, and another smaller, softer throw lies closer to the fire. Lamps cast a muted glow along the walls, but Ross leaves the brighter overhead lights off.

He sits beside me, close enough that our knees nearly touch. Neither of us speaks for a while. The silence doesn’t need rescuing.

I watch the flames move behind the grate while Ross rests one arm along the back of the sofa. His presence beside me has become something I’m acutely conscious of, from the warmth of his body to the faint scent of his cologne beneath the lingering smoke from the fire.

I turn my head. Ross is already looking at me. There is no mistaking what passes between us. He doesn’t reach for me. That choice affects me more than it should.

After everything that happened between us before, I know exactly how easily Ross could close the distance. Instead, he waits, leaving the decision entirely with me.