Three hours later, try as we might, we could not stay in bed any longer. My stomach growled, deciding it needed to be part of the conversation and announcing it wouldn’t be ignored. We dressed and bounded down the stairs into the pub, where we were greeted by the innkeeper with an offer of breakfast, but Taylor declined. Momentarily baffled, I stared at him in shock.
“Hungry. You got that part, right?” I whined, not embarrassed one bit.
Threading our fingers, he leaned in and kissed my temple. “Aye, I got it. But I’m going to take you to one of my favorite bakeries. It’s run by a little old woman named Maeve. When I was just a wee lad, she was one of the fae. Old Maeve warned me that if I was sneaky and stole any of her goodies, she would curse me.”
I laughed. “And you believed her?”
“Oh, I never mess with the fae. To tell the truth, I’m still a wee bit afraid of her.”
"Aren’t you precious?”
“I am. You should treasure me forever,” he said solemnly.
“I just might do that.” He linked our fingers and tugged me into a bakery, where he ordered each of us a couple of things.
I half expected Maeve to come waddling out, warning us off of falling into any fae circles. But she didn’t. Honestly? I was a little disappointed.
Until Taylor took me on a journey through the town and we found the crest of a hill with a bench resting on the top. Together we sat and ate our pastries as he pointed out various locations in the village that were special to him.
“Has it been hard not being back for so long?”
“In a lot of ways, it was easier to just never come back.”
“Why?”
He sighed. “Because then I didn’t have to long for it so much. But there was a big part of me that was missing. Just didn’t realize it.” Intertwining our fingers again, he brought my knuckles to his lips. “Thank you for coming with me.”
“Your grandfather seems like he’s doing pretty well.”
“He’s not.” Taylor frowned, lines bracketing his mouth and deepening between his brows. “He’s holding on, pushing through and pretending because he doesn’t want anybody to see him looking weak.”
“Really?” That tracked, though. Taylor did the same thing. He’d blown out his knee three seasons ago. He hadn’t told me, but in my effort to understand my husband better, I had done base-level research. “I guess the apple doesn’t fall very far from the tree.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you do the same thing. And as you said, he’s more like your father than your real dad is. It would stand to reason that you’ve learned how to be because of him.”
“You’re probably right.”
“Is that scar on your knee from when you got injured?” I would have missed it if I hadn’t been paying attention, but his shoulders stiffened.
“Aye.”
"What happened?”
“It was a stupid accident. Wasn’t even on the ice, so luckily, there’s no footage of it happening.”
“What was it?”
“I’d gone for a run, and a dog had gotten off leash and darted in front of me. So I paused mid-stride, turned quickly, and ruptured my ACL. It was right in the middle of the season. Bad time to get injured. So it was no surprise when I was traded to Seattle.”
“Wow. I don’t know how I feel about that.”
“You don’t know how you feel that I had a nearly career-ending injury?”
“No, I... that’s awful, but also, if it hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have met you.”
“We were always destined to meet. It would have happened somehow.”