He's the Engineer Restoring the Priory, But One Touch Proves We've Been Lovers for a Thousand Years

The rain had been relentless for the last hour of the drive, turning the narrow coastal road into a slick, treacherous ribbon of asphalt. When the stone spires of St. Jude’s Priory finally pierced the low-hanging gray clouds, it felt less like an arrival and more like a surrender. The place loomed, a skeletal silhouette against the churning sea, and my little rental car groaned up the final incline as if it, too, were exhausted by the journey.

I killed the engine and just sat for a moment, the rhythmic drumming of rain on the roof the only sound. This was my job. I was Elara Vane, archivist, the one they called when a place’s history was deemed too fragile to survive the future. I preserved memories trapped in paper and ink. But stepping out of the car, the wet wind whipping my hair across my face, I felt a different kind of memory rise up from the ground itself.

The stones of the priory, dark and glistening with rain, seemed to pull at me. It was a bizarre, overwhelming sensation—a feeling of homecoming. My boots crunched on the gravel path, and with every step, a hollow ache grew in my chest. It was loneliness, but a loneliness so ancient and profound it felt like it belonged to the priory itself, a sorrow that had seeped into the very mortar between the stones and was only now finding a home in me.

A portly, red-faced man in a bright yellow rain slicker hurried out from a temporary-looking side building, his smile a beacon in the gloom. “Dr. Vane! Welcome! I’m Arthur Finch, project director. Bit of a grim day to arrive, I’m afraid.”

“It’s fine,” I said, my voice feeling small against the howl of the wind. “The building is beautiful.”

“She’s a stubborn old girl, that’s for sure,” he chuckled, leading me toward the main entrance. “The team is just doing a final walkthrough of the chapel before we call it a day. Come, I’ll introduce you.”

Inside, the air was cold, thick with the scent of damp stone, decaying wood, and something else… something clean and sharp, like ozone after a lightning strike. A small group of people in hard hats and work boots stood in the nave, their voices echoing in the vast, vaulted space. Arthur made a few quick introductions I barely registered, my attention snagged by a man standing slightly apart from the others, staring up at the rose window.

He turned as we approached, and the world seemed to tilt on its axis. He was tall, with a quiet solidity that felt like an anchor in the crumbling space. His dark hair was damp from the weather, and his face was all strong lines and angles. But it was his eyes that stopped my breath. They were a deep, clear gray, the color of the sea just before a storm. And when they met mine, the polite, professional smile on my face faltered.

It wasn't a look of greeting or appraisal. It was a look of recognition. A profound, soul-deep acknowledgment that went beyond this moment, beyond this building, beyond this life. It was as if he had been waiting, and I had finally, finally, arrived. My heart gave a painful thud against my ribs, and a warmth I hadn’t realized I was missing spread through my limbs, chasing away the chill of the priory.

“And this,” Arthur said, his voice a distant buzz, “is Liam. He’s our lead structural engineer. The man trying to keep this beautiful pile of rocks from falling on our heads.”

Liam didn’t smile. He just held my gaze, and in the space of that single, silent moment, I felt as though I had been seen and known for a thousand years.

I finally managed to tear my eyes away from his, my cheeks burning as I gave a clipped nod. “Liam. It’s a pleasure.”

Arthur, oblivious, clapped his hands together. “Right! Let’s proceed. Watch your step through here, the floor is a bit treacherous.”

He led the way toward the chancel, his voice echoing as he pointed out areas of significant water damage. I tried to focus, to make professional notes in my head, but my awareness was completely consumed by the man walking silently beside me. I could feel the heat radiating from his body, even though we weren't touching. Every nerve ending I possessed was humming, tuned to his presence. I felt his gaze on me, steady and unnervingly constant.

My boot heel caught on the edge of a floorboard near the altar steps, and I stumbled, a small gasp escaping my lips. Liam’s hand shot out, his fingers wrapping firmly around my upper arm to steady me. The contact was electric, a searing heat that shot straight through the fabric of my coat and into my skin, leaving a trail of fire all the way to my core.

“Careful,” he murmured, his voice low and close to my ear. His hand lingered for a second longer than necessary before he released me.

I looked down, my heart hammering against my ribs. The board my foot had caught on was loose, its edges splintered and raised. “It sounds hollow,” I said, tapping it again with the toe of my boot. The sound was a dull, empty thud, completely different from the solid wood around it.

Liam crouched down, his brow furrowed in concentration. He pulled a multi-tool from his pocket and used the flat end to pry at the edge of the board. With a groan of ancient, protesting wood, it lifted. Beneath it was not dirt and joists, but a dark, rectangular cavity, carved expertly into the stone subfloor.

Resting inside, nestled in the darkness, was a small, leather-bound book. It was no bigger than my hand, its cover worn smooth with time, held shut by a tarnished silver clasp in the shape of a stylized feather. A collective murmur went through the small group, but my focus narrowed to the object in the darkness. It was calling to me, a silent pull that resonated with the strange ache of homecoming I’d felt earlier.

I knelt beside Liam, the damp cold of the stone floor seeping through my jeans. I reached into the space, my fingers trembling slightly as they neared the journal. Liam moved at the same instant, his larger hand covering mine, intending to help lift the fragile object.

The moment our skin touched, the world dissolved.

There was no chapel, no rain, no cold stone. There was only firelight, warm and flickering, casting dancing shadows on rough-hewn walls. I felt the heat on my face, smelled the woodsmoke in the air. A voice whispered words, low and urgent, a language I had never heard yet understood on a cellular level. It was a promise. Liam’s hand was no longer just his hand; it was a different hand, calloused and strong, and it was holding mine in front of the flames. The sensation was overwhelming, a torrent of shared memory and emotion that wasn’t mine.

Then, just as quickly as it came, it was gone.

I snatched my hand back as if I’d been burned, a sharp gasp of air flooding my lungs. Liam had recoiled, too, his gray eyes wide with shock, his lips slightly parted. The air between us crackled with a visible energy, a static charge that made the fine hairs on my arms stand on end. We stared at each other, the forgotten journal still lying in its secret tomb, the rest of the world fading into a muted, distant hum. Something had just passed between us, a current of impossible knowledge, and in the sudden, ringing silence, I knew he had seen it, too.

Arthur had bustled everyone out of the chapel shortly after, his professional cheerfulness a jarring contrast to the charged silence that had fallen between Liam and me. I’d mumbled something about needing to secure the artifact and retreated to the small, sterile room assigned to me as a makeshift lab.

Hours later, the shock had subsided into a low, persistent hum beneath my skin. The journal sat on my worktable under the bright, focused light of a magnifying lamp. My hands were steady now as I worked a delicate tool under the silver feather clasp. It gave way with a soft click, a sound that seemed to echo loudly in the quiet room.

The pages were vellum, thin and brittle with age. The ink, a faded sepia, was written in two distinct hands. One was a precise, elegant script; the other, a rougher, more forceful scrawl. It wasn’t a single narrative, but fragmented entries, call and response, a conversation across pages. A woman—the scribe, I gathered—wrote of the light in the chapel. A man—the stonemason—wrote of the weight of the stones he set into the walls. They wrote of secret meetings, of hands brushing in passing, of a love that was impossible and dangerous. A story from the 17th century, playing out in the very bones of this priory.

The door creaked open, and I looked up, startled. Liam stood in the doorway, his large frame seeming to fill the small space. He held two steaming mugs. He didn’t smile, but the hard line of his jaw had softened. The question was still in his eyes, but it was no longer accusatory or panicked. It was just… there. Between us.

“I figured you might still be up,” he said, his voice a low rumble. “Brought tea.”

I nodded, my throat suddenly tight. “Thank you.”

He stepped inside, placing one of the mugs on the table beside my elbow, careful not to disturb my work. The warmth from the ceramic seeped into my skin, a small comfort against the lingering chill of the day. He pulled up the room’s only other chair and sat, leaning forward with his forearms on his knees, looking from my face to the open journal.

“Find anything?” he asked.

“Lovers,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “A scribe and a stonemason. They met here.”

He was quiet for a long moment, his gray eyes fixed on the delicate script. “It makes a strange kind of sense.”

We talked for hours. The conversation drifted from the centuries-old journal to us. He spoke of his fascination with old buildings, not just for their engineering but for the lives lived within them, the stories held in the wood and stone. I told him about my own obsession, how I felt more at home in the dusty silence of archives than I did at any party, how the words of people long dead felt more real to me than most conversations I had. We discovered a shared, quiet sense of displacement, of feeling like we were born in the wrong century. It was a lonely feeling I’d carried my entire life, and to hear it echoed in his voice was a profound relief. The tension from the chapel didn't vanish, but it transformed, settling into a shared, unspoken understanding. The world outside the small, bright circle of the lamp—the wind, the priory, the reason we were here—faded away, leaving only the two of us and the quiet, powerful pull of a connection I was beginning to understand was far older than a single afternoon.