He’d concentrated on his life and on his army career. And whilst he was careful about his personal life, he wasn’t exactly a monk. He knew of at least a couple of engaging, equally career-minded female friends who had made it clear they were interested in dating him, if he ever wanted to call them up.
‘Kane?’
Kane stopped, paused, then swivelled around to stare back down the corridor to where Mattie was standing immobile, as though rooted to the spot, and ignored something that kickstarted deep in his chest.
‘It is you,’ she muttered, and even from a distance he could see the stunned expression playing over her striking features.
Suddenly his hands itched to smooth it away and he had to clench them into fists and punch them down, deep into his pockets in a very non-military way.
Thank God he wasn’t in uniform.
‘Hello, Matz.’ The name that only he had ever used for her. He couldn’t help himself. ‘It’s been a while.’
‘Fourteen years.’ The words were clipped, sharper.
As though it still mattered.
Kane hated it that his heart twisted in some perverse hope. Of course she didn’t care, she was just surprised, even shocked, and he was just reading into it what he wanted to see. He had no idea how he managed it when so many emotions were charging through him right at this second, but he folded his arms across his chest and affected a lighter air.
‘And you’re still chagrined?’
‘Of course not,’ she answered quickly—too quickly—and her voice sounded thick.
He had to remind himself that didn’t mean anything either.
And if he saw her eyebrow quirk slightly at his choice of vocabulary—using words his younger, uneducated self never would have known—then so be it. He wasn’t that uncultured kid any more. He’d changed; in ways he doubted she could even imagine.
‘I never thought... That is, I didn’t expect...’ She stopped, lifted her head and straightened her spine as if she’d given herself some kind of pep talk. ‘What are you doing here, Kane?’
‘Just visiting...someone.’ He didn’t think she’d detected the momentary hesitation when he’d stalled. Wanting, for a split second, to tell her more.
Suddenly needing to unburden to someone—he refused to admit it was only because it was her—that he was here visiting a former army buddy. The only other survivor of a mission gone wrong a few years back, and who was only in this hospital now because he’d let the guilt of it eat into him.
Kane slammed the shutters in his mind in an instant. He had no intention of following his old buddy down that dark path. And baring his soul to Mattie wasn’t going to help anyone.
‘Which ward?’
She bit her lip, her brow furrowing in a hint of irritation. It was a mannerism so painfully familiar that it caused a sharp band to tighten around his chest. Still, he was fairly certain her question had slipped out before she could check herself and it felt as though there was some comfort to be drawn from that.
Still, saying anything to her about his visit was bound to have her demanding to know how he—army-hating as he had been as a kid—had even come to sign up. And then he’d have to tell her where he’d disappeared to all those years ago. And why.
He’d have to explain himself, the colossal error of judgement he’d made, and how Mattie’s own father had been the one to drop everything and rescue him. And how they’d agreed that the feisty eighteen-year-old Mattie—always scrappy despite being a couple of years younger than him—should never, ever know.
Oddly, a part of him actually welcomed the prospect to explain it to her after all this time. But another part—a greater part—balked at the idea. Why rake up a past that could only make her think worse of him than she’d probably thought all this time?
It wouldn’t have changed anything back then, and it would change even less now. She was married, he reminded himself.
She belonged to someone else.
/> And he fully intended to respect that. But no one else had ever come close to knocking Mattie off that pedestal in his head. Since they’d been kids, whenever he had been around her, he’d felt his world contracting until it had been just the two of them. Which was why, if he stayed in her company too long, it would surely get harder and harder to remember the outside world.
‘Good to see you, Mattie,’ he said grimly, this time avoiding using his pet name for her, which had somehow felt too...intimate. ‘I’ll let you get back to work.’
And then, with the same force of will that had got him out of multiple difficult situations over the years, including one firefight in hostile territory from which not a single one of his section had been expected to escape, he turned and walked away.
* * *
‘Kane. Wait.’