‘You’re a liability to me.’
Everything froze around him. The hut. The camp. The world. It was just him and her, and for a split second he wished it was all there would ever be.
‘Say that again?’ she whispered.
He didn’t know if he couldn’t or if he just didn’t want to. It was an admission he hadn’t imagined he would ever make. But the moment he heard it he realised the truth.
He cared for this woman. In a way he’d never thought he’d ever care for anyone. A part of him had realised it earlier, of course. A few days ago? A week ago? Longer?
Hayden didn’t know. He just knew that he couldn’t stand the thought of anything happening to her. Ever.
‘You heard me,’ he bit out instead.
For a moment he thought he saw a flicker of...something in her expression before she shut it down.
‘I’m a liability?’ she asked softly. ‘To you?’
‘Forget it. Just withdraw your name.’
‘Because you care about me.’ It was less of a question and more of a realisation, and yet he couldn’t answer her. ‘Say it, Hayd. Tell me you care.’
And the sickest part was that even though a part of him wanted to tell her—desperately—he refused to. As if that could somehow make this moment, this weakness disappear.
‘I don’t care.’
‘Clearly you do.’
‘No,’ he denied, despite that fact that even he didn’t believe himself. ‘No more than I care about any of your colleagues. I just don’t need the distraction.’
‘If you don’t care, why am I any more of a distraction than anyone else?’
Everything tumbled within him. This churning sea of...feelings he had never had to deal with before. Had never wanted to.
He was cool and detached. He prided himself on it. He didn’t drag other people into his life because it was never steady or consistent enough. Hadn’t his kind, caring but permanently unsettled mother taught him that much?
‘This is your job, Hayden.’ Bridget was speaking suddenly. Her voice was firmer than he thought he’d heard before. ‘And it frightens me, what you do, but I accept it. It’s who you are and it’s what makes you tick. But nursing out here is who I am. This is what makes me proud of who I am. And you have no right to ask me to stop that because you’ve suddenly realised you care for me.’
‘That isn’t what this is about,’ he growled.
‘I think it is.’
‘Remove your name, Birdie,’ he bit out. ‘Or I will go to Mandy and do it for you.’
And then, before he could betray his own code of ethics any further, he swung around and left the hut.
And the woman that he was terribly afraid he was beginning to love.
Bridget waited for the helicopter to come in to Rejupe on a rare, miserable, overcast day, and pretended it didn’t feel portentous.
She’d asked Mandy for the transfer the moment their small team had been evacuated from Jukrem after all. There were any number of the charity’s other camps in the region that were far enough away to be safe from the rebels and which were crying out for an extra pair of hands. Some of the Jukrem camp staff were filling in gaps in the main Rejupe compound, whilst others, like her, were transferring out to smaller camps across the area.
It was no big deal, she told herself crossly as she commanded her hands and body to stop shaking. When they didn’t obey, she tried telling herself that it was anger.
She suspected it was more grief.
Up to that moment in the tukul a few nights ago, she’d been afraid that Hayden hated her. That he was trying to shut her out and disengage from her. And the idea of him pulling away from her had hurt more than she’d ever wanted to admit.
But the truth seemed to be that he didn’t hate her, he loved her in his own way, and impossibly, devastatingly that was worse. Because his idea of love was dominance and control. Just like her father had dominated her mother. Hayden didn’t believe in equity or mutual compassion. He believed in her supporting him in his career, but him dictating what she chose to do in her life.