This was it. This was his opportunity to say all the things he’d been imagining telling her for half a decade. Instead, he found he couldn’t. His head was all over the place, and things were unfolding in a way that didn’t match any of the many and varied scenarios that he had envisaged.
He felt reactive. Quite different from the proactivity with which he was usually characterised. And suddenly he found himself falling back on the arguments he’d used back then. When he’d been angry, and desperate, and grieving for the life, the career, he’d had but would never have again. When the only thing he’d felt as though he’d been able to control had been stopping it from impacting on Tia’s life too.
‘It was for the best.’
‘Not for me. Not back then.’
‘You didn’t need the burden of a cripple.’
‘You still believe that’s what you are?’ she cried out.
‘No, of course not.’ He’d got past that long ago. The army rehab centre had made sure of it. Wallowing hadn’t been an option; the centre had ensured the guys were all up at dawn, making their beds, carrying out daily ablutions, just as they’d all done years before in basic training. It had instilled the work ethic back in them, treating rehab like a training routine, like a job, and tea and sympathy had been far, far down the list.
It was what guys like him—ex-military—had needed. That discipline, those expectations, the rules, had been familiar and comforting.
‘Forget I said that.’ He hauled off his sodden, icy tee, furious with himself. ‘I’m lucky. I got off lightly compared to so many guys.’
What was wrong with him? Why was he acting like the arrogant chip-on-the-shoulder kid he’d thought he’d left behind a long, long time ago?
‘Do you still blame me for amputating?’
‘Say again?’ He stood up incredulously.
He had come to terms years ago with the fact that Tia hadn’t had any choice. His role
in black ops meant that only a handful of people would ever have known where he was. Tia’s commanders would have had no idea that his squad were even within a hundred miles. And his commanders couldn’t have changed her posting or it would have been a sign that they were planning a black ops mission.
Besides, there had been no reason at all to think that that particular mission ran any real risks. It had been a complete curveball to all of them.
But when the IED had gone off and the medevac had come in, her little hearts-and-minds field hospital had been the only one they could have hoped to get to. The fact that she had been the only doctor in that camp was just devastatingly misfortunate.
Then again, she had saved his upper leg, and maybe even his life. If she hadn’t amputated above his ankle when she had, then by the time he’d got to the UK he would probably have lost the knee as well. If he’d even survived the journey back, of course.
He knew that. He’d known it by the time he’d got out of physio at the UK hospital, eight months later. Which brought him right back to the question of why was he acting like a belligerent teenager now?
Was it because she was the only person in the world—other than his old man, and he didn’t really count—who had made him feel...less?
Less of a person. Less of a husband. Less of a man. The nightmares he’d had back then—still now—certainly didn’t help matters.
‘Then why did you push me away?’ she croaked out.
How was he supposed to answer that?
Balling up his tee, he stuffed it viciously into his motorbike rucksack and pulled out a clean, fresh one from another compartment, before turning around to face her again. He wasn’t prepared for the way her eyes were locked onto him. Or the desire that burned within those darkened irises.
She wanted to know that he didn’t blame her for amputating? That he had forgiven her. He could say something, he could try to explain, but he’d never been good with words. He’d always been more of an actions man.
So maybe actions would convince her now.
Deliberately, he crooked his mouth and dropped his arms, delaying pulling on his fresh tee. The sense of triumph swelled as her gaze didn’t slide away, instead holding fast. Her pulse leaping a moment at her throat, those flushed patches high on her cheeks, her lips parting a fraction.
His entire body reacted in that very instant. Carnal and primitive.
The next thing Zeke knew he was striding back across the room, snaking one hand around the back of her neck, and hauling her willing mouth to his.
That thing that had always been between them—so bright, so electric—blasted back into life with a power that almost knocked him backwards. Making him feel truly alive again.
After all this time.