‘My God, Zeke, is that what you really think of me?’
He forced himself to stand still. Not to move or even to blink. Merciless. Pitiless. Which made it all the more incredible when he began to finally talk to her.
‘I need this, Tia—you must see that?’
‘You need it? You’re a multimillionaire. You have Z-Black and Look to the Horizon. Why would you need to put yourself through all that again?’
‘Because it makes me feel alive. It reminds me who I am, and what I’m capable of.’
‘You make it sound as though, if you don’t go out there, you’ll be someone different.’
He didn’t answer immediately, but then he met her confused gaze.
‘Maybe that’s what I fear.’
He willed her to understand but she only furrowed her brow all the more.
‘I don’t understand. If it was so important to you, then why not be one of those hundreds of major limb amputation soldiers who have gone back into service? Some even back into war zones.’
He knew what she was thinking. No doubt as an army doctor she’d seen former soldiers hell-bent on getting back to their buddies, to the only life they’d ever known. He certainly had. And she would know how fired up they could be. How single-mindedly they chased down their goals.
Tia had known him for nearly two decades, she would surely imagine that he would have been worse, or better depending on perspective, than any of them.
‘But I was SBS. The kind of things we do—the things I did—are demanding enough on the human body when it’s at its peak. An operative with one leg...that’s a liability.’
‘Let me guess, you refused to settle for what you would have seen as second best?’
‘I was black ops, of course anything else was always going to feel like second best to me.’
‘Really?’ She wanted to stop but she couldn’t. The words—the hurt—were all there. ‘Like a family? Like Seth and me?’
‘That’s a completely different thing, Tia.’
‘Is it?’ she challenged. ‘Only, from where I’m standing, it feels exactly like that. Despite everything we said, and faced up to back at the chateau, for some reason you’re still punishing yourself.’
‘And you know all this, do you?’ He was contemptuous, valiantly trying to ignore the fear that ran beneath the surface, that she might just be right. ‘Just because we’ve been sleeping together for a couple of weeks? Just because I finally let you see my stump?’
She blanched.
It should have felt more of a victory.
‘We’re going around in circles,’ she mumbled at last. ‘Every time I think we’ve sorted it out, somehow it finds a way to resurrect itself.’
‘Maybe that’s because I’ll never get away from it, Tia. It’s who I am. You should know that by now.’
‘You need to change,’ she announced suddenly.
He didn’t know what it was about her tone, but a shiver moved over his entire body.
‘Why do I need to change, Tia? For me? Or for you?’
‘For my son.’
‘Our son,’ he corrected furiously, a coldness washing through him as she shook her head.
‘No.’
It hung between them, casting a shadow that looked bizarrely menacing.