He looked...broken.
‘Myles?’ She spoke softly. ‘What happened?’
For a moment he didn’t answer and the silence pressed in on her, far more brutal than the oppressive heat outside.
‘You already know what happened,’ he ground out when she’d almost given up hope of him speaking to her. ‘Or else you wouldn’t be here.’
‘I came to congratulate you,’ she admitted after a moment’s hesitation. ‘They’re calling you a hero out there.’
He made a sound that might have been a bark of laughter but for the fact it was possibly one of the most chilling sounds she’d ever heard.
‘A hero is the last thing I am.’
‘You saved a little girl. You fought to save her leg when no one else was going to. Out here that’s the difference between her having a family to go back to, a home—wherever that may actually be—and being cast out for ever.’
He didn’t answer. It was all she could do to resist the urge to pull her chair closer, to run her hands over his bent back, to try to soothe him. To take his pain away.
But she couldn’t be that person. She could barely even sort out her own mess of a life, how could she possibly imagine that she could be enough to help someone else?
Besides, Myles would never want her help. Sex was one thing, a simple physical act. But intimacy, actually laying oneself emotionally bare to another person, was a completely different thing. He’d made it clear time and again that he would never want her in that way. She would be a fool to keep repeating the mistake, hoping for a different outcome.
And still, she didn’t move.
Which meant she was that fool.
So she could scarcely believe it when he started to speak again.
‘The smell was almost unbearable.’
He had fastened his hands together, lacing his fingers tightly, around the back of his head, and if she hadn’t strained to hear his agonised voice she would have missed what he said.
‘What smell?’ she asked, tentatively.
‘The smell of burning flesh. Once you’ve smelt it you can never forget it. It scorches itself into your nostrils. Brands itself into your brain. There’s no escaping it.’
She wanted to answer, to ease his obvious torment. But what could she possibly say? So instead she waited, her hands balled in her lap to stop her from reaching out to touch him, to comfort him, the way she wanted to. To stop herself from lifting his head to look at her, as though that could somehow break this terrible spell he was under.
But she couldn’t risk it. He was only talking now because he was caught up in his own head. If she reminded him of where he was, of the fact that she was there in front of him, he might realise who he was talking to and shut down altogether.
Now, more than ever, she knew how close to the mark her half-brother had been when he’d told her that he thought Myles was suffering.
And so she sat still, quiet, waiting. It felt like an eternity before he spoke again.
‘That’s what I smell...in those nightmares.’
He lifted his head abruptly, to look at her, to connect with her. And suddenly she wished he hadn’t. It was as though something were wrapping itself around her lungs, preventing them from expanding, from drawing in any breath.
The torment that laced his voice was magnified tenfold in that bleak expression, dark torture roiling in his eyes. She wanted him to talk and yet the idea of making him relive it was almost unbearable. She yearned to be the one to take away his pain. To be the one who could make it all right for him.
‘From a mission?’ she pressed gently, smothering the guilt she felt at knowing more than she was prepared to reveal.
But she wanted it to come from him. She wanted him to be the one to tell her. He dipped his head in what she took to be a nod.
‘One of the last missions I went on.’ He stopped again, and she held her breath. ‘I was on a medical mission, going from village to village treating a number of medical issues. I was looking at a cleft lip, with and without the cleft palate in paediatric cases. There were a few of us, from medics to surgeons, and we had a rifles team with us when we went into the less stable regions.’
She offered an encouraging sound, not wanting to risk speaking and interrupting his thoughts.
‘We’d been to a village in the foothills. Whilst I dealt with a couple of surgeries, others tried to resolve some of the more common issues such as diarrhoea and vomiting. There’s a general lack of education, poor nutrition, no access to medical care out there. They were mostly farmers so there wasn’t a lot to go around, so, other than that, we played some football with the kids and provided some materials and labour to help with general repairs around town.’