Had he remembered?
She spun around in her seat, wondering how her uncle factored into it.
‘Wait—why did you really bring me here?’
‘Someone asked me to. And I liked what he had to say, so here you are. The rest, Felicity my dear, is up to you.’
An eagerness spiked low in her abdomen. The mock-up town, peppered as it was with bullet holes and crumbled sections of pretend housing, held so many fond memories for Fliss. The place had long since been abandoned by the military in favour of a bigger, newly built urban training area and now, bathed in a warm sunset, the place almost looked beautiful with grass growing through the dusty ground and small trees sprouting up through concrete floors. Like nature reclaiming an abandoned civilisation, the cycle of life.
Her uncle’s vehicle departed, slowly so as not to leave dust in its wake, and Fliss became aware of a figure walking towards her.
Ash.
Her heart felt as though it was hammering against her ribs, fervently trying to escape its cage.
‘Quite a man, your uncle,’ Ash said evenly as he approached. ‘Even when he isn’t busy being a general.’
‘I can’t believe you went to speak to him,’ she said softly. ‘And I can’t believe you remembered what I told you about this place.’
‘I hoped you’d like it. I’m not good at this romance thing.’
‘This is perfect,’ she assured him. ‘This is where I trained when I was doing my medical degree. All those long hours, learning to treat casualties under fire. Learning how to be an army combat doctor. Learning the skills which had finally given me the confidence that, even if my private life—my family life—was a complete mess, then I was still skilled and infinitely competent when I came here.’
He held his arm out to her and she obliged, linking with his as she let him lead her around the old mock-town.
‘This is where you put most of your past behind you and looked forward to a bright future?’ Ash guessed.
His ability to read her made her feel even more comfortable and relaxed.
‘Do you know I saved my first life here?’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘It started as a routine house-clearing training exercise. But then turned potentially fatal when one of the younger recruits become too over-eager and leapt out of the second-storey window. I ended up performing an emergency tracheotomy amongst other things.’
How long ago that felt now. But it was the moment she’d first felt like a real doctor.
‘This place holds some really special memories for me,’ she whispered, marvelling at how good it felt to share them with Ash and know that he understood where she was coming from.
She stopped so suddenly she jerked his arm.
‘I really need to say this. Thank you, for what you said to my mother, and for what you said to me about her. I needed to hear that, even if I didn’t exactly process it well at the time. But, most of all, thank you for what you said about me. About me deserving more and being worth more. I think I’d forgotten that.’
‘You had where your mother was concerned.’ He reached out to cup her jaw and her body fired into life. She barely resisted the impulse to tilt her head into his palm.
‘I talked to her, you know,’ Fliss told him. ‘That night, I asked her all the questions which had been swirling around my head since I was a kid. I think it helped me to understand her better.’
‘You need to cut her out completely, not try to understand her.’
His obvious protectiveness was touching and Fliss rose up on her tiptoes to press a quick kiss to his lips.
‘I just mean that I guess, as odd as it probably sounds, in her own twisted way she thought she was doing something good for me by taking me from my grandparents’ home with her. She hated the stifling life with its never-ending rules and boundaries. I think maybe she thought she was doing me a favour by not leaving me there.’
‘That’s one way to look at it.’ Ash didn’t look convinced but, instead of shutting herself off to him, Fliss found herself wanting to help him to understand.
‘She was still a kid herself. And an immature one at that. She was wrong to make me responsible for her happiness when her own dreams died, but she wasn’t the only one at fault. My grandparents weren’t exactly perfect themselves.
‘I grew up feeling culpable and worthless, and all the other cruel jibes she threw at me on a daily basis. And it went on for so long that even when my uncle tracked us down and took me home I realised that most of what she had told me was right. My grandparents took me in because they felt it was their duty. They were obliged to care for their daughter’s fatherless child.’