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‘Are you asking me to quit?’
Was she?
Mattie hesitated for a heartbeat before answering.
‘No,’ she told him firmly. ‘I’m not asking that at all. I’m just...explaining why I can’t leave my army career.’
‘Neither can I.’ His voice was hoarser than she expected. As though the words were painful for him to say.
In an odd way, that helped.
‘I’d guessed as much,’ she whispered, shifting onto her back so that could turn and finally face him.
The expression on his face was dark, making her stomach dip and roll.
‘If I was going to leave for anyone, it would be you,’ he told her fiercely, his hand tilting her chin up as he stared into her eyes in a way that made her heart actually ache. ‘But I can’t. I won’t.’
Her whole world was beginning to crumble, like the tide coming in to reclaim the castles they’d build on the beach as kids.
Yet she hadn’t even realised her world had been made of sand.
‘Kane, I never said—’
‘This is my life, too,’ he cut her off quietly. ‘It might not have been my dream since birth, as it was for you, but the army has made me the man I am. It’s who I am now.’
‘You were always that man to me,’ she told him. ‘Even as kids. If you hadn’t been, you never would have kept yourself away from the life that your father led. Or your brothers.’
She heard him wince, even if she didn’t see it. Like she’d landed some blow she hadn’t even been aware she was throwing.
‘I didn’t keep away from them, though. Not until it was too late anyway. You always thought I was so different from my brothers, and from my dad, but the truth is, before you came along, I was pretty much the same. I just wasn’t as far down that path.’
‘You’re talking about this thing you did when you were a kid?’
He didn’t answer, and she faltered for a moment then shrugged, as though it didn’t matter. Though every fibre of her being was crying out for him to tell her. To finally let her in.
‘You don’t have to say anything more. Not if you don’t want to.’
Still, she held her breath. Right up until he finally started to speak.
‘The night it all happened I was with my brothers in a stolen car. They were wasted so I was driving.’
‘You were fifteen,’ she cried, unable to help herself even as she instantly regretted interrupting.
Kane watched her closely, a dark frown clouding his features and making her fingers long to smooth it away.
‘Anyway, we stopped at an off licence. That Eight-Till-Late over on Beech Street, you remember? It was where my brothers always got their gear from.’
She remembered it. Some hole in the wall notorious for alcoholics, and the night staff selling illicit drugs.
‘Only when we got there, they weren’t buying anything. They both had guns, goodness knows where they got them from, and I realised they were holding up the place. Worse, I was their getaway driver.’
She sucked in a shocked breath.
‘Tell me you called the police, Kane. Tell me you drove off and called 999.’
He raked his hand through his hair, and she could feel his despair and regret.
‘I should have. Of course I should have. But... I didn’t think the police would believe me.’
