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It wasn’t going to work on her. Not any more.
‘No, Zeke. I’m making this about you.’ She refused to let her eyes slide away. ‘The reason I came down here was because I was checking on Seth when I heard noises.’
‘Noises?’
She didn’t imagine the way his body stiffened up.
‘I didn’t realise what they were at first but something about them compelled me to come and check it out. It brought me to your suite.’
‘Strange?’ He cocked his head as though listening out. ‘But I don’t hear anything now.’
‘No,’ she agreed. ‘But then we wouldn’t. Given that you’re now awake. You were having a nightmare.’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he scorned, but the edge to his tone told Tia everything she needed to know.
‘You have them a lot. I should have realised. Have I...? Does me being here make it worse?’
‘No.’
But he’d paused a fraction too long and she didn’t believe him. She told him so.
‘No,’ Zeke repeated. More firmly this time.
Tia shook her head sadly.
‘I heard you. That was what the noise was, wasn’t it?’
He glared at her, yet there was something about his expression that was less hostile than she might have expected. Still, she was shocked when he dipped his head in acknowledgement.
‘Yes. I had a nightmare. A particularly bad one, I admit it. But...’ He tailed off.
Her heart twisted and knotted inside her chest. There was no way she could leave it that way.
‘But what, Zeke?’ She waited but he didn’t answer. ‘You accused me of making this about me and I told you I was making it about you. I want to amend that. I’m also making this about us.’
‘This has nothing to do with us,’ he said coldly. ‘There isn’t even an us.’
It hurt far more than it had a right to. Still Tia refused to back down.
‘At some point you’re going to have to deal with what happened. We have a son together, and we’re going to end up being in each other’s lives for good whether you like it or not.’
‘I’m well aware of that, Antonia. It’s why I brought you out here.’
‘You say there’s nothing to forgive, yet I don’t feel forgiven. It’s like every time we take three steps forward somehow your leg gets in the way and we take another two back.’
Belatedly, she realised what she’d said. She opened her mouth to apologise, astounded when a low chuckle reached her ears.
‘Pun intended?’
The tension in the room eased instantly. Zeke always had liked a dark sense of humour. She remembered them telling her at the rehab centre that the lads would rag each other mercilessly. Fellow amputees dismantling each other’s chairs and hiding the parts or pushing each other around to see who would topple over first.
She’d been horrified, but the response had been that they didn’t take it as bullying, they took it as character-building. The kind of camaraderie they had been accustomed to in their units. It was different in the medical corps, but she could see exactly what they’d meant. Why being in that centre had been far better for him than coming home.
But now, if she wanted to finally reach him, then she was going to have to stop being Tia, his estranged wife and mother of his son. And be Tia, a fellow soldier who took no bull.
‘I’d like to say I’d intended the pun,’ she hazarded, ‘but I’m afraid not. I’ll think of a better one for next time, though.’
He watched her a moment longer. Intently, as though he was trying to read her very soul. If she’d known how to open it up for him, then she certainly would have.
