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* * *
Myles shook his head.
Guilt scraped away inside him. He’d been so caught up in his own internal battles that he’d wilfully ignored the war that Rae, too, had been waging. She loved him. Just as, he realised with a heavy thud, he loved her.
He was in love with her.
He had been pulling the whole macho soldier routine and toughing it out, but even though it had fooled almost everybody else, it hadn’t fooled her.
He loved her. A deep, fierce, strong love, which he’d never known he had the capacity to feel, before now. But that also meant recognising that he had nothing to offer her, that he was a shell of a human, and a fraction of the man he used to be. He’d been an army trauma surgeon for so long that he didn’t know how to be anything else. Which meant that he was nothing. He was damaged and broken, and Raevenne deserved so much better than that.
And something had begun to untwist inside him.
He’d been existing. But he hadn’t been living. And then he’d met up with Rae after all those years.
A woman who seemed to turn the lights back on in his life. She poured warmth—life—into even the bleakest, coldest corner.
‘Bit by bit, these past couple of months, you helped me deal with a pain I’d been pretending I wasn’t wallowing in. You began to save me that month we spent out here last time. But it was time for me to start saving myself.’
For himself as much as for her.
He owed them both that much.
She deserved someone who could give her so much more than he could offer right now. But as that old, familiar, lost grit began to burn inside him again, Myles knew that he was ready to stand back up, to fight, to be the kind of man worthy of a woman like Raevenne Rawlstone.
He had one more shot at living. He wasn’t going to mess this one up.
* * *
‘So what did you talk about with your brigadier?’
‘Too many things to explain now. Old missions. Old buddies. Guys who are no longer here. It wouldn’t make sense to you if I told you now. It wouldn’t...mean anything to you. But, if you like, over time, I can tell you the stories. Even introduce you to some of the old guys.’
A part of her wanted that, wanted to talk to people who knew another side of Myles. But then she thought of her brother, and how closely he guarded some of his stories. Things he knew that she could never fully understand if she hadn’t been out there with him.
‘That’s okay.’ She placed her hand on his chest instinctively. ‘That’s your past. Your memories. Keep them precious. I want your future.’
‘And you have it,’ he told her fiercely. ‘I can’t promise that the nightmares are over. Or that I won’t have lapses. But I know who I am now, with you, and I know that I can overcome them. I can’t control everything, not with the villagers or with Mikey. Or with you.’
‘Oh, I don’t know about that.’ She blushed naughtily, thinking of the nights together when his unique set of skills had controlled her body most efficiently.
The difference was, she was beginning to learn that she had her own set of skills to control his body, too.
‘I’m here for you, though,’ she added seriously. ‘Whenever you want me. To talk to, to distract, or even just to hold.’
‘And I promise you, I’ll always come to you from now on. I’ll never push you away again.’
‘I like the sound of that,’ she murmured, pushing him down on the bed and moving to sit astride him. ‘Starting from now?’
‘From now.’ He dipped his head in agreement.
‘Prove it,’ she murmured, lowering her mouth to his.
‘Shh... Listen!’ He grinned suddenly.
‘Ten...nine...eight...seven...’
‘Myles?’ she blinked, mumbling against his hot, vaguely salty chest.
