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‘On the hard stuff, I see,’ Thea murmured, looking at the glass of water in his hand.
The crowd around the bar was three rows deep, and she didn’t exactly have the physique to push her way through. He pointed out as much.
‘Elbows.’ She smiled, holding them up as if for him to inspect. ‘And stop deflecting.’
‘I just don’t like the acco
lades,’ he admitted. ‘I don’t deserve them.’
‘Yesterday was horrible—we lost a lot of patients. We don’t even know if those we got to hospital will make it,’ Thea pointed out gently. ‘But you’re the one who risked his life to crawl into burning wreckage for a baby who might not have even been there.’
‘So we cheer that and forget the bad?’ Ben pulled a face.
‘No, we find a small victory in a hellish situation and celebrate that,’ she told him quietly. ‘Are you telling me that you never did that in all your time out in Afghanistan?’
Yeah, they’d definitely done that. He’d done that. Until it had been him they were celebrating. Then it hadn’t seemed so...appropriate.
Still, her calm reminder had eased the tension he’d been feeling. She’d made him feel stronger again. The crowd surged slightly and Ben pulled her towards him protectively, concerned about her getting pushed too hard. She barely resisted before slipping neatly into his arms.
Too neatly. As if she was meant to be there. They both stayed still, taking comfort in the closeness, the crush and clamour fading away until all he was really aware of was himself and Thea. It felt particularly intimate, and he knew that the tension of the day, the memories, meant he’d let his guard down. Suddenly he didn’t care.
‘Can I get you a drink?’ he asked softly. Could she hear his heartbeat accelerate?
‘I have one.’ She shook her head, but her voice sounded unusually throaty and he wondered if she was as aware of him as he was of her.
‘Thea—’
‘Can I ask you something—?’
They spoke at the same time, both stopping and offering a nervous laugh.
‘Go ahead,’ Ben said eventually, not caring about the crowd surging around them.
It occurred to him to ask Thea if she wanted to go somewhere quiet to talk, but he didn’t want to break the spell, and thought that maybe the crowd was somehow making her feel more secure than if it had just been the two of them. Too much pressure.
‘What happened yesterday?’ she asked tentatively.
He huffed out a hard breath. It wasn’t exactly a surprise question, but that didn’t make it any easier. Still, he was determined to be honest with her. They’d come so far he didn’t want to mess it up now. He cast around for the right words before realising there were none. There was just the truth.
‘Your PTSD is triggered at night, when the house is silent, right? What triggered it at that crash site yesterday?
He assessed her thoughtfully.
‘I think seeing everything from the air definitely reminded me of my own accident. But instead of making me freeze it cut out my fears and drove me to act on autopilot, without really knowing what I was doing.’
‘But you ran into an evacuated zone; you could have been blown up,’ Thea objected, still concerned.
‘I know that. I knew it then. But when my patient told me her baby was still in there... I couldn’t not.’ How could he explain it any other way? ‘Standing back just isn’t me.’
‘And if that car had blown up and you’d be in there you’d have both died.’
The shake in her voice touched his heart. Without thinking he pulled her into his arms and held her close.
‘And if it had blown up and I hadn’t even tried how could I have lived with myself?’
‘At least you’d have been alive,’ Thea muttered against his chest.
But he could tell by her tone that she was glad he’d saved the baby. Glad he was the kind of soldier who was willing to make that sacrifice if it was the right thing to do.
