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‘Barely. You really have to go?’
‘I have time for breakfast.’ The words slipped out
before his mind had a chance to engage.
‘Really?’
No.
‘Yes.’
Quickly, quietly she slipped out of bed, unashamedly searching for her clothes as though being with him here the morning after wasn’t awkward or strange at all. And he liked it. He liked her confidence, her strength, the certainty that last night hadn’t been a mistake.
He pulled his T-shirt over his head, watching as she slipped her feet into tiny ballet pumps from the wardrobe across the room, and then, as she rounded the bed, he reached impulsively for her hand.
‘Come on, I know a little bakery nearby. I’ll take you there.’
Steadfastly he ignored the part of his brain telling him he should get going. He ignored it as they walked, hand in hand with an intimacy he’d never known before, down the deserted streets. He ignored it as he easily talked his old friend into letting them into the bakery before it was supposed to be open. He ignored it while he listened to Elle’s soft voice chatting to him as the early sunlight danced over her animated features and played with the light as it bounced off hair he longed to lose his fingers in again and again. And as she watched him curiously, he couldn’t help asking what it was she was thinking.
She hesitated, a shy smile tugging at her lips.
‘I didn’t think this was what the morning after would look like.’ She ducked her head and concentrated on a few crumbs of her almond croissant, unable to meet his eyes.
‘What did you expect?’ he heard himself asking, as if him leaving wasn’t how he’d expected the early hours to unfold either.
‘I thought you’d be gone. Sneaking away in the night. You told me you didn’t do relationships.’
‘I don’t.’ He took another sip of his black coffee, aware of the irony.
‘Yet here you are.’ She finally lifted her head. ‘You don’t seem as emotionally disconnected as you like people to think.’
Her words should have alarmed him. Instead, he felt immeasurably sad.
‘You don’t know me.’
‘So tell me.’
And instead of shutting her down, he thought of the way she’d opened up to him last night. How she’d bravely told him about her sexual experiences with her ex. He’d thrilled in showing her exactly how good it could be, his own body hardening beyond anything he’d ever experienced at the sound of her coming undone in his arms.
Now the words came from nowhere he recognised. A dark place within him that he’d locked down so many years ago, like a kid with a scary monster in the closet. But the light she shone made everything less frightening.
‘My father was army, like me,’ he began, hesitantly at first. ‘Only he wasn’t a commissioned officer, he was a nineteen-year-old corporal with his sights set on staff sergeant and beyond when he met my mother. A couple of months later she found she was pregnant and they got married. He always resented being tied down. He took it out on my mother, usually with his fists, usually when he’d been out drinking, although I didn’t know about it for years. My mother had always been terrified he’d hurt me so she did the only thing she felt she could, and took the beatings in silence as long as he left me alone, and later my sister.’
‘Fitz!’ Elle gasped, and tried to disguise it, but Fitz didn’t miss her shock. He fought to shut out the memories, so old and repressed they were like a silent black and white movie in his head now. But they still made his heart thump furiously in his chest, like it was trying to ram its way out. Like it was trying to escape.
‘Mum and I used to breathe a sigh of relief every time he walked out that door with his kitbag for another tour, especially if he’d been home a while. Him being away meant months of blissful peace, and if we were lucky and he went somewhere else for R&R, we might even get a full year.’
‘Were you close, then? You and your mum?’ Elle asked gently.
‘Sort of.’ He hunched his shoulders. No emotions, just facts. He couldn’t explain this urge to talk to Elle, just that it was there. But that didn’t mean he was ready to actively think about it, feel it. Not yet.
‘But my mother was as unhappy in her own way as he was. Neither of them had wanted to marry the other, but they’d had no choice. Add to that the fact he beat her, and it made for a fairly unpleasant life. I never lacked for anything in terms of food, clothing, toys. She worked hard, and in her own way she loved me, but she was never exactly the huggy sort of mum from American TV shows. It was never a happy home, not exactly full of love.’
‘It’s all relative, isn’t it?’ Elle murmured, almost to herself. ‘I thought I had it bad with my stepmother, but at least I got to experience something better before that. I knew it didn’t have to be that way.’
Fitz shrugged, unable to answer that.
‘Maybe. But maybe it’s worse. Sometimes words can hurt as much as fists. If someone says you’re worthless, stupid, unwanted often enough, you can start to believe them.’
