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Elle nodded sadly.
‘My stepmother was devious. She’d pretend to be okay when my father was around but when he wasn’t, she was spiteful and vindictive. If I hadn’t had Stevie, if I’d been a bit younger, I might have let her win. In many ways I got lucky, but then it only added to my guilt later for not loving him.’
‘He didn’t deserve your love.’ A stab of jealousy sliced through him.
‘But he deserved my honesty.’
‘Words are powerful tools in the right hands,’ Fitz said slowly. ‘But powerful weapons in the wrong ones.’
Elle met his gaze, thoughtful and open.
‘Or else they’re meaningless,’ she countered. ‘Stevie used to tell me he loved me, but all the while he was cheating on me. I think I’d far rather have actions over words.’
Fitz nodded but said nothing. He knew he would too, but he hadn’t any right to it. He’d always failed in his actions. In trying to be everything his father hadn’t been, he’d ended up acting in precisely the same self-serving way. He couldn’t escape his nature, it seemed.
‘So what happened, Fitz?’ Elle touched his arm sadly and Fitz worked to loosen his tightly clamped jaw.
‘When I was fifteen he got injured and he was home for a long while. Things just deteriorated. One night, or at least the early hours of the next morning, he came in steaming drunk. I don’t know what she said or did, probably nothing, but he completely lost it. I remember hearing her trying to muffle her screams so she didn’t wake me or my two-year-old baby sister. Something snapped in me. One minute I was in my bed and the next I was in my parents’ bedroom and my dad was lying flat out on the floor and I was threatening to kill him if he ever touched her again.’
Despite the monochrome background of the rest of the memory, he could still see the bright red stain on the dirty carpet from his father’s bloodied nose. And the absolute shock on the old man’s face.
‘He hit you?’
‘He didn’t dare,’ Fitz snorted bitterly. ‘A bully doesn’t pick on someone he can’t intimidate. But he never touched my mother after that. In fact, he pretty much never returned to their army house after that. They stayed married, at least for appearances, but he took posts that meant he was stationed away. He did courses during his downtime, and on the couple of occasions he really didn’t have anywhere else to go, my mother took my sister and me to visit her sister, who was married to a soldier and stationed abroad.’
‘So you never really saw him again?’
‘Not really. He’d never been interested in a family anyway. His wife and son had been imposed on him. My sister was the product of a married couple who went through the motions. So, no, we didn’t really see him again. Not until that last time.’
‘What happened the last time, Fitz?’ Elle half-whispered, as though a part of her already suspected it wasn’t good.
He hunched his shoulders, feeling suddenly chilled in the otherwise pleasant l
ate-afternoon air. Suddenly it wasn’t easy to tell her anything more. Suddenly, he wished he’d never started. The words were lodged thick and painful, choking in his throat.
‘The night he came back was the night they died.’
‘The car crash,’ she said quietly.
Guilt, anger, grief, all of which had been simmering barely beneath the surface until now, suddenly rushed Fitz so hard he felt physically winded. It took him several long moments to regulate his breathing enough to answer her.
‘Yes,’ he bit out. ‘I don’t want to talk about that any more. I don’t usually. Last night was the anniversary of their deaths. It’s been eighteen years and I realised that I’ve now been without them, without her, for longer than I ever had her. I guess it just got to me.’
‘It would get to anyone!’ Elle exclaimed.
‘So let’s just close it down now and enjoy the last hour or so we have left.’
It wasn’t a request and he could see her biting back whatever she’d been about to say.
‘Of course,’ she said instead.
So they did. Fitz fought to shrug off the unwanted, alien emotions and the acknowledgement that talking to Elle had been far more cathartic than he could ever have imagined. And he let himself enjoy the last hour as they made their way back to the hotel, and to her room, and he couldn’t stop himself from making love to her one more time. This time, when he woke he slid carefully out of the bed, seeing her hair puddled on the white pillow like a splash of light, and dressed in silence. Wishing they had more time.
Not knowing what difference that would have made.
He headed for the door, opening it softly to let himself out, before stepping back inside, crossing the room and snatching up a pen and paper from the desk under the mirror and jotting down his phone number.
Last night had been perfect, like a dream he’d never expected to experience. He’d never felt so connected, so at ease with anyone before. But it was just an illusion. A woman he’d met in a bar. For her, he was a means of putting something between her and her failed engagement. For him, a last indulgence before yet another tour of duty. Not that he begrudged it, he loved his career. It was who he was.
