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Why not?
The question lingered. It was on the very tip of her tongue. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to ask it. He would fob her off and she didn’t want him to do that. He was clearly one of those soldiers who left his civvy life at the door of the barracks and put on his colonel-soldier one and she could understand that, it was usually how she liked to be on operations, especially if she was going into a combat environment. But out here, on this particular mission, things were more relaxed and Fitz didn’t need to be quite so rigid. He wasn’t protecting anyone.
Except, perhaps, himself.
Should she leave? Stay? She glanced at Fitz, hoping for some kind of response but he was only watching her. Judging her. For not being able to draw a line the way he could.
She bristled and turned to the door, faltered, then stepped back to his desk.
‘You have no right to judge me, you don’t even know me.’
‘I’m not judging you,’ he argued. ‘I’m trying to protect you.’
‘From whom?’ she exclaimed. ‘From you?’
The bleak look in his eyes caught her off guard. A haunted look that clawed at her insides.
‘Fitz, why on earth would you think I need protection from you?’
He shook his head, his lips pulled into a thin line as though he didn’t intend to answer. And then he spoke.
‘You’re bright and vibrant and happy. And I’ll destroy it. It’s who I am.’
Incredulity spread through her. That was so far removed from the man she’d met that night.
‘Why on earth would you say that?’
He shook his head as though he didn’t want to say any more but the words kept coming.
‘Because I’ve done it before. Because I’m my father’s son.’
This was about the car crash, she realised with a rush, remembering what Fitz had told her that night. Now she realised he felt guilty over his mother’s death. Whether he realised it or not, he was likely punishing himself for still being alive while his mother and sister were gone.
She should have seen it earlier, she should have recognised it. Guilt. She knew it only too well. Only in her case it was guilt and gratitude. Without Stevie she doubted she would ever have realised her dream of becoming a doctor; she simply couldn’t have afforded the university course. It was the reason she’d ignored the little signs that Stevie had been cheating on her for a long time. She’d told herself that it wasn’t true, and she’d allowed herself to believe it, until that night she’d said the words out loud to Fitz and realised how unlikely they sounded.
And she couldn’t shake the suspicion that it was some form of guilt that made Fitz shut people out, deny himself happiness. As though, somehow, he didn’t deserve it.
She stepped towards him, shaking her head gently.
‘Your father was a drunk. You were a seventeen-year-old kid. What happened to your mother and sister wasn’t your fault.’
He laughed—a humourless bark that splintered inside her.
‘You have no idea what was or wasn’t my fault.’
‘So tell me,’ she encouraged softly.
She could actually see the battle raging inside him, etched into every chiselled groove of his face. Some part of Fitz wanted to tell her, she was sure of it. But he was fighting it and she didn’t know why.
Still, she forced herself to wrinkle her nose at him coolly. As though her every fantasy since last week hadn’t involved Fitz doing deliciously wicked things to her.
And then he said the words she least wanted to hear and it felt as though her heart was shattering. Shredded by shrapnel as if it had been caught in a homemade IED.
‘After all, it was just sex, right?’
The root of the pain was so deep she couldn’t have pinpointed it if she tried. It snatched her breath away and left her legs feeling weaker than those of a newborn foal.
As though it would have been no hardship to him at all to walk away from her that night. When she knew she would have never been able to resist him.
