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‘Then let me say that it isn’t the side of you that I saw that night.’
Pain expanded in his chest, almost crushing everything else.
‘But it would be. If that night was allowed to be something more.’ His voice sounded raw even to his ears. ‘That’s why I’m trying to shield you.’
Her whisper was so low he had to strain to hear her.
‘See, that’s where I have the difficulty. If you’re so much this selfish person, then why would you be trying to shield me?’
He stiffened, momentarily thrown. She made him want to believe in himself the way she seemed to.
‘Because there’s worse you don’t know about.’
‘So, try me.’
Hot. Urgent. Desperate.
And he wanted to. He wanted to tell her everything, to lay every last, ugly truth out there and let her smooth it away, the way he suspected she could.
But if she didn’t, if she saw what he’d been trying to hide all along, the mirror image of his father, Fitz didn’t think he could bear it.
It was a reminder he needed.
This wasn’t about him. This was about Elle. If they hadn’t ended up here, at this hospital, in this place, they would never have tried to see each other again. He ignored the voice that reminded him how he’d been considering contacting the hotel about her when he came back off his tour of duty, however unlikely it was they might have assisted. And, yes, it was more than just sex, it felt like there was some kind of connection there. But how long would that last? It would disappear in the end. He’d feel stifled, trapped, just as he had with Janine. And then, despite his best intentions, hurting Elle would be inevitable.
‘I have to live with the consequences of my choices every day,’ he bit out, firmer now. ‘But I can make sure I don’t hurt a single other person. I can make sure I don’t destroy you.’
It was for the best.
‘Except that you can’t, can you?’ Elle whispered. ‘You keep trying to push me away but then you can’t help yourself, you have to reel me back in. You might not mean to but you do. You obviously care about me in some small way when you worry about a dust storm, but when I challenge you, you call me a meaningless fling. How is that not hurting me?’
He froze. As much as he might not want to admit it, there was merit to her words. From the moment they’d met he’d felt some kind of connection with her and he’d found it next to impossible to leave her the next day without also leaving his phone number, even though he’d come to his senses and binned it.
He’d dragged her into his office and dredged it all up that first day he’d turned up to see her, and he’d allowed himself to kiss her, to convey all the confusion neither of them could articulate. And now he’d dragged her here again, dismissed Carl, engineered things to be with her. He should have left days ago. He could have worked on the plans back at Razorwire, but this was where Elle was.
The more he pushed her away, the more aware he seemed to be of her. As though the fact that she was out here on site, yet avoiding him, left him feeling illogically hollow. The more she avoided him, the more she took up residence in his head. Instead of her absence helping to quell his ache for her, it only made him want her all the more. Crave her.
And not just physically. He ached to hear her laugh, see her smile, feel the warm glow that accompanied her presence.
Just because she was out of sight it didn’t mean he hadn’t gathered as much information as he could about her from the other officers around the site, both those who had worked with her for years and those who had just started to get to know her on this mission.
Yet the answers were always the same. She was respected, admired, liked and not infrequently lusted after, though no one but Carl openly admitted it. As a man who was suffering from the same affliction he could recognise the signs, not least because it caused a fresh sense of possession to course through his veins.
He could hear a muffled part of his brain proposing that if pushing her away and distancing himself from Elle wasn’t working, then perhaps allowing himself to spend time with her, saturating himself with her presence would do the job. More time with her would allow him to see her as just another woman, flawed like everyone else. He could stop elevating her, could stop seeing her through the sentimental eyes of that first night, when the grim anniversary of his family’s deaths had already been stirring long-buried emotions inside him, and which Elle had inadvertently tapped into.
The events of that night had created a false sense of connection with her, and that was what was causing him to lose his head now. It was stopping him from focussing on a job to which he’d never had any issue applying himself in the past.
If he allowed himself to explore being with Elle, then perhaps he would finally be able to shake off this unreasonably acute, distracting need to know her, to understand her.
And if they both knew the rules of any such encounter from the outset, if they both agreed it was temporary, an extension of that one night, then surely he could also set aside his fear that he would hurt her. He’d never worried about that with previous relationships, he’d never let that stop him.
But Elle wasn’t like them. She was different. He felt different with her.
He needed time to think.
‘
I’m trying to protect you,’ Fitz eventually stated flatly. ‘That’s the last thing I’m going to say. For now.’
