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He didn’t blame her. He wasn’t sure even he had ever understood it, everything had happened so fast.
‘Janine was a fellow officer. We met at Sandhurst. She was kind and generous and quiet, exactly the kind of girl I ought to like. To love. She understood the army and she loved me. I wanted to love her back.’
‘You wanted to?’
He could hear the confusion in her voice.
‘There was no reason why I shouldn’t have loved her. I liked her. But that was it. I couldn’t. That was when I realised I was flawed. I’m not like other people, Elle, I don’t feel the way other people do. I lack that empathy, that connection.’
‘I don’t believe that. You just weren’t right for each other.’
‘No, you don’t understand. I felt more for Janine than I have any other person but I couldn’t love her. It just wasn’t there. I was selfish, just like my father was.’
He watched her expression change from surprise, to shock, to disbelief.
‘You are not your father. How could you even think that?’
Her faith in him was humbling, the way her eyes stared so deeply into his as if she could somehow show him exactly how she saw him.
But he had to resist. He couldn’t fall for it. She knew about his cruel and violent father, she understood about the car crash, she soothed his guilt over not being there for his mother and sister. However, she didn’t know about Janine.
And it was time he told her. He owed Elle that much. That hard, unwieldy truth.
‘Elle,’ he began, ‘I don’t deserve your kindness. I never did. You think I’m a better man that I am. I wish you were right, but you’re not.’
‘Fitz—’
‘No.’ He stood up, cutting her off before she could object. ‘You keep insisting I’m this stand-up guy because that’s the army guy everyone sees. But you’re wrong. All of you. The man I seem to be able to be out here is the person I would like to be. The colonel I would like to be. I like who I am, what I’ve achieved, how much my men accomplish when inspired. It’s why I love my job. I’ve poured everything I have into my career.’
‘I know that,’ she began, but he refused to let her steer the conversation.
‘But I’m not that same man back home, out of Green, in my personal life. I never have been. God knows, I’ve tried.’
‘You are the same man. I saw it that night. You’re just too plagued with the demons of your past to see it. You signed up within weeks of that fatal car crash and you used the army to give you a new life, to reinvent yourself. And it worked, but in doing so you never allowed yourself time to grieve. I don’t think you ever properly grieved. So every time you go home you’re still stuck in the same place. Until you grieve you can’t let go, and until you let go you can never let yourself move on.’
Every one of her words slammed into him, like rounds into body armour. He wanted to believe her. But he still hadn’t told her everything. He sucked in a sharp breath.
‘Elle, stop talking for a minute,’ he said simply. ‘You need to listen, really listen, to what I need to tell you.’
He didn’t know why, but he began to move around the desk as she stepped closer. As if it was just him and her. And soon the ugly truth.
A sharp rap on the door startled them both.
‘Come in.’ It was an effort to conceal his frustration.
‘Colonel, we’ve just had a message from Major Howes. There’s a problem with one of his troops in the Zenghar Valley. He’s caught up with a complication at the railhead after the earthquake.’
The switch was immediate for Fitz. It had to be serious if Carl was calling at this hour.
‘The troop out there was building a bridge to link the railhead with this hospital.’
‘Yes, sir. They think the earthquake has affected the stability of the ground. Major Howes says there’s a large local population who live beneath.’
The risk of landslides in that region was already quite high without the additional danger of the aftershocks.
‘Potential for multiple fatalities if the ground gives way...’ he muttered, almost to himself.
‘We understand so, Colonel.’
