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All the chaos, and the noise, and the dust fell away. It was just him and Elle.
And he finally allowed his brain to acknowledge what his heart and soul had realised a long time ago.
He loved her.
The urge to tell her almost crushed him.
Beautiful, lovely Elle, who always looked for the upside. And if there wasn’t one then she created it just by her vibrant spirit and sheer force of will. She was like his morning coffee, like food, like air. He’d felt as though he’d almost been holding his breath until he’d seen her e
ach day, and never in his life had he felt such a compulsion to be with someone.
Elle was a woman like no other he’d ever known. The more he knew her, the more he felt he didn’t know enough. He wanted to know everything about her, tell her everything about him. He would never get enough of her, this woman who had shone a warm light into even the blackest caverns of his soul.
A woman who resisted the army chefs’ chocolate cake if she’d been working in the hospital all day, but could devour two slices if she’d been rushing around the local communities. The woman who loathed drinking her water from a round plastic bottle and always decanted it into a battered square one she refused to throw away. Who had a pink lion token on her pack so she could identify it day or night but had learned a funny little story in the local language to break the ice with the local kids. He knew she always loaded up one of the pockets of her vest with small colouring books and crayons for them.
The thought of losing her actually twisted inside his gut and the urge to tell her almost crushed him.
But this wasn’t the place and it certainly wasn’t the time.
She was right, it was their job out here, and he had always prided himself on his professionalism as an army officer. But more than that, it was who they both were. They’d both chosen this life, they both loved this life and, right now, that had to come first. Besides, Elle’s role was certainly vital but there was one thing in his favour.
The noise and pandemonium of their surroundings suddenly raced back to the foreground, crowding in on them.
‘Fine.’ Fitz blew out a breath. ‘But since we aren’t back at the hospital and this is my site, this is now my command. You listen to me, understand?’
‘Colonel.’ She dipped her head in acknowledgement, a soft smile playing on her lips as the light he so loved tiptoed back into her eyes. ‘So where would you like me?’
He thrust the last of his doubts and fear away.
‘What have you got? A couple of twelve by twelves?’
‘Three of them, so far.’
It took him seconds to glance around the site, years of experience kicking in. There was a decent location a few hundred metres away, safe enough to be out of line of immediate danger but close enough that the injured could be easily carried there to be triaged, treated or prepped for the MERTs, and close to the helicopter landing site.
‘You can set up over there.’
‘Yes, Colonel,’ Elle agreed, snatching her pack up and spinning back around to where her team was offloading kit from the helicopter. He watched her go, irrationally proud of the woman he saw; a woman who was liked and respected everywhere she went.
A woman who had achieved the one thing he’d never expected anyone could ever do so subtly he hadn’t even noticed it happening; she’d put the shattered fragments of his heart back together and, more than that, she’d done so with such skill that he almost couldn’t believe it had ever been crushed in the first place.
In his life there had been a few people who had known about what had happened to his mother and his sister. The therapist the state had made him visit for that first week before he’d turned eighteen, the army mental health doctor when he’d enlisted a couple of weeks later, even Janine when her father had told her what was in his file about the crash, but he’d never told them some of the things he’d told Elle that first night.
And although all of them had told him it hadn’t been his fault, none of them had made him believe it. None of them had known the full story that Elle had known, about the phone messages or the abuse his mother had suffered. Elle had been the one to make him accept that he couldn’t have changed anything. That he couldn’t have known his mother was calling because his father had reappeared after three years, and that even if he’d raced home after that first call they would already have been gone. Even if he’d called the police, no one could have got there in time.
She’d allowed him to finally accept that the only person to blame that night had been his father, and that it was time for him to let go at last. He’d spent nearly two decades focusing on his army life, his career, throwing himself into it as a way to avoid having to consider what his non-army life had been like. He’d thrown up a wall between his personal life and his professional one, always keeping himself on the side of the latter. But in a matter of months Elle had begun to take down that wall, brick by brick, and now he knew that he could step over what was left of that division if he wanted to. He could finally consider a future that didn’t centre on his career. Fitz wasn’t yet sure what that future might hold, he only knew it contained Elle.
He just had to convince her of that.
But he could wait. A day, a week, a month, until they had the chance to be alone again. She deserved to know how very incredible, and special, and unique she was. How he couldn’t foresee a life without her in it. And how what they had wasn’t transitory or a bit of fun, because she was the only woman with whom he could ever—had ever—been able to see tantalising glimpses of a future.
Unexpectedly, Elle turned, although he hadn’t said a word, and even if he had she could never have heard him over the clamour. It was an instinct that had begun to bind them ever since that first night.
‘Colonel?’
He couldn’t hear the words but he could read her lips, and still it didn’t stop him from speaking aloud, the words swallowed up within the pandemonium, yet that did nothing to diminish the excitement bubbling inside him.
Like he was once again the kid he’d stopped being the night he’d lost his beloved mother.
