Her defences shot up instantly. ‘Don’t judge me, Clint.’
Wow. Thinking it and saying it were two very different things. There was a kind of power in actually verbalising the words.
Don’t. Judge. Me.
His eyes zeroed back in on hers. ‘Judging you? You’re practically a virgin, Romy, and I was about to take you up against a wall in an alleyway. How do you think that makes me feel?’
She lifted her voice to match his. ‘Don’t judge yourself either. I just wanted you to understand why I took off like that. It was rude and I’m sorry.’
Words failed him. Then he laughed, strained and thin. ‘You don’t sound sorry—you sound really ticked off.’
‘If you keep pushing me I will get ticked off.’ Lord, it was amazing to speak her mind! ‘I simply wanted you to know why I left.’
‘I assumed it was the military thing.’
She stared at him, breathing heavily. ‘So did I, at first.’
‘But not now?’
Her voice dropped to a bare whisper. ‘It still bothers me, Clint. I would be lying if I said it didn’t. But I recognise that it’s a big part of you.’
Wordless seconds ticked by. Romy studied her hands. Then he finally spoke, steady but low.
‘I go to the city. About four times a year…’
She lifted her eyes to his profile. Was he finally going to share something with her?
‘…to meet with a woman by the name of Adrienne Lucas.’
A vortex opened up deep in Romy’s belly.
‘Dr Adrienne Lucas of the medical corps. It’s a condition of my leave that I check in regularly with her.’
Romy looked up at him, her stomach settling. ‘Check in?’
‘She’s a shrink, Romy. She treats me.’
‘What are you on leave for?’
‘They call it medical leave. I call it leave of last resort. It was that or retire from the corps entirely. The corps wanted me to stay.’
‘But you didn’t want to?’
Silence.
‘What happened?’
Clint made a noise in the back of his throat. His fingers beat a steady rhythm on the steering wheel. ‘They called us the force of choice. One of Australia’s elite squadrons. It meant we were posted deep inside conflicts all over the world. Reconnaissance, retrieval, extractions. We saw things no one should have to look at. Eventually you get used to seeing those things. And to doing them.’
Romy slid her hand over towards him until her little finger barely touched his thigh. She very much needed some part of her to be touching some part of him.
‘One day I saw something I couldn’t get used to. One of my patrol committed something so…’ He shook his head, took a deep breath. ‘A kid, no older than Leighton. It was unacceptable. We were supposed to be helping people. There was only the two of us on reconnaissance, the LT and me. I didn’t want to dog on a senior, a friend, but I didn’t know what else to do.
‘I talked to the LT about it. We were pretty tight. He seemed remorseful, said he appreciated me coming direct to him. Grateful enough that I’d handled it discreetly he granted me a weekend leave.’ He shook his head in the darkness. ‘I spent most of it drunk in the desert, trying to erase what I’d seen from my mind. When I got back to base, I got carpeted by my CO.’
‘What happened?’
‘LT cited me for bailing during the mission. He said I didn’t have what it took in close combat. It became my superior’s word against my own. I was forced to justify myself, forced to tell them what happened with the kid, that he was only defending his family with a rusty old AK with no ammo in it.’ His voice thickened.
Romy stared at him. ‘They didn’t believe you.’
‘There was a reason we all looked up to the LT. He was the best, a talented strategist.’ His laugh turned ugly. ‘He struck pre-emptively to undermine everything I said. He painted me as a coward, made sure the whole platoon heard about it.’
‘And they believed that? About a man who’d earned a commendation for valour?’ He fell to silence. Romy realised. ‘You wore it. You didn’t challenge him.’ As a woman who spent her life feeling judged, she knew exactly how to say that. Factual. Simple. Toneless. He’d find no judgement here.
‘I thought I could tough it out, watch the LT, try and prevent anything like it from happening again. But the other troopers in my unit, men who’d trusted me with their lives, suddenly didn’t want to know me.’ He clenched the steering wheel as if it was a weapon. ‘I was dropped to solo recon. And the LT kept on going out.’
He sounded like a man and a wounded animal all at once. Romy got a real sense of how important that trust relationship was to him. How badly his loyalty had been abused.
‘When did you leave?’ she asked.
‘He finally went too far. Command pulled him out and it all came to the surface. What I saw was just the tip of the iceberg. Even they were shocked, I think. My XO hustled to make good on the damage done, but nothing could undo it for me. I’d grown suspicious of everyone. I had no faith in the men I served with. I had no faith in myself. I started to believe…’
Whatever he’d been about to say, he couldn’t finish. He looked stricken. ‘I spent the best part of a year drunk whenever I wasn’t on mission. It was the only way I could sleep at night.’
‘So you went on leave?’
‘Command considers it some kind of compensation. Either that or they didn’t want a flaming star medallist cut loose and drawing attention. In any case I’m pensioned off on medical leave until my time is up, then they’ll discharge me honourably with no fuss. It’s all over.’
She picked her way through a minefield of possible responses and, as was her peculiar talent, selected the most painful one. ‘But not for you?’
His eyes blazed like emerald coals. ‘That unit was my family, Romy. I would have died for any one of them and I nearly did, several times. So to be turned on by the men who I would have taken a bullet for…To have the corps call my courage into question, my honour…’
Death before dishonour.
Romy shuddered. He’d watched his mother desert his father; then his lieutenant betrayed him, his brothers-in-arms turned on him, his corps abandoned him. The only person he had in the world was Justin. The already strong brotherly bond doubled.
Amazing he could still function, really. That spoke of enormous strength behind those fathomless eyes. She slid her hand onto his where it gripped the steering wheel desperately.
A
