made the memories all the more vivid. Real. Even now, very occasionally, he would still wake up in a sweat, reliving that final mission. A mission that had gone south so quickly that his team had had no chance to extract themselves.
The torpedo. The explosion. Then blood in the water all around him, just before everything had gone black. He hadn’t even felt the pain at that point.
‘I lost everything that night,’ he growled, abruptly.
‘Yes.’ Tia tilted her head up determinedly and met his gaze for the very first time. ‘And so did I.’
‘Don’t go there, Tia.’
Anyone else would have heeded the warning note in his voice. Tia merely swallowed hard, but she stood her ground.
‘Why not? Because only you get to own that pain? You don’t think I carried it, too?’
‘Why do you think I told you to leave?’ he bit out. This was insane. It wasn’t how he’d imagined things going in any version of meeting up with Tia again. ‘I wanted you to be free of it. I released you so that you could walk away and never look back. I’ve carried it with me for these past five years so that you didn’t have to.’
‘And yet I have,’ she matched him, her eyes shimmering unexpectedly.
Deep within him alarm bells rang, but he couldn’t heed them. Couldn’t stop himself.
‘What? What have you carried, Tia?’
She stopped. Glowering. Emotions charging all over her face. And then, just as suddenly as her temper had flared, she reined it in. The loss was unbearable. He felt her withdrawing and he had no idea how to stop it from happening.
It hurt. Far more than it had any right to.
‘I’m sorry,’ she choked out, as though she knew how his chest was tightening excruciatingly.
Zeke didn’t realise he’d crossed the room to her until she tilted her head to look up at him, her eyes growing darker, her mouth opening just a fraction, her breathing quickening.
And still, Zeke didn’t stop himself.
‘This can’t be why you came home, Tia. It certainly isn’t why I drove up here tonight.’
His voice was huskier than it had any right to be. He needed to leave. Now. Tia needed space to think, and he needed to get out of there before he broke all his rules about taking things slowly if they were to stand a chance of piecing their relationship back together.
So why, instead of moving away, was he reaching to take her chin in his fingers, his entire body revelling in the way her breath caught sharply?
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