With a rush of love, Tia turned to obey.
‘The walls here are too steep. There’s no way to climb out. Get a rope, or anything to help pull us up,’ Zeke yelled as he ducked down to pull the man’s head above the water.
It took Tia all of two seconds to locate the nearest moored boat and race across the uneven ground to where its owner was sunbathing, oblivious, on deck. It felt like an eternity as they located a spare rope.
And then Tia was racing back, the other cyclist now lying face down on the edge of the canal, leaning down in a futile attempt to reach his buddy and Zeke—who was doing an incredible job of treading water with the casualty—and help pull them out. But the walls of this part of the canal were too high, and it was clearly proving impossible.
‘Grab the rope,’ Tia shouted, tying one end around a tree and locking it off before looping the other end and throwing it to Zeke and commanding the second cyclist. ‘Aidez-moi...um...tirer.’
With a last, anguished look at his friend, the man jumped up and hurried over to her, taking hold of the rope between Tia and the canal. His impatience was almost palpable as they both waited for Zeke to finish dropping the loop over his casualty and tie it in place.
‘Okay,’ he signalled at length, still holding the man’s head above water as Tia and the second cyclist began to pull.
It felt like hours but was probably a minute or less before they’d successfully pulled the unresponsive casualty onto dry land, Tia’s fingers fumbling to loosen the knot and release the loop for the rope to be thrown back to Zeke.
He couldn’t tread water for ever and there was no other way out of this section, but she was going to have to trust the second cyclist to help Zeke. She needed to concentrate on her patient, who she had now ascertained was having a heart attack. There was no choice but to start chest compressions.
‘J’ai appelée au secours.’
A strange voice broke Tia’s thoughts, and it took a moment for her to realise that it was the woman from the boat.
‘I am calling ze help services. They come now.’
‘Thank you. Merci.’
‘Je peux faire quelque’chose d’autre?’
For a moment Tia’s head swam, but whilst the words meant little to her the tone was clear. The woman wanted to help. She continued with her chest compressions.
‘Defibrillator?’ Tia asked, then, hopefully, ‘Défibrillateur?’
‘Non, mais il y a un poste de pompage... How you say? A pump-house? Wait... I go.’
Before Tia could answer, the woman had hurried away and she was left with her patient, not even daring to lift her head to check if Zeke was all right. Or her son.
‘Seth, baby, are you all right?’
‘Yes, Mummy.’ Clear, confident. Trusting her.
She couldn’t let this man die. Not for him. But also, not in front of her son.
And then, suddenly, Zeke was there, his voice low and reassuring to Seth. And at the same time the woman was back, mercifully with a defibrillator in her hands. Gratefully, Tia took it and turned to Zeke.
‘He’s having a heart attack. You take over the chest compressions whilst I get this ready. Okay, stand clear.’
It took two shocks and some more CPR before the cyclist’s heart was back in normal sinus rhythm, having managed to converse briefly, and laboriously, with his fellow cyclist. Still Tia was grateful when the emergency services arrived as she was stabilising him, the handover going much smoother when Zeke stepped in to translate, a proud Seth tightly gripping his hand.
Father and son. Her chest tightened, almost painfully. She was at serious risk of falling in love with Zeke all over again. And that would be the definition of stupidity, since it was clear he was every bit as determined to keep her at a distance as he had ever been.
The sooner she got her and Seth back to Delburn Bay, the better.
CHAPTER TWELVE
WITH A FINAL intake of breath to quell her nerves, Tia pushed open the anteroom door to the master suite and stepped inside. The odd noises had stopped a while ago, but the draw was still powerful.
In front of her were the panelled double doors to the bedroom, slightly ajar, to her left a single, open panelled door to his walk-in closet. Tia turned to her right where another single, panelled door barely muffled the sounds of a shower.
Tia froze. This wasn’t what she’d bargained for.
She couldn’t have said how long she stood there, unable to move, but suddenly the shower was being turned off and there were sounds of movement inside. She turned awkwardly, almost crashing into the burr walnut table as she tried to leave.
The en-suite bathroom door opened instantly.
‘Tia.’ He sounded taken aback and she spun back around, an apologetic smile plastered on her lips.
‘Zeke...’
Suddenly any hostility that she’d sensed in Zeke dissipated.
‘Is Seth okay?’ he asked urgently.
‘Seth’s fine,’ she managed.
But any other words were choked off by the sight of him standing—filling—the doorway, imposing and autocratic as ever despite his state of virtual undress.
Her mouth seemed to simultaneously dry up and yet water. Her eyes wandering greedily over the sight in front of her, from his wet hair, slightly spiky from the shower, to the broad shoulders that seemed to stretch from one door jamb to the other. One muscled arm was braced against the wooden frame, emphasising his solid, honed, tanned chest, which boasted more of an eight-pack than a six-pack, and which tapered to an athletic waist with hips barely holding onto a towel.
‘Is he having nightmares?’
She couldn’t have said what it was in the question that made the hairs on her arms prick up but it was suddenly as though a fog were beginning to clear in her head.
Nightmares.
Why hadn’t she realised it before? She, of all people, a former army doctor.
Tia blinked, trying valiantly to drag her gaze away but she couldn’t. Her eyes were locked onto him as though her brain was fervently trying to memorise every last glorious detail to savour for the future.
‘Seth is absolutely fine.’
Zeke seemed to relax a little.
‘He isn’t upset in any way?’ The note of urgency had reduced to one of concern. But it was there, nonetheless. ‘He’s only a kid. It can’t have been easy seeing that man have a heart attack in front of him. It’s a shock the first time you see arms windmilling like that.’
‘Seth isn’t upset,’ she reassured him. ‘We made sure he was far enough back, and I think you and I both kept instinctively putting ourselves between him and the casualty. I don’t think he really saw anything at all. If anything, he seems proud.’
She couldn’t move; his scanning gaze was rooting her to where she stood. As though he was trying to work out if she was telling him the truth.
‘I’m glad.’ Eventually he bobbed his head. A curt, sharp movement that belied his words. ‘Thanks for letting me know.’
‘Right.’ She nodded, hesitating for a moment. ‘I should go.’
‘You should.’
Neither of them moved. Instead Tia stared, her eyes raking over him again and again, indulging and absorbing. And then they travelled lower. Over the short towel that barely covered his powerful thighs, and down his legs.
Until she could see the one thing he had seemed so hell-bent on keeping from her. The knee and the residual limb. Once she had seen it, she couldn’t tear her gaze away.
This was what she had done. Her first ever solo amputation. On her husband. The professional part of herself noted that it had been a good, neat job. The rest of her went hot, then cold, then hot again.
‘Seen enough?’ His sharp voice pulled her back to reality as he snatched up a temporary crutch from behind the doorway and moved swiftly, smoothly, across the anter
oom to where she hadn’t noticed an older prosthetic limb by the wall.
Tia watched, transfixed as he slid the liner on, then the fibreglass shell complete with a sleeve art that was so typically Zeke she felt a rush of nostalgia, before he stood forward until the pin fixed into the lock. The click seemed to reverberate around the room, making her jump.
‘Where’s your bionic limb?’ she asked hesitantly.
He paused, as though he wasn’t going to answer, then met her gaze and held it. Almost challenging her.
‘I wanted to give it a quick clean and check after this afternoon.’
‘Right.’
‘So, now you’ve satisfied your curiosity, I suggest you go. Get back to our son.’
‘Show me.’
The words were out before she could stop them. Zeke’s face hardened, his eyes narrowing.
‘You want me to show you?’
‘Show me how it works.’ She nodded. ‘You seem to have no problem showing the kids at your charity, or even showing Seth. And I’ve heard you’ve turned it into a puppet show at one point to make them all laugh. But whenever I’m around it’s different. You shut down, keep me out.’
‘You’re really making this about you?’ he accused her, and for a moment she almost backed down.
But then she remembered that was what Zeke always did: turned it around on others. It possibly worked well in some of his missions.
It wasn’t going to work on her. Not any more.
‘No, Zeke. I’m making this about you.’ She refused to let her eyes slide away. ‘The reason I came down here was because I was checking on Seth when I heard noises.’
‘Noises?’
She didn’t imagine the way his body stiffened up.
‘I didn’t realise what they were at first but something about them compelled me to come and check it out. It brought me to your suite.’
‘Strange?’ He cocked his head as though listening out. ‘But I don’t hear anything now.’
‘No,’ she agreed. ‘But then we wouldn’t. Given that you’re now awake. You were having a nightmare.’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he scorned, but the edge to his tone told Tia everything she needed to know.
‘You have them a lot. I should have realised. Have I...? Does me being here make it worse?’
‘No.’
But he’d paused a fraction too long and she didn’t believe him. She told him so.
‘No,’ Zeke repeated. More firmly this time.
Tia shook her head sadly.
‘I heard you. That was what the noise was, wasn’t it?’
He glared at her, yet there was something about his expression that was less hostile than she might have expected. Still, she was shocked when he dipped his head in acknowledgement.
‘Yes. I had a nightmare. A particularly bad one, I admit it. But...’ He tailed off.
Her heart twisted and knotted inside her chest. There was no way she could leave it that way.
‘But what, Zeke?’ She waited but he didn’t answer. ‘You accused me of making this about me and I told you I was making it about you. I want to amend that. I’m also making this about us.’
‘This has nothing to do with us,’ he said coldly. ‘There isn’t even an us.’
It hurt far more than it had a right to. Still Tia refused to back down.
‘At some point you’re going to have to deal with what happened. We have a son together, and we’re going to end up being in each other’s lives for good whether you like it or not.’
‘I’m well aware of that, Antonia. It’s why I brought you out here.’
‘You say there’s nothing to forgive, yet I don’t feel forgiven. It’s like every time we take three steps forward somehow your leg gets in the way and we take another two back.’
Belatedly, she realised what she’d said. She opened her mouth to apologise, astounded when a low chuckle reached her ears.
‘Pun intended?’
The tension in the room eased instantly. Zeke always had liked a dark sense of humour. She remembered them telling her at the rehab centre that the lads would rag each other mercilessly. Fellow amputees dismantling each other’s chairs and hiding the parts or pushing each other around to see who would topple over first.
She’d been horrified, but the response had been that they didn’t take it as bullying, they took it as character-building. The kind of camaraderie they had been accustomed to in their units. It was different in the medical corps, but she could see exactly what they’d meant. Why being in that centre had been far better for him than coming home.
But now, if she wanted to finally reach him, then she was going to have to stop being Tia, his estranged wife and mother of his son. And be Tia, a fellow soldier who took no bull.
‘I’d like to say I’d intended the pun,’ she hazarded, ‘but I’m afraid not. I’ll think of a better one for next time, though.’
He watched her a moment longer. Intently, as though he was trying to read her very soul. If she’d known how to open it up for him, then she certainly would have.
‘Did you blame me for amputating your leg and thereby keeping you alive, when your buddies had died, Zeke?’
He eyed her again, and then, to her surprise, he smiled. A half-apologetic smile, but a smile nonetheless.
‘Maybe. I don’t know. When I look back on it, nothing I thought back then was rational, so it’s possible. I knew I’d pushed you away but a part of me was still angry that you went. I know now that you called the hospital for updates and that you never expected me to discharge myself and go off grid. Just as I understand why you kept the pregnancy from me initially, and I believe you that you intended to tell me as soon as you thought I could handle it. But that’s the part that really gets to me. That you thought I couldn’t take it. That you thought I was somehow less.’
It tore into her chest, squeezing her heart painfully.
‘I never, ever considered that you were less of anything.’ Her voice cracked but she forced herself to continue. ‘You were...are... Zeke Jackson. How could you ever be less than that?’
‘You wanted to get away from me, Tia. I saw it in your eyes. You keep trying to deny it but I know it was there, just as we keep trying to move on, but it always comes back to that.’
And then she deflated, right there in front of him.
‘You’re right. I’m sorry, and I hate myself for it, but you’re right.’
The noise that escaped his throat was almost animalistic. Like a roar and a pain, all in one.
‘But I can tell you that it wasn’t about the accident, or the leg, or anything like that,’ she pushed on. Desperately. Forcefully. ‘Not for a second.’
‘Then what, Tia?’
‘It was about the fear of losing you. The way I had lost my mother. It had always been there, in the back of my mind, but I’d never once imagined that you would be brought to my camp, on my operating table, with no other choice but to perform surgery on you. It’s the worst situation to ever be in, Zeke.’
‘I can’t imagine,’ he murmured, and somehow that soothed her.
‘I felt so responsible and so lost. You were lying there, bleeding out, and I froze for a moment. I had no damned idea what to do. And in that moment—as ludicrous as it might sound to you, I wanted to shout and scream and rage at you, for putting yourself at risk and putting me in that position.’
For a moment he didn’t speak, so many emotions chasing over his rugged features that she could barely keep up, even though she tried. As if he was weighing up her words. Assessing her sincerity.
The silence felt almost suffocating. Tia wanted to shift, to move, to break free. Yet simultaneously she didn’t even want to breathe if it risked breaking this spell they seemed to be under.
And then, after what felt like an eternit
y, he finally answered her.
‘You felt powerless,’ he said slowly. ‘I understand how debilitating that is.’
She didn’t want to have to answer him, but she made herself.
‘The prospect of losing you was horrific, and then, on top of that, it opened up everything I’d stuffed down and refused to deal with when my mum had died. I thought I could run away, escape it, let it bury itself again.’
‘You thought if you could get away from me in that hospital, then you could isolate yourself from everyone and never get hurt again.’ His voice was gravelly. Hoarse.
‘How stupid, how selfish, was that?’ She choked back an angry sob, only for Zeke to cup her cheek.
His thumb grazed her jawline, rough, almost assailing. Silencing her.
‘It was understandable. Brave, even. Because you didn’t pretend we could be something that we weren’t. Not back then. You were right not to have told me straight away about the baby. I would never have given myself a chance to heal. I would have felt pressured to provide for you and I would have made both our lives miserable when I couldn’t do it.’
‘Zeke—’
‘I only regret leaving before you had a chance to tell me.’ He cut her off as if she hadn’t even spoken. ‘I thought I was sparing you the burden of me. But I think it was just a way to run away whilst pretending to myself that I wasn’t.’
‘The survivor’s guilt?’ she guessed.
He drew in a breath.
‘Yes.’
This was it. This was their chance. Zeke was talking to her; she couldn’t blow it. And with Zeke, directness was going to be key.
‘You know that’s the goal, don’t you? That’s why they make those IEDs exactly the size they do.’
‘Of course I know that, Tia.’ He exhaled, but this time there was no rancour in his tone.
If anything, she might have even thought there might be a touch of relief in it. But that didn’t make sense; he had army buddies—both fellow amputees and not—to talk to.
Could it really be relief at finally being able to talk to her?
‘I run a company that sends men out there in a private role every day. It’s my job to know that. Those IEDs are designed to maim, not kill. If you have someone with their feet or legs blown off, screaming their heads off in pain, it not only ties the men up, but it demoralises too.’
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