I walk back into the bedroom with a new lightness of heart. I’ve made up my mind what to do. Yes, deciding not to make a decision still counts as doing something. Especially when it means I can spend more time with the man who makes me happy. Only, when I look over at the bed, my smile fades. Flynn is gone.
Looking around the room is futile, but I do it anyway. Is he being silly and hiding from me? I glance in the wardrobe and under the bed, but I know he’s not there. A thorough investigation of the bed leads me to finding a note scribbled on hotel headed paper laid on the pillows.
Carrie,
I’m sorry, I thought I could say this to your face, but it seems I haven’t got the courage to do it. You have come into my life and made me realize I can’t run any more. I need to face up to what I did in my past so I can move on into the future with a clean slate.
I’m going back, taking my punishment. It’s long overdue. I’ll come and find you when it’s all done with, and then, if you’ll have me, maybe we can start again.
All my love,
Flynn
He must have left while I showered. I suppose a man trained in battle can do things quietly and with great stealth even when he’s full of the flu. The decision has been taken from my hands.
Sobs wrack my body, and I collapse to the bed and curl up into a protective ball. Flynn is gone, and once again I’m all alone.
Chapter Thirteen
One month later
I knock on the door, at the same time glaring at the smart silver name plaque affixed to it. Doctor Alex Jones, followed by a bunch of tiny letters. Such an ordinary name for what must, at times, be an extraordinary job. It would be today, at least. There was nothing ordinary about his next patient—me.
“Come in,” calls a voice.
I comply, opening the door and stepping into the room, before closing the door behind me. I hesitate.
“Mr. Gifford, I presume?” the man says. He sits behind a cheap-looking desk—no budget wasted here, that’s for sure—but still manages to exude an air of importance. He’s got a couple of decades on me, at least. He’s also got steel gray hair, and the piercing nature of his eyes is not diminished in the least by his wire-rimmed spectacles. “Please, sit down.” He indicates a chair on the opposite side of his desk. So he’s not going to make me lie down on a couch, then, like you see in films. That’s something, I suppose.
Forcing a smile, I cross the room and take the proffered chair. I don’t know if it’s really small, or if it’s just me being too damn big. Either way, it’s not going to be the most comfortable hour I’ve ever spent. And that’s before we even get to the reason I’m here.
“Thank you, Doctor. But please, call me Flynn.”
“If it makes you feel more comfortable.” The doctor inclines his head.
“Thank you.”
“So.” Doctor Jones peers at me over the top of his glasses, then reaches for his posh-looking pen. He holds it, poised, over a notebook which has been opened to a brand new page. A new page for a new patient. A new start. “What brings you here?”
“Orders,” I reply, the word out of my mouth before I can stop it. But then, why should I have stopped it? It’s the truth, after all.
He makes a note at the top of the page. That’s not a good start. Then he spears me in his gaze. “All right, Flynn. That’s fine. But can you tell me why you’re in prison, being ordered to see a psychiatrist?”
“It’s a bit of a long story, Doctor.”
He gives a thin smile, one that doesn’t even come close to reaching his eyes. Christ, this bloke is a cool customer. “That’s all right. It’ll take as long as it takes. I’m in no rush.”
I run a hand through my hair—surprised, as I have been a lot recently, by the lack of strands passing beneath my fingers. I’d had an insane mop of hair for so long that this regulation buzz cut is taking some serious getting used to. I’m not going to get out of having this talk, I know that, but it doesn’t make it any easier to start. I think, though, that once I do start, I’ll be okay. I have to be okay. Because this is all part of my punishment and rehabilitation. I’ve got to play by the rules. If I do, I can be out of this place in another eleven months. And then, as long as it’s not too late, I can go and get my girl. I hate this, I hate every fucking minute of it, but I’m doing it for Carrie, so it’s worth it.
Okay, Gifford. Come on, man up. You’ve put this off for far too long. Time to bite the bullet, so to speak. The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll finish. Get this the fuck over with.
I take a deep breath, and then I begin. “I was in Basra, on a special ops mission with my unit. We were on a search and rescue mission. We’d had intelligence that our target was in a certain building on the edge of town. So as to not draw attention, the kidnappers were keeping a low profile, and didn’t have much security.
“Or so we thought, anyway. They may not have had much manpower, but they’d taken other precautions. Just as we thought we were closing in on them, and were preparing to storm the building and make the extraction, I heard a noise. Next minute I was slammed against the side of the compound and knocked clean out. When I came to, I was in hospital.”
Huh, that had been easier than I’d thought.
“All right.” Doctor Jones sat back in his chair, the very epitome of casual. I suspected it was deliberate. He was trying to keep me relaxed. He knew damn well that the event I was describing had been traumatic, so he didn’t want me recounting it to be any more difficult than it already was. “So what happened next? Did you find out what had happened? The noise? The rest of your unit?”
I opened my mouth, then promptly snapped it shut again. Christ, he really wanted me to go into detail? Maybe it wasn’t going to be easier than I’d thought, at all. It was going to be harder. So much fucking harder.
I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to gain some kind of focus. Just recount the facts, Gifford. You’ve told him half the story. Now fill in the blanks. Only they weren’t blanks to me. They were great big, stabbing chunks of agony lodged inside me. Ones that would have to be pried out, without anesthetic, if I was ever going to move on.
Figuring the doc wouldn’t care if I stood on my head, as long as he got the information he wanted, I kept my eyes closed as I spoke. “I woke up in hospital. Turned out I was lucky to be alive. I’d been barely a couple of feet away from a fucking IED when it went off.” I took a deep breath. It was shaky when I exhaled it. “The rest of my unit weren’t so lucky. Two of them were killed outright—which I suppose was lucky when you compare it to what happened to the other … person.”
“Which was..?”
Fucking hell—why was he making me say it? He’d probably seen my file, probably already knew exactly what had happened. Yet the sadistic bastard was going to make me tell him. All the while I was reliving the fucking awful experience in my head. The experience I’d worked so damn hard to forget about, to erase from my memory forever.
I gritted my teeth so hard it hurt. Then I focused firmly on my future, while blurting out the details of my horrific past. “She … my … colleague, was hurt real bad. I was out cold, so couldn’t do a thing to help her. She lay there, in total agony, able to see our dead buddies, and me unconscious. Somehow, she managed to get on comms and radio for help. She was still alive when help came, but only just. She’d lost a ton of blood. There was internal bleeding. The medics just about managed to piece together what had happened—they were trying to keep her talking, you see, keep her conscious—but she died en route to hospital. In agony, drowning in her own blood.”
For several minutes—the longest fucking minutes of my life—the doctor was quiet. Seemed he was weighing up how to proceed. He knew I’d just told him something incredibly significant, incredibly painful, and he wanted to keep prodding without seeming insensitive, or making me clam up. But I knew what was coming. It was his job, after all. I couldn’t get angry at the bloke for doing his job. And if it helped me in the long run, then it’d be
worth it.
Finally, Doctor Jones cleared his throat. “Well … I’m very, very sorry for your loss, Flynn. There’s nothing else I can say, there are no words, to convey my sympathies for your ordeal. But … I must … I have to know … how did what happened to you in Basra cause you to go AWOL not long after being discharged from hospital?”
“I…” I trailed off.
Christ, wasn’t it fucking obvious? I sighed. Of course it was—but once again, he wanted me to say it out loud.
“I just couldn’t handle it. I’d seen good friends and … I’d seen good friends die. And I’d survived. Yes, I’d been messed up—and I’ve got the damn scars to prove it—but ultimately I was in one piece, and I was alive. I didn’t know how, and I didn’t know why. I just knew that I couldn’t be in that situation again. I couldn’t … get close to people like that again, only to lose them, and in such a horrific way. I know what happened was nobody’s fault—well, except for the fuckers that planted the IED, obviously—but I still felt guilty, still do feel guilty, for being alive, for walking away, when three of the people I cared most about in the world were dead.”
“You were … close to the members of your unit?” the doctor queried, his tone gentle.
“I should fucking think so,” I shot back, my stomach roiling. “Two of them I’d been with since basic training. And the other … the other…” I gulped in air. There wasn’t enough. I was suffocating. Suddenly, I was aware that my cheeks were wet.
“The other one, the woman. She was my fiancée.”
Chapter Fourteen
Two months later
It’s as if nothing ever happened. I’m in my chair, behind my desk in my office. It’s my safe space, and, contrary to what everyone suspected, being back at work has done me the world of good.
There have been some changes. I delegate more and don’t take work home with me so much or stay in the office ‘til the early hours. It’s true, I am only one woman and need time to recharge now and then. I’ve learnt something from my time in Derbyshire.
Sighing, I shake my head. That bloody man still jumps to mind so readily. I see his smile, hear his laughter and every time I imagine him my heart breaks a little more. Flynn never came back. I wished he would, but he’s not been in touch at all. Not even another shitty letter full of excuses.
I can’t dwell on it, though. Clearly, I didn’t mean as much to him as I hoped I did. Obviously, he got what he wanted. He fucked me and fucked off. The only way to stop the sadness, to halt the tears before they fall, is to keep hold of the anger. He ran away, and all he left me was a letter, a note full of platitudes and lies.
It took me a long time to give up on seeing him again. In fact, part of me still clings to the promises he made. I ignore that bit as much as I possibly can, as clearly it was just soppy sentiment. I thought I was in love with Flynn, and that is hard to forget even though he’s abandoned me.
But I am thankful to him for breaking me out of my prison, for letting me be me and bringing me back to my senses. I might want to rip one of his arms out of its socket and beat him with the soggy end for leaving me so abruptly, but that doesn’t alter the good he originally did.
The phone rings, pulling me out of my musings.
“Miss Rogers, I have your mother on the line. She is very insistent on talking to you.”
“I bet she is.” I shake my head.
“Should I tell her you’re busy, then?”
“No, no, put her through.”
It’s been playing on my mind, the way we left things. Mum literally disowned me. Clearly, she’s as good at keeping her promises as Flynn, because here she is ringing me.
“Okay, I’m putting her through now.”
Closing my eyes, I take a very deep breath. There are some things you just can’t put off. Your mother always seems to be one of them.
“Caroline?”
“Hello, Mother.” My response is measured. I don’t want an argument.
“Oh, thank God, I’ve had the run around from that receptionist of yours, you know. You should get rid of her. I really don’t like her tone. I’ve been on hold forever!”
“She’s good at what she does, Mum. What do you want?”
“Well, we didn’t part on very good terms, did we?”
I’m not going to rise to that one. Nope, that’s got loud, pointless argument written all over it. She plows on regardless.
“No, we didn’t, and I’ve been really shaken up since you left. I have been talking to the good Lord regularly about it all. And to the prayer group, just so they can back me up, so they know what they’re talking to God about. Well, I was telling them what happened, and Mrs. Hamilton—you remember her, don’t you? Face like a well chewed toffee and she always wears a hat, even in the bath I’ve been told—anyway, she said something that stuck with me. She said it doesn’t matter what our kids do, they’re still our kids and we’ve gotta love ‘em. She’s right, you know.”
Already she’s winding me up. I’m sure there’s not a person in the whole of the North who doesn’t know my business. “So what are you saying, Mum, really?”
“Well, I forgive you, Caroline, and if you want to come visit any time, you’d be welcome.”
She forgives me? Oh, I should have known.
“That is, very, erm, big of you, Mum. Thank you. I’d like you to know that I’ve forgiven you, too. I’ve forgiven you for undermining me at every turn, for always believing the very worst of me, and for mollycoddling me at every opportunity since I was born. I’ve forgiven you for being a totally shit mother.”
The stunned silence is a joy to listen to. It’s not often that my mum is lost for words.
“So, Mum, we’re all square. No hard feelings. I’m not going to argue with you, but I’m also not going to be coming to visit. I think it’s best if we just put a line under it and call it quits. We can exchange cards at Christmas, maybe chat on the phone now and then, but I think it’d be best for both of us if we just stay the hell away from each other.”
“Forever?” Her voice is delicate and soft and very unlike what I’m used to.
“No, maybe not forever, Mum. But we can’t continue doing what we’ve been doing, can we?”
“I guess not, but I do love you. You know that, don’t you?” There is a desperation in her tone that unsettles me.
“I know, and I love you, too. That’s why we’ve got to just cut down our contact for a while and start from scratch. You gotta let me be an adult, and I’ve got to let you be your own woman. I can’t change you, and you can’t change me. If we learn to accept that, then maybe we can mend what’s left of our relationship.”
“Okay, Caroline. Okay. I’ve been trying to do it my way since you were born and clearly that hasn’t worked, so let’s try your way for a bit.”
“Thanks, Mum, I appreciate that.” A genuine smile lights up my face. For the first time I can ever remember, my mum has taken me seriously.
“No problem. Okay, well I better go. The washer just dinged and I want to get my sheets on the line while it’s still blowy. I’ll talk to you soon.”
“Okay, Mum, take care.”
“You too, love, you too.”
It might not be the start of a fairytale relationship, but I hope it’s the start of something a whole lot more positive and healthy. I don’t want to lose her from my life completely, after all for so long we only had each other, but we have to change how we communicate. This is an indication that change might actually be possible.
I continue work with a little weight off my shoulders. I’d hate to lose my Mum because of a disagreement caused by Flynn. Yes, that wasn’t the only reason, but it was a huge factor in me breaking out of Mum’s floral prison. My mother might not be perfect, but she has always at least tried to do her best by me. I can’t say the same for Flynn. I turned my back for a moment and that rat deserted the ship. I hadn’t even known it was sinking. Hell, it had hardly had chance to float.
I’d like to tell
him what pain he’s caused me. I’d love to let him know how he broke my heart, to get that closure therapists talk about so much, but each day that passes I’m more and more convinced I’ll never see that man again.
It annoys me how much that realization still hurts.
Chapter Fifteen
Nine months later
London
I go to wipe my sweaty hands down my sides, then stop myself. I don’t want to put suspicious stains on my smart new clothes. Then I realize my palms are so wet that if I don’t dry them I’ll never be able to grip the damn door handle.
Fuck’s sake, who am I kidding? They’re not going to let the likes of me cross the threshold of this glass-and-chrome monolith of a building, anyway. Security will be breathing down my neck before I’ve got so much as a toe through the door.
Then I remember—I’m not a tramp any more. I’m suited and booted, my hair has had a decent cut, I’m clean-shaven. I look fucking good, even if I do say so myself. Like I’m going for the job interview of a lifetime.
Except the job interview of a lifetime wouldn’t be nearly so terrifying. Seriously—I’ve seen and done some things in my time, dangerous, life-threatening things. And yet, the prospect of entering this building, going to the reception desk, asking for Caroline Rogers, fills me with a dread I can’t begin to describe.
What if she won’t see me? Tells me to fuck off and never darken her door again? Part of me wouldn’t blame her.
What if she will see me? Then I’ve got to explain myself. If she lets me get a word in, that is.
I have a sudden image of Carrie flying at me, expensive letter-opener in hand, brandishing it like a knife, eyes full of fury and her lips twisted into a war cry. I shudder, then push the image away. Carrie’s a businesswoman, a professional. She didn’t get to the dizzying heights of her career by behaving like a lunatic. Except for the breakdown, I guess. But that was different.
The Billionaire and the Wild Man Page 12