Page 38 of Second Song

“A lot more.”

14

ROWAN

This garden must have been rubble too once. Someone laid waste to this walled-off corner of it before rebuilding, before replanting, before sunshine and rain worked their magic. New life got a chance to take over. And that’s what sends up tendrils inside me—new life at hearing that walking disasters like me do it for him.

We aren’t far from where Luke described trauma responses to me. Liam, on the other hand, describes a fighter, not someone who freezes or takes flight. I’m tempted to fawn like that lamb did after Liam saved us, but now isn’t a time for nuzzling under his chin because he isn’t done yet.

“You’ve got grit, remember? You’ll be fine with the kids because of that. They’re lucky to have you.”

Who the hell knows why that wrenches this from me. “I told you I played a stupid game once, right?” I can’t remember what spilled out while spinning on the end of a rope. He reminds me.

“The game you ran away from school for?” He squints. “You said you’d have to be desperate to go back and play it again.” I must blink. He adds more detail. “You said wild horses couldn’t make you sing for them ever again. Anyway, what about it?”

I’m tempted to say, “Nothing” again if that means avoiding this discussion, only he just told me that word hurts him. Plus, he called me fearless, so I try my best to speak up right here over swaying poppies. “My stupid game involved a soldier. He’d left the army. That was spun as him not being brave enough to stay.”

“Not brave enough?” Liam comes to attention, his jaw clenched. “People who haven’t served can fuck right off with their opinions. Even peacekeeping can be dangerous. I should know.”

I nod because he’s right, and I’d tell him so only past-me hears that same studio door thudding shut as ever. I also stand outside a headmaster’s study, dreading having to make more “I don’t remember” excuses like a little kid in trouble. This comes out sounding just as cornered. “I could have helped him.”

Help him?

I made things so much worse.

That’s what I confessed a week ago in these same gardens—what I wrote down on sheet after sheet of notepaper and then folded. Even now, those sheets are hidden in my suitcase, but I’m still so sorry for keeping my mouth shut when speaking up might have mattered. Instead, I only opened my mouth to…

Save my own bacon?

I didn’t end up any safer, did I?

Liam’s glance is steely again but he speaks softly. “Regret is such a useless fucker. I thought I was invincible when I signed up. Rock solid. Just wanted to see the world and be active with my mates. My brothers. Never pictured slinking home while they were still… Are still…”

He touches that sign describing combat while the sea glitters in the distance. So do his eyes as the sun dips to kiss the horizon, and that’s what I want as well—to kiss Liam who is the opposite of someone who would slink away from danger. He crosses the bridge before I get a chance to. His footsteps are a hollow, thumping reminder of Jamila dancing over spilling water. Now the only spilling is Liam’s next low-pitched confession. “I miss building with those wazzocks.”

“Building?”

He nods. He also faces the sea again, standing head-on towards a sunset that doesn’t only gild him. He’s burnished like something left out in all weather, rough and tarnished. “Royal Engineers don’t only blow shit up or dig trenches. We rebuild infrastructure.” He must take my silence for a question. “Otherwise peacekeeping can’t happen, can it? How do you think aid gets to civilians without roads and airstrips? Without…” He glances back at the bridge. “We rebuild. That part of the job is quieter, but?—”

I’m not sure if he means rebuilding is less noisy compared to the blast that brought him home, or if he means that the rebuilding aspect of engineering isn’t common knowledge. I’ve never thought about military logistics. I don’t now, either, not while focussing on him stopping mid-sentence, then continuing with his voice pitched even lower.

“But it doesn’t matter. None of it does. Not after some fucker didn’t listen one time too many.” I’m almost certain he means himself. He winces, and I’m not sure if that’s for tinnitus-related reasons until he adds a hoarse, “Only I got to walk away from that last pile of rubble.”

Someone else didn’t?

He touches my face for a third time before I can ask. This touch feels different, more needed by him than conversation, so I tilt up my own chin and go up on tiptoe, and we’re kissing.

We’ve done this before.

I’ve kissed him plenty of times already: first in a pub, then in a shadowed alley, then for longer in a bedroom. I kissed him behind construction netting yesterday, and he kissed me in a near-empty car park this evening.

Each one might as well have never happened.

This isn’t new. Something still ignites at how right his tight hold is, my heart pounding to violent life right beside a flower-filled crater, and all because his mouth moves from my lips to the hinge of my jaw, then to my ear where he rumbles another confession. “I got to walk away, Row. And this?”

He steers me off the path and between bushes where he drops a bombshell.

“It’s the very first time I’ve felt grateful.”

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