Chapter 13

ROWAN

Another anxious prickle travels with me the next evening as the sun starts to sink and I head for the sculpture garden. The sun is lower still in the sky when Liam finally arrives after me, pulling into the car park just as other visitors are leaving.

He doesn't get out of his camper right away when I lock my car and shoulder a picnic bag. Liam only winds down his window, craning his neck to look around the almost empty car park before locking his gaze with mine. Maybe this is a week for ditching first impressions because his eyes are so far from steely. Their corners crinkle, although he's as gruff as ever.

"Why does this feel like a trap?" He peers around the car park again. "No loose sheep? No cliffs waiting to kill me?" And here's proof that he saw what happened over a week ago now and that I had hoped he hadn't spotted. "No hotel windows to throw yourself out of headfirst?" He eyes the unmanned kiosk at the garden entrance. "Or is there something death-defying waiting to end me in there?"

He gets out of the camper regardless, but by the time he joins me, I'm back to second-guessing this location like I second-guessed which chalk colour Charles expected me to choose.

I work on getting a grip the same way as I did when Charles told me there was no right or wrong answer. No reason to choose a colour at all. That I was a gift he was looking forward to his children unwrapping, and we'd wait and see together.

Now Liam pockets his keys and straightens a short-sleeved shirt he already looks great in especially where the buttons strain a little. He's cool, calm, and collected while I stutter a suggestion. "W-we can go somewhere else, if you want."

Christ knows the last time we were alone ended up with both of us naked. I haven't stopped thinking about it since. Maybe he's expecting a repeat with no intervening wining or dining. Or no picnicking, at least. And yet this garden seemed right the moment Luke suggested a revisit. Or had seemed right—up until this moment. "I just…" I stop myself from saying I really like your body, so that's progress. "I just…"

I don't realise I'm toeing at the car park gravel until he touches my chin, which I lift. I don't know why I'm dithering. I don't have the first idea about what I want now, apart from more of his ghost smile flickering.

"You just what, Row?"

No one else has called me Row in years. I like it so much I must sound dopey. "I just thought somewhere quieter than a pub might be better."

"Better for what?"

A car door clunks closed, the last vehicle here apart from ours heading for the exit. He watches it go before his gaze swings back to me, and he already looked good, but like this? The lowering sun doesn't only gild him, it also makes me slow to notice that he's kidding. He doesn't need me to stumble through an explanation of why I want to see him here or about what's on offer this evening.

More humour softens all of his sharp angles. "You think this is a better venue for the lecture I'm going to give you about being reckless?"

"A lecture? Shit, no. I've had enough of those to last a lifetime. And reckless about what?"

"Site safety, for a start." He's back to grumbling, only now I can tell the difference between him being serious and him taking the piss out of me, if gently. "Because you've got to save yourself first, right? But until then, I can't help thinking that you need a minder." He takes the picnic bag from me and then straightens his shoulders, and I relax even though he still grumbles. "Fuck knows what I did to deserve the job of keeping you in one piece, but I'm up for it if you are?"

He doesn't wait for an answer.

He kisses me too quickly to process before one of his arms comes around me and he herds me like a lost lamb to the garden entrance. And like a lamb, I let him.

Once we're inside, herding is the wrong word for his quick march through the entrance. "Slow down. And I can keep myself alive just fine, thanks."

He doesn't acknowledge or refute that. Maybe he doesn't hear me over the chime of a bell. A sign states it will ring hourly, counting down to this garden closing, so we still have a couple before the gates lock. All I know for sure is that his hand is still on me, and I like it. I also like finding a picnic bench with a perfect sea view. "Stop. Let's eat here."

I empty the bag of my dining-hall finds, aware that I'm talking faster than usual, nerves spiralling like the distant sea gulls. "I've got bread. Cheese. No booze."

"Not a drinker. I remember."

"And I'm under orders to get an early night and to have a clear head for tomorrow. But I do have these bad boys." I waggle a couple of school-issue juice boxes.

"Christ. I'm getting flashbacks of my old job." He takes one. "What else is in your ration pack?"

I show him the sole Kit Kat I found. "Be grateful. I had to fight off the headmaster for this."

He huffs out a small laugh. "Never thought I'd say this, but I think the army did it better. I'm not… I'm not exactly saying I miss it, but…"

His silence feels thick. I thrust a French stick at him as if crusty bread might cut through it, and once breadcrumbs are all that are left between us, he unwraps the Kit Kat. "Okay," he admits as he tears off the red wrapper and snaps four chocolate fingers into equal portions. "I do miss parts of it."

"Like what?"

He tells me story after story, smile flickering over people and places his work took him. About someone called Neck Brace, and another called Twin One. About what he calls being away on ops, and homecomings. About more friends, although those stories keep fading into silence, but I'm okay with quiet when it comes with this view. I don't mean of these gardens or of the sea in the distance.

Liam's got my whole focus. I'm not sure how the bell can chime again so quickly, a first hour gone already. Perhaps that's down to how easy it is to talk and listen here in this empty garden where the roar of the sea is muted.

It isn't so easy when he turns the tables, intent on hearing all about me.

"Me? I only came back yesterday. Still finding my way around. It all kicks off tomorrow. That's when I'll cover a lot more duties until the rest of the teaching team gets back from a trip."

"So you weren't here last week? Good thing you got a chance to go home before work keeps you busy."

"Home?" I rub my arms. "No. I shared a house near uni. I came straight back from there."

Liam's gaze is lowered, focussed on my rubbing hands, which I must still a beat too late for him not to notice. "You didn't want to go home?"

It's the second time the subject has come up in this garden. We aren't too far from where Luke first raised it. I don't want to waste our evening rehashing what feels like my own tightly closed compartment. "Nope. My stepdad already thinks I'm a fuckup." That's not entirely true. "Or maybe disappointing."

Liam asks a logical question. "And your mum?" He also comes to a quick conclusion. "Ah." He inhales slowly, exhaling a quiet apology before speaking up over seagull cries. "So it's just you against the world."

I could let him think that. Maybe there's something in the air here. Like with Luke, more truth spills out. "My stepdad did make sure I got a good education."

I rub my arms again, stopping as soon as he says, "At a school you hated?" His eyes narrow. "That's what you said on the cliff, yeah? You hated it, Row. Doesn't sound like he did you many favours."

"At least he made sure I learned that boarding schools should do better for kids who don't fit in."

"You think Glynn Harber does it better?"

"It's like night and day, which is probably why I've got the jitters about working with the little ones and Charles tomorrow."

"You've got the jitters?" He takes a last sip from his juice box, his cheeks hollowing, which only accentuates all those angles. So much so that I miss that he's teasing. "You're seriously telling me that Mr. No Shit Sherlock is scared of a few toddlers?"

"They aren't toddlers." I explain how I'll support a combined class of four- to six-year-old children. I also confess this. "I'm only scared of getting it wrong for them. Especially the ones with extra needs." Charles made each of those colours sound amazing—important—worth taking time to shape his teaching around. "I don't want to do or say the wrong thing again. I've got a track record for that."

He snorts. "Sounds to me like the school picked the right person for the job." His feet nudge mine under the table. "Some of the kids are different? Well, you're not exactly standard issue, are you?"

I'm not sure what crosses my face at hearing versions of that twice in twenty-four hours.

Both of his feet squeeze mine. "I mean you aren't scared of going all out." He also murmurs, "Muppet."

I duck my head, smiling, feeling as warmed by that as when he doodled on my bare belly. We're fully dressed now, both sitting with the remains of a shared picnic supper between us, when his feet squeeze mine again and he touches a finger to my chin until I raise my eyes to his. "You go all out," he repeats. "And I'm just saying that when shit goes sideways, those are exactly the kind of people I'd want on my side." All of that steel softens. So does Liam's murmur. "I did have people like that."

"You still do, don't you? Like Matt?"

"Yeah." He scrubs at his face. "Yeah, like Matt." He takes my hand to pull me upright. "See? You didn't fuck up saying the right thing just then." He adds, "Don't you change, or worry about the kids," and it's wild how much I like it. The next section of garden we wander through is wild as well. We cross bridge after bridge with me still talking about everything I hope tomorrow will prove, and him still listening until he misses a question. That prompts an explanation of why I agreed with Luke's suggestion of this location.

I face him. "I thought meeting somewhere like this might be better because of your…" I touch the lobe of my ear. "Which side is better?"

Seagulls wheel overhead, still crying. Perhaps that's why he only catches the last word of my question. He repeats, "Better?" and for once, I wish the sun's low angle didn't bathe him quite so clearly. There's no avoiding that his expression fractures. Maybe that's the wrong word for what I witness, but fractured is how this next sounds to me. "I won't get better."

His head bows, and at some point during this walk he must have brushed too close to one of the rose bushes. A petal is lodged in his hair, but that's only fair. Something's lodged in my throat at his change in tone, but I've always been susceptible to shifts in pitch, haven't I? To sharp or flat notes. Hearing this flat tone from Liam is painful because it's familiar and aimed firmly inward.

"I'm stuck with tinnitus. No one actually knows how to fix it forever. I've just got to get over myself and live with it like thousands of other veterans." He answers my next question before I can voice it. "Acoustic trauma is common. No surprise when some of us spent so much time blowing shit up before we could rebuild safely. I wasn't the first casualty. I won't be the last."

"I'm sorry, I only meant?—"

"No worries." He lets out a laugh that isn't anywhere close to happy. "It's not the end of the world, just the end of a career."

"Does it have to be?"

He doesn't meet my eyes. "Would you trust someone who can't weed out orders from background chaff that no one else hears?" He shakes his head as if I've answered. His shoulders straighten again although it seems an effort. "But I'm still here, aren't I? Not like some poor sods in the same line of work as me." He corrects himself quickly. "The line of work that I was in. Yeah, I hear phantom sounds that never let up. And it's a drag when it disturbs my sleep, but I'm?—"

He clenches his jaw, and I see why. We're beside a sign explaining how service personnel built this part of the garden for a fallen comrade.

"But I'm still here," he finishes, sounding wrecked. And that's what we've walked into, I realise. This part of the garden looks as if a bomb dropped right here in Cornwall. It must have been a while back—plants crowd this devastation, more roses climbing broken walls, twisted metal rusting beneath bobbing daisies. We even cross a bridge built over a crater filled with blood-red poppies.

"From Afghanistan," I read from more signage. "These poppies grew there." I have a sudden realisation about what I'm standing over, and I deflate. "Shit."

"What?" Liam touches my chin for a third time this evening until I look directly at him. "What?" he repeats.

"Oh, it's…" I've already told him that I was stupid once and lost my first chance. I hadn't expected to get confronted by this reminder, and definitely not while I'm with someone I want to think better of me.

Because that is what I do want more than anything in this moment—for Liam to know me as I am now, not as I was back when I was under a different kind of pressure, one that didn't come with explosions but still shook my foundations. I want that so much that I mutter, "It's nothing."

"No," he snaps before quickly giving a quieter order. "Don't say nothing to me, Row."

He cups my face while we stand right where I don't deserve to be, not until I've had a chance to talk with the men who built this garden, former contestants in the same stupid game as me, one of whom has an Afghan background.

Ed and Pasha must have worked so hard to build this memorial.

Liam draws a different conclusion from my nonanswer. "Do you know how often people have said that to me? Nothing?"

That's another lonely flat note.

So is this.

"People say nothing to me far too often. It only ever means I've missed something important. That the radio station in my head has tuned into nonsense instead of tuning into what's really important. So don't say it. Not even if you think whatever you said isn't worth repeating."

His hold on my jaw is gentle, although it wouldn't matter if it was firmer. I couldn't look away from him even if I wanted, not when the only one of us who's earned a place in this garden isn't done speaking.

"Whatever you've got to say, I want to hear it." His hold on me gentles even more but doesn't release. Maybe he knows I've leaned into his cupped palm so much that I'll stumble if he drops it. Frankly, it's the only thing holding me up when he adds, "I was relieved when I heard you. Yesterday at the school, I mean."

His voice drops, his bruised gaze pulling me even closer.

"I don't catch everything people say when my tinnitus gets busy, but you?" His gaze drops all the way down to my stomach as if he can see what he sketched there before it rises again. "I heard you laugh. Didn't think I'd get to hear that ever again. Thought I'd be long gone before you came back to Cornwall. Thought we were a one and done. All I wanted to do was make sure the school wouldn't fall down on top of you."

I'm close enough to see his colour rising.

A wave of something warm rises in me too when I grasp what that means.

"You took the job for me?"

"Someone's got to save you from yourself, right?" He's joking. He's also still flushed, but his gaze doesn't waver. "Thought I'd be done months before you started, only there you were, back sooner than I expected. Still throwing yourself at shit that scares you. I heard you worrying about getting it right for the kids."

"You heard that?"

"Soldiers are nosy fuckers. Yeah, I was listening." He rubs at the back of his neck. "Kinda want to be around to hear more."

He already told me he's a demolition expert.

He turns me to rubble with a final comment.

"A lot more."