Burnt (10 page)

He didn't deny it, but he didn't really acknowledge her observation either, which she thought was interesting. ‘Do you ever get scared?'

‘Sure. Although, usually only if I have too much time to think about it. Once you're on the ground, you don't have time to be scared – your training kicks in and you just do your job.'

‘What about now? Have you had too much time to think since your injuries?'

He regarded her with a suspicious expression. ‘You some kind of counsellor as well?'

Rebecca smiled. ‘Nope, just curious.'

‘It doesn't pay to be too curious about the stuff we do.'

‘I wasn't asking about what you did, I was asking about you and how you
felt
about what you do.'

‘I feel fine about what I do,' he told her in a slightly clipped tone. ‘Why? You got a problem with it?'

Rebecca's eyebrow shot up in surprise. ‘No. I've always respected anyone who's in the military – you know that.' She knew he knew that, because it'd never been a secret that she'd liked anything military. She'd gone as far as sending away for recruitment papers to do her nursing degree through the army, but had decided against it. It would have taken too long to get through the paperwork, and she was too impatient to wait around. Once Seb had left town there were just too many painful memories to stay here without him.

‘Then why all the psychoanalysis?'

Rebecca didn't answer immediately, letting her gaze wander back to the girls. ‘I've read about what happened to you – how you got wounded. This isn't your first medal for bravery. Makes me wonder if you have some kind of death wish out there,' she said quietly. From the corner of her eye, she saw him stiffen a little before dropping the rocks back onto the ground.

‘I don't have a death wish. When your time's up – it's up. I just go out there and do what has to be done.'

Side on, his profile was even more chiselled. She'd seen the beginnings of this new, angry Seb just after the accident, the day she'd tried to talk to him before the funeral. Sudden hot tears stabbed behind her eyes. She'd been in so much pain, physically as well as emotionally, and all she'd wanted was to see him and reassure herself he was safe.

She didn't remember seeing him at the accident scene that night; she knew he'd been cut from the car, as she had been, and taken from the wreckage, unconscious, but he'd ended up with nothing more than some nasty cuts and bruises, his face swollen and battered. She'd waited for him to come and visit her in hospital, but he never did. Her parents told her later that they'd tried to get him to come in, but he'd needed some time.

Time? she'd thought, when they'd told her.
Time for what?
No amount of time was ever going to make anything better. She'd just needed to see him – to touch him, to make sure he was really there. She was still struggling to come to terms with Reggie's death, finding it hard to work out with what was real and what wasn't.

After she'd been released from hospital, she'd tried to call him, but he refused to come to the phone. His mother, in her quiet way, had told her gently to ‘be patient with him, he just needs to sort himself out'. It didn't stop the sting of his rejection though, and when he refused to look at her at the funeral, she'd known then that she'd lost him as well.

‘You didn't say goodbye when you left.'

Seb froze at the unexpected turn in the conversation. Man, she was good. Not many people managed to catch him off-guard, but Bec had him off-centre and out of his comfort zone like a damn interrogator – he knew some sadistic bastards in the Intelligence Corps who could take a few lessons from her.

He didn't bother to pretend he had no idea what she was talking about. The same memories obviously still plagued her as they did him.

‘I wasn't thinking too clearly back then,' he said with a shrug after a few minutes.

‘You think I was? I lost my best friend, my boyfriend and my future plans all in the space of a few days.'

Seb took in her wounded expression. ‘In all honesty, Bec, I wasn't thinking about anyone but myself when I left.'

‘You weren't the only one hurting, Seb,' she said, turning away from him.

‘At the time I was too selfish to realise that.'

‘And now?' she challenged, eyeing him with an intensity he had no hope of pulling away from.

‘I'm probably even more selfish. I make sure I only have myself to hurt nowadays.'

‘Meaning you don't
allow
yourself to love anyone?'

‘Damn, Bec. I don't
need
a shrink, you know.'

‘Maybe not, but I think you need to talk about the past, so you can move on.'

‘I moved on a long time ago. It's the coming back that's been a pain in the arse,' he muttered darkly.

‘You didn't move on – you walked away. There's a big difference.'

‘You seriously think I could have hung around here after the accident?'

‘That's just it, Seb, it was an
accident
. A sad, terrible accident that wasn't anyone's fault, but you took it upon yourself to take all the blame and you left before anyone could tell you that it. Wasn't. Your. Fault.'

‘I was driving, Bec – there's no way I can't feel responsible for what happened.'

‘We were just in the wrong place at the wrong time,' she said softly. ‘Any one of us could have been the one driving that night. If you remember, I usually drove home after a game. It just happened that I didn't that night. It could have been
me
driving, Seb. What would you have said to me, then?'

For almost the last twenty years he'd gone over the instant he saw that tree crashing across them. Could he have done something different? Could he have swerved, slammed on the brakes? Seen it happening sooner? Every way he looked at it, if he was being fair, he came up with the same result – no. It hit them from out of nowhere. The only thing that could have saved them that night was timing. If they'd left a few seconds earlier, a few seconds later, waited out the storm and left the next morning … In hindsight, any of those options would have been a better decision – but hindsight didn't change fate. Fate had put them there at that exact moment in time, and there was nothing he or anyone else could do about it. It didn't make the fact that he was driving when it happened any easier to accept, though. Somehow, despite the knowledge that it was a freak accident, he would always feel responsible.

‘Yeah, well be grateful you weren't, 'cause living with that on your conscience is a bloody nightmare.'

‘Is that why you do what you do? You think that you owe everyone, so you put your own life on the line? Try to save the world, by taking down one bad guy at time?'

Seb gave a small chuckle. ‘I think you're confusing me with some kind of action hero. In real life, we don't always get to fight for glory. Sometimes it's dangerous and sometimes there's just a lot of waiting around. I'm not doing this to be noble. I do it because I'm good at it and the adrenaline rush is addictive. I'm no saint. It's just a job.'

The silence that settled between them wasn't uncomfortable, but it left them both with a lot to consider.

‘Have you been out to the cemetery since you got back?' she asked softly.

‘You think I need to go out there to remember them?'

‘No. I just wondered, that's all.' She looked away and blinked quickly. ‘I haven't been out there either.'

‘You know, you're being pretty damn quick to accuse me of not facing the past, but what about you? You didn't stick around much longer after I left,' he pointed out, watching her shoulders stiffen slightly.

‘There wasn't a lot left in town for me after that, was there?'

The words stabbed at him painfully; he wasn't proud of the way he'd abandoned her. ‘I only had enough strength in me to focus on getting through basic, Bec. I wasn't in a good place.'

He'd thrown himself into training. The physical exertion kept his mind too busy to dwell on the past and wore him out enough to make him drop off to sleep, but eventually he undertook extra activities to stretch his mind and body with the same aim: to wear himself out so he didn't dream at night. It was his determination to forget that had caught the eye of his platoon sergeant, who encouraged him to think about trying out for SAS selection, and eventually Seb had taken his advice. The sadistic bastards on the selection course seemed hell-bent on finding ways to push him to his physical and mental limits – it seemed a perfect solution.

‘It wasn't you I was running from.'

‘Sure felt like it at the time.' Her tone carried more than a hint of pain and a sinking sensation settled inside, making him feel like a complete jerk. ‘Do you ever wonder what would have happened if things had turned out differently?' she asked, as she watched her kids laughing in the water.

‘I try not to think about it.' As soon as the words left his mouth, he regretted them. He saw her flinch and a ripple of hurt cross her lovely features. There was no way he could tell her that he didn't think about it because, some days, the regret was enough to cripple him.

She seemed to compose herself before getting gracefully to her feet. ‘You're right, it was for the best. I'd have never had these two, and I can't begin to imagine what life without them would have been like.'

He couldn't see her face, and although her voice sounded calm, he knew he'd just stuffed up – again.

He watched as she called the girls from the water, and after a small battle of wills as the kids begged for ‘five more minutes, Mummy,
please
', they reluctantly dragged their dripping bodies from the creek.

While Rebecca unpacked the picnic lunch they'd brought with them, Seb made a camp fire and prepared a damper.

‘Mum, can we camp here tonight?' Sarah asked eagerly, chomping on her sandwich and watching the fire crackle.

‘I don't think so,' Rebecca said, trying to suppress a shudder at the thought of sleeping out, now that it was getting cooler in the evenings and early morning.

‘But we've never
been
camping,' Sarah huffed, her little face crinkled into one big frown.

Seb gave a rather incredulous chuckle. ‘You've never taken them camping?'

Rebecca looked up, immediately on guard. ‘Well, I've never liked it and their father wasn't exactly the outdoors type.'

‘They have to go camping. It's just not right that a kid doesn't get to sleep outside in a tent at least
once
in their lives.'

Seeing the way her children's eyes lit up, she knew – thanks to Mr Big Mouth – she was never going to hear the end of it now. ‘We'll see.'

‘Aw,' Sarah drawled irritably. ‘When she says that, it
always
means no.'

‘It means
we'll see
,' Rebecca repeated, eyeing her youngest firmly. Sarah refused to back down.

‘You said that about getting a horse, too, remember
?
' she pointed out.

‘You did, Mum,' Natalie added with an apologetic grimace.

Great! Now the kids are even ganging up on me
. Rebecca looked at Seb, who was quietly eating and obviously enjoying the entertainment. ‘Don't look so smug. If there's any camping, you're going to be there too – or maybe, you can just take them on your own,' she threatened, receiving a small measure of satisfaction when the grin vanished from his face at the thought of dealing with two children all by himself.

‘Hey, I think the damper's ready,' he said quickly, diverting the girls' attention and saving himself from further volunteering duties.

They finished off their lunch with damper, strawberry jam and cream – a perfect ending. With full tummies and the warm sun on their backs, they lounged around to let their lunch settle, although, too soon, the girls began to get antsy, ready for some more action.

‘Can we climb the trees for a while, Mum?' Natalie asked as she pulled a dry T-shirt over her head and shook out her wet swimmers.

‘See?' Rebecca said in a mock-haughty tone for Seb's benefit. ‘My kids are not completely deprived of outdoor experiences. They like to climb trees.' She nodded to seal the argument, before turning back to her children. ‘Sure you can.'
Ha!
See? I don't always wrap my kids up in cotton wool, Mr Hard-arse Drill Sergeant!
But when she heard his next words, she suddenly wished she could call back her permission.

‘There's some big ones just over there,' Seb helpfully pointed out, deliberately avoiding Bec's small frown of concern and leading them off towards the big fig trees further back from the river bank.

He'd forgotten how much fun a simple walk through the bush could be. Every tree, every spot, held a memory from a time so far removed from his present-day life that it felt as though it belonged to someone else. For the first time in ages, he thought of Marty and he didn't feel the clench of dread in his gut that usually followed.

‘Mum, there's an old cubby house up there,' Sarah yelled, bounding about her mother's heels like an excited puppy.

‘Who do you think built it?' Natalie whispered as she tilted her head backwards to look up at the remains of a platform.

‘I did,' Seb told them. ‘Well, me and Mar– a friend of mine when we were kids,' he amended smoothly.

‘Really?' Natalie asked, her big dark eyes looking up at him in awe.

‘Yep.' He couldn't help the grin that spread across his face at the wide-eyed look, and when he felt his guard waver, he knew he was in serious trouble. ‘You wanna climb up?'

‘Ah, I don't know if that's such a good idea. It might fall apart – it looks kind of … old,' Bec said doubtfully.