Page 37 of 72 Hours

He wasn’t listening. “I wasn’t much support to you, was I? I lost sight of it all. You suffered because of me, as well as suffering yourself.” His eyes shone in the darkness with a vivid fierceness. “I never meant you to.”

I stared at him, seeing the faint glow of reflected light around the shape of his rigid body. What the fuck was he going on about? “You were the one who was injured, Niall.”

He shook his head, a quick, dismissive movement. “My body was. But you were in shock. I didn’t understand your distress. I couldn’t see it.”

I leaned slightly towards him, fascinated. “You’ve never talked like this before.”

“I should have done. Joe told me a few home truths, only recently.”

I bristled; my whole body tensed. He must have felt it, but he continued on regardless. There was a strange wildness to his tone, like he was running towards a cliff, and he knew damned well he was heading for the edge, but he didn’t slow down. “He told me there were other things I should have accounted for, not just the physical effects of the stabbing. He told me you would have been in shock, too, from the attack, from the investigation. I just saw your behaviour and took you at face value. I never credited anything beyond that.”

I didn’t know anything about that. I’d been in shock? Well of course I had, but that was my problem. Daresay it was some syndrome that the head shrinkers had in their textbooks, but right then, I didn’t have time for it, did I? Don’t make me think about it. I didn’t want to now, I didn’t want to then; I’d been a little insane. Maybe more than a little.

Am I the last to be honest with myself? I gazed at Niall like he was the only thread holding me to the planet. My carelessness nearly got you killed. Who’s missing the point, me or you?

He was oblivious. “There was a hell of a lot I didn’t understand, Tanner. I know that’s no excuse, but I don’t know how I was meant to keep up. You were always so difficult to capture, like quicksilver. Quick in your responses, in your reactions. I was always several steps behind. I felt like dross beside you.”

“Crap!” The cry was dragged from me. “It wasn’t you, it was me. I felt a fool set against you. Lightweight. You said as much yourself.”

“But I never meant it.” He sounded very weary.

“Maybe not. I provoked you.”

He nodded so slightly I only just caught it. “We brought out the worst in each other.”

I nodded, more to myself than him. “Sometimes.” He’d laid his hand on the sheet now, a few inches from my own. I looked down at it, at the splayed fingers, at the tendons tight with tension across the back of his hand.

“Yes,” he agreed. “Sometimes.”

And the best....

“And the best.” It was an uncanny echo of my thoughts. Astonishing that it should be Niall—Mr Silence-is-Golden—who now spoke so openly. “I just... wanted you, Tanner. Desperately. Always. In any way possible. Never stopped to think things through sensibly. Never spent enough time getting to know you properly.”

I tried to breathe normally, but my chest felt as if it were in a vice. He was speaking my own thoughts; he was laying open my own regrets.

He turned towards me again, a strong muscular shape in the half dark room. His voice had softened. “You look better. There’s colour in your face.”

“Soon back to normal,” I said too brightly. If some sniper doesn’t get me first.

“The fight,” he said. “I regret it. Bitterly.”

“Yeah.” So do I, my heart screamed at me, but the words were still in the mire of self-pity at the back of my throat. “But that’s all over now, isn’t it? We’re both agreed on that.” I stared again at the dapples of shadow running over the skin of his hand. I knew my own hand ached to reach out and touch him. What was happening here to me? To us? My head remembered the hurtful shit, yet my body ached from the sensual memory of him.

“It was just so painful, Tanner. Such confusion.” His voice had an unfamiliar break in it. “To see you withdrawing from me—to see your awkwardness with me.”

“Better we parted,” I said very quietly. I didn’t want to discuss this; I didn’t want to hear this. “Guess we could have chosen a slightly less public way to do it, though.”

“Yes,” he said. “Definitely would have been better without the audience.” He laughed, but with no real humour. Sighing, he shifted on the bed and the bandages fell to the floor with a soft thump, rolling over against the wall. His hand opened on top of the sheet beside me, then fisted up again.

“How did it get so bad, Niall?” I was surprised again to hear my words aloud.

“I can’t tell you.”

“No of course you damned well can’t—”

“No,” he interrupted. “Because you won’t let me. I can’t find the words like you can. Never could. I may have been too quick to judge you, but then you never gave me time to find out to the contrary. You’re so abrasive sometimes.”

I pursed my mouth. “You’re not exactly sweetness and light yourself.”