“Hey, you don’t have to tell me, if it makes you feel bad. I just wanted to understand.”
She was giving him a way out, and maybe he should take it, but now he found he wanted to tell her. Wanted her to understand a little of who he was and why he would never be the man she thought he could be. He sat back and thought about where to start. “I had a sister. She was ten years younger than me. When I was seventeen, she was taken into care and eventually adopted, and I could do fuck all to stop it.”
She reached out and rested a hand on his. “I’m sorry, Josh. Were you close?”
“I brought her up from the moment she was born.” He could still remember the feel of her tiny body in his arms as his mum had shoved the baby at him when she got home from the hospital. “Just stop it crying,” she’d said. And somehow he had. From then on, he’d done everything for her. “My mum was a total screw up. Men, alcohol, drugs. Name a vice and she was into it. She wasn’t interested in a baby, so it sort of fell to me. But from the moment I saw her… Evie was the sweetest, and I didn’t mind.”
“Evie? That’s the tattoo you have on your arm. Your sister?”
“Who did you think it was—another woman? Evie saved me. At ten, I was doing a great job of following in my mum’s footsteps. I thought I was a total badass. I’d have probably been in juvie before I was eleven. Evie straightened me out, made me see there were things worth working for.”
“I bet you were a cute little boy.”
He snorted. “I was a monster. But I changed. She made me take responsibility. I thought she was someone I could love unconditionally.” And look how well that had fucking turned out.
“What happened?”
“My mum met this guy. Apparently, he didn’t like kids, so she got rid of the problem. Handed her over to social services. I begged her not to, told her I’d look after Evie. She wouldn’t even know she was there. She laughed at me. I can still remember Evie’s face when they took her away.”
“I hate your mother.” She sounded so passionate.
“I went to see social services. They told me it was impossible. I was a seventeen-year-old-kid, with no money, no job, no education—I’d missed a lot of school—and a police record for shoplifting. It was often the only way I could get the stuff Evie needed. Anyway, Mum had already signed the papers. Evie was put up for adoption, and that was that.”
He risked a glance at her face, not wanting to see her pity. She blinked away a tear. She was such a softie.
“And I joined the army. It seemed as good a place as any and my options were limited. But I liked it. Loved the order, knowing what I was supposed to do and when. I was good, and I made sergeant.”
“And you didn’t see Evie?”
“Social services thought it was best. Give her a clean start. Maybe they were right.” He shrugged. One minute she’d been his whole life, the next she was gone completely. “Anyway, I took a sniper bullet in Afghanistan. Just over my heart.” He rubbed at the spot where he could still feel the raised scar. “I was about to be discharged, and I had no ties—my girlfriend at the time had just dumped me.”
“Why?”
“She wanted more, and I wasn’t ready to give it. She said I was a commitment-phobe, and she was right. Families fuck you up.”
“Tell me about it,” she said morosely. “So what happened next? How did you end up marrying me?”
“Jamie Frobisher was my commanding officer. He knew I was at a loose end. He approached me when I came out of the hospital. Said he had a friend who needed help, and that I could give it. He named a pretty impressive sum of money. And I had this idea. At seventeen, I’d had nothing. I couldn’t fight the system. But with that much money, I could get a private investigator to find Evie, and I could hire a lawyer and try to get custody or at least visiting rights.”
“Did he find her?”
“Yeah.”
“But you didn’t get custody. Oh Josh, I’m sorry.”