Jonas looked over at Shannyn, watching her bite her lip, worrying it. She’d changed. He hadn’t realized how much when they first re-met. But she was a mother now. A mother to a child. A child he’d never known existed. His child. It was hard to reconcile the fun-loving girl he remembered with this woman who seemed so remote and unfeeling. Because not telling him was cold. She’d never convince him otherwise.
How could she have done that to him? He wanted to reach out and shake her, demand to know what she’d been thinking. Hear her paltry justifications.
Instead he rubbed a hand over his face, struck by the image of a curly-haired poppet with his eyes, vibrant and excited. A huge argument wouldn’t accomplish anything, and he knew it. But keeping his cool outwardly didn’t stop the shock or the anger pulsing through him.
He’d never wanted to be a father. But finding out he was one, knowing she’d kept it a secret, made his blood boil. What had he ever done that was so bad she thought to punish him in this way? The fact that she wouldn’t have said anything if she hadn’t been caught only fuelled his anger.
“You shouldn’t have done it,” he finally ground out through his teeth. He kept his voice as level as he could; too many people were around, and he didn’t want to make a huge spectacle. “You had no right to deny me my own child.”
Shannyn moved a step or two closer. “I can explain.”
Jonas stared out over the river. How much time had he spent in this very water during his training? How many times had they gone boating, or swimming, feeling the cold slickness of the water on each other’s skin? How had things gotten to this point? How could it be that they were in this place again, strangers dealing with something as intimate as a shared child?
His heart pounded as memories flooded back, unfaded by time. When had Emma been conceived? On a day like today? Years ago, on an afternoon like this, he would have found a secluded spot downriver. He would have made love to her there in the heat of afternoon. Things had burned hot between them from the very beginning. And fires that burned hot usually were extinguished just as quickly.
Only it hadn’t. It had smoldered all this time in his memories of her.
He had good memories. Memories of the two of them together during a summer that had been more than a fling. Memories he’d kept tucked away, bringing them out only when the pressure got to be too much. Memories that were now suddenly tarnished by a gigantic lie.
“Nothing you can say will justify keeping this from me.”
“Please Jonas, just hear me out.”
“Hear you out? What can you possibly say that will make this right? I left for Edmonton six years ago! And you knew you were carrying my child and let me go anyway, none the wiser!”
His hand automatically found his thigh, rubbing it absently as he had a way of doing since his injury.
“I didn’t know I was pregnant when you left.”
The defense rang false. “Don’t give me that. You would have found out within a few weeks. You knew where I was stationed, knew my battalion. You could have gotten in touch if you’d wanted.”
She came closer and sat on the opposite end of the bench. “You’re right. It was my choice not to tell you.”
“Why?” He thought briefly of how his grandmother would have loved seeing her great-granddaughter, her namesake, and the single word came out thick with emotion as anger and loss poured through him in waves. It was a struggle to keep his voice steady and low. He was glad she was sitting closer, so not every person wandering the walking path could hear the sordid details.
“There were lots of reasons. For one, you left me. You never once said you wanted me with you. I knew if I told you and you came back, it would be out of obligation and not a…deeper emotion.”
“I had my reasons,” he bit out. He knew she was referring to love. He hadn’t said it back then, hadn’t wanted to.
“I’m not saying you were wrong. I’m saying what I based my decision on. Let’s face it. If you’d wanted more from me, you could have called. Or sent a letter. You left and I never heard from you again.”
“You’re blaming me?” He couldn’t keep the incredulity out of his voice. Somehow she was making this his fault? Just because he hadn’t said I love you? He’d lost his daughter for five years because she felt spurned?
“No, Jonas, of course not.” Her words came faster, and he sensed her desperation. “But what I am saying is that our situation, our personal status, wasn’t one that supported the idea of us and a baby. I knew you didn’t want marriage and a family. And I wasn’t about to put Emma through what I went through as a kid. Divorce sucks.”
She sighed and softened her tone. “But that wasn’t the only factor.”
“Go on.”
He met her eyes as she folded her hands in her lap. Good God, she was beautiful. Maybe even more so now than she’d been then. Her blond, streaked hair was gathered up in a clip, the ends falling in artful disarray. Her eyes were blue and clear as a morning sky over the Arabian Sea. Her skin was sun-kissed and dotted with light freckles.
He’d been enchanted back then, not knowing she’d have the power to do something like this to him. It irked him to find that he still responded to her girl-next-door sort of beauty, even when he was as angry as he’d ever been in his life.
“Oh Jonas, look at you,” she lamented, her lips downturned as she struggled to explain. “You were young, we both were. You were in the military, on the fast track to Special Forces. I knew it. You would be moving around all the time or deployed. And what would we do when you were gone for months at a time? Wait for you to come back, perhaps more of a stranger each time? A part-time father for a daughter who didn’t understand why Daddy wasn’t around? Or worse—what if you didn’t come back at all? I didn’t want to give my daughter a father only to have him ripped away from her in some foreign country.”
“So you took her away from me. Denied me the chance to know my own flesh and blood.”
“I protected her!”
”From me! From her father!”
“Not from who you were! From what you were!”
Heads turned in their direction as their voices raised. She took a deep breath, spoke more calmly and tried a different tack. “Did you want to be a father then? Be honest.”
He paused, clamping his lips together. Of course he hadn’t. He’d been twenty-two, at a brand-new posting with a new stripe on his sleeve. He’d been well on his way to becoming the best shot in the regiment. He had his eye set on deployment and making his mark. And as much as he’d cared for Shannyn, the last thing he’d wanted was to be tied to a wife. A family. He’d had things to accomplish first. A wife and children had no place in that world.
“That doesn’t mean I didn’t have a right to know.”
She turned away so she was staring at the lighthouse in the distance. “I did what I thought was best for my daughter.”
“Our daughter.”
Even saying it felt foreign on his tongue.
How had his life come to this? Back where he started? He stretched out his leg, trying to relieve the ache that settled in his quadricep. Why couldn’t things have just stayed the same? Being with the battalion. Doing what he did best. Being the best.
He stared ahead. He could see Chris’s face before him still, wide and smiling after cracking some joke. The two of them running laps around the compound before the desert got too hot to breathe. The quiet, reassuring sound of his voice while Jonas stared through the scope.
Their last mission.
The taste of dust was everywhere.
Parker’s voice was low beside him telling him to hold his shot. The midday sun beat down harshly, and Jonas wondered if it was possible to bake in one’s own skin. He held his position; sweat trickled down his neck, sticking to his skin, but he didn’t move a single muscle. Hadn’t moved for the last three hours, twenty-seven minutes and fifteen seconds. “We’ve got someone at the door, Park.”
“Not yet.”
God forsaken desert, Jonas thought, biding his time. He’d been in the desert long enough that he was sick and tired of it. There were nights when he lay awake for hours, thinking of home. Of cold beer in a sports bar and a bacon cheeseburger, instead of army chow and warm water from his canteen. Instead of dusty roads and the same unending landscape as he traveled from assignment to assignment. At least he had Chris Parker to keep him from going crazy.
“Jonas? Jonas, are you okay?”
Shannyn’s voice broke through and he turned his head slowly, surprised to see her sitting there beside him. She reached out to touch his arm and he flinched. She drew her hand back automatically, her blue eyes suddenly troubled.
“I’m fine,” he answered roughly. The flashes of memory were happening more and more frequently, and always at the strangest times. He couldn’t seem to control them, and he frowned. They were always, always of that one day. Bits and pieces here and there that hit without warning. Leaving him feeling raw and exposed and it took him some time to reestablish himself with his surroundings.
“You don’t look fine.” Her voice was low with concern. He hated that tone. Hated it every time someone looked at him the way Shannyn was looking at him now. As if he didn’t quite make sense.
“I said I’m fine!” he snapped, rising to his feet and taking a half dozen steps to get away from her. Faces turned again in his direction, and he took deep breaths to try to get his heart rate to return to normal. He wished the memories would all go away so he could get on with what was left of his life. Only now that too was thrown into chaos by learning he was somebody’s father.
Shannyn stared after him, warning bells pealing madly in her head. What was going on?
They’d been talking and then suddenly he’d gone. His eyes had blanked and every muscle in his body had stilled. It had been eerie, watching him dissociate, until she realized his breathing was accelerating.
She’d tried to call him back, and the empty stare she’d seen before he came to frightened her more than anything else.
What in the world had happened to him?
She was getting in far deeper than she cared to. Now that he knew Emma was his, naturally he’d assert his rights and demand to see her. She couldn’t deny him that now. And seeing him this way, knowing something was horribly wrong, she could already feel herself being drawn in. Wanting to help him almost as much as she wanted him gone.
What if he shouted this way at Emma?
When he turned back, she fortified herself with all the courage she could muster. “This is a perfect example of why I didn’t tell you. Emma is five years old, Jonas. She’s not going to understand if you blank out and then shout at her. She’s not equipped for that.”
She wanted to say that even as an adult, she didn’t understand him either, but right now the focus had to be off her own feelings and on keeping Emma safe and happy.
“I have a right to see her. She has a right to know me.”
“Why is this so important to you? Why can’t you just let it go?”
“Because she’s my daughter. My responsibility.” The earlier flash dissipated. “I’m not the kind of man who shirks responsibility. I thought you understood that much about me.”
“That’s what I’m saying.” Shannyn implored him with her hands. She did understand. As much as she was hurt that he’d left her, she’d admired him for his dedication to what he considered his duty. And he would have been dutiful to Emma too, and it would have broken her heart little by little to know that he was staying for that reason and not of his own free will. Would have destroyed her to come home one day to a man who wanted out. Who wanted a life away from her and Emma. She never wanted Emma to feel abandoned and unloved the way she had growing up.
“You would have stayed involved out of responsibility, not out of any lasting affection.”
Jonas looked around them. Now that the shouting was over, no one seemed particularly interested in their exchange, no one noticed anything out of the ordinary. People simply walked along the path, enjoying the early summer day, the mellow heat, fresh green of the grass and leaves. Everything seemed to spin in a slow circle. The desert, Germany, the base, all spiraling outside of here. A perfect world around him while he felt trapped in chaos. His whole world was changing. It didn’t seem real.
He clung to the one thing he hoped she might understand, searching for common ground that would anchor him to this unreal situation. “Shannyn, you’ve brought her up alone. I could have helped.”
“With child support.” Her lips thinned to a straight line.
“Well, yes.”
Her short laugh surprised him. “And your money would have made it all right.”
“It might have lessened your financial strain. It couldn’t have been easy.”
“We’ve done just fine, thank you.”
Jonas stared hard at her. Dismissive. Her tone, her body language…it was all dismissive. He wasn’t wanted or required here. God, he wasn’t really wanted or required anywhere anymore. In a world of do-ers, he was now redundant. What had once been his purpose was gone. And he’d never thought about what he’d do when it was over. He’d always thought he’d keep doing what he was doing until he died on some battlefield. He certainly hadn’t expected coming home with a gimp leg, leaving him good for next-to-nothing.
He saw the talent in the next wave of elite soldiers and hated that he wasn’t one of them any more. Put out to pasture at the ripe old age of twenty-eight. It didn’t seem fair. He’d lost his career and now discovered he’d lost a family he hadn’t even known he had.
“I want to see her.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
His eyes blazed. “Shannyn, you can’t keep me from my own daughter.”
“I’ll do what I have to, to keep her safe and happy.”
“And you think I’d threaten that?”
“She doesn’t need a temporary dad who’ll leave once he satisfies his curiosity.”
That was what she thought of him then. It showed how little she knew. How far apart they were.
“Look at me,” he whispered stridently. “Does it look like I’m going anywhere? You’ve seen my file, right? Active duty is a long shot at best, out of my realm of possibility more likely, according to the doctors.”
He stepped closer, close enough that she had to tilt her neck sharply to look into his eyes. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, so close he could almost feel it against his. His gaze fell to her lips, and they opened slightly. How he could despise her so much right now and still want to kiss her was beyond him.
“I’m obviously not in danger anymore. So tell me, Shannyn. What is it you’re really afraid of?”