Chapter 468
[ 575 words ]
Chapter 468:
The intensity of his stare made her skin prickle, but she forced herself to walk forward, letting the tent flap fall shut behind her, sealing them in. She stopped on the other side of the central table, meeting his gaze. The ache in her chest was still there, but so was a stubborn, clear-eyed resolve: she hadn’t come to beg forgiveness for trusting him. She’d come because some things couldn’t be left to fester, no matter how much it hurt to be the one who spoke first.
“Can we talk?” she asked quietly. Her voice was steady, but she couldn’t keep a hint of her lingering hurt from bleeding through.
He remained silent, a statue carved from fury and exhaustion. She saw something flicker in his eyes, a crack in the ice, and for a heartbeat, she thought she glimpsed something more than anger. Regret, maybe. Or a clumsy, aching remorse that he didn’t know how to voice. His jaw worked, as if he were chewing on words that refused to come.
He looked past her once, toward the tent flap K.C. had escaped through, and the realization settled over his face like a shadow. He had driven a good officer out of his own command tent because he had not been able to control what Caroline’s calm had done to him. That, more than anything, seemed to strip some of the steel from him.
After a moment that stretched into an eternity, he finally spoke, his voice rough and scraped raw. “Caroline.” Just her name. Then, lower: “I was out of line.”
The words were torn from his throat. They hung in the air between them, so unexpected that Caroline’s carefully prepared arguments dissolved into nothing. She just stared at him, speechless.
𝘜𝘱𝘥𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘴 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘬 𝘰𝘯 𝘨𝘢𝘭𝘯𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘴.𝘤𝘰𝘮
He held her gaze, the ice in his eyes cracking to reveal a deep, raw remorse. “I shouldn’t have lost my temper in the mess hall. I shouldn’t have made a spectacle of it. And I shouldn’t have left you sitting there with everyone staring at you.”
He didn’t mention Ashley. He didn’t blame her calmness. He was apologizing only for his own loss of control.
The dam of her resolve broke. A wave of warmth washed through her, softening the tight knot of anxiety in her stomach. He had met her halfway. More than halfway.
She shook her head. “I was wrong, too.”
He did not reach for her hand. His left hand was still splinted, the fingers too swollen to curl naturally, and his right arm remained trapped beneath the brace. Instead, he shifted one step closer, stopping just short of touching her, as if discipline were the only thing keeping him from closing the distance.
“No,” he said, his voice low and controlled, though the control was costing him. “It was my fault. I saw you looking so calm, and I let myself read it the worst possible way.”
He had finally said it. The core of it.
“Because I trust you,” she countered, her voice gaining strength. “My trust in you makes you angry?”
A look of genuine strain crossed his face. He closed his eyes for a brief second. When he opened them again, the colonel was still there: restrained, upright, refusing to beg. But the man beneath him was visible now, wounded and too proud to ask cleanly for what he needed.
“No,” he said. “Your trust is not the problem.” His throat moved once. “The problem is that I wanted it to cost you something.”
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