Page 104 of Quiet Longing

And it was odd Charli noticed it because Steph never had. Then again, she’d rarely come to my office. Normally, she’d text me to come upstairs to hers.

Charli stood holding the frame in her hands, staring down at the moment captured in time, a brief period where it had felt like we’d belonged to each other. I’d just told her that summer was the best of my life, and then she’d agreed, saying it was her best summer, too, which meant I was currently wrangling with the urge to grab her, throw her down on my desk, and kiss her like I had last Friday night at the restaurant.

I hadn’t been able forget her taste nor stop thinking about how right it had felt to hold her in my arms. I knew her asking for that kiss didn’t necessarily mean she’d wantedme. Charli had been in a dark place, and the request had been her way of climbing out of it. I was a person she could be safe with. She could ask me for things without worrying about me ever asking for anything in return. I hoped she knew that.

After discovering her scumbag ex-husband had not only been coercively controlling her but violently beating her, too, I’d spent half the weekend trying to temper my rage and the other half looking the prick up. Jesse Miller was a criminal defencelawyer because,of course, he was. He was also a named partner at his law firm.

I’d forwarded his details to my ex-legion friend, Piotr, to see if he might be able to dig up some more info. I knew from experience that people who were violent towards their spouses or family members were often into other fucked up shit outside the home, and if anyone could find dirt on Jesse, it was Piotr. He hadn’t returned to an ordinary life after he’d left the legion, not like I had. Instead, he’d started working for Europol, and I only ever heard from him once or twice a year. Alongside his many other talents, Piotr was an adept hacker and could find information most regular internet users wouldn’t stumble across. He also had connections with various international government agencies, many of which I presumed were in the United States.

“Right,” I said, clearing my throat as I pushed away thoughts of murdering her ex-husband and brought my attention back to Charli and the picture. “Derek found a bunch of our old teenage photos when he was doing a clean out last year. He gave me that one.” I omitted the part where I’d purchased a special frame for it.

Charli held said frame in her hands, eyes wide as she took in the scene. Finally, her gaze flicked to mine. “You know, I can’t even remember this being taken.”

“It was the week before you went home,” I said then cleared my throat. “We were at the beach.”

“Right, now it’s coming back to me. We went to a little diner afterwards and got cheese fries.” She paused, her attention going to the other photos on the shelf, one of Mam and me when I’d been home from France to visit a few years before she’d passed and another with my cousins, Shay and Ross, and my uncle, Eugene.

“So, you decided to keep this in your office?” Her gaze searched mine, and a hard lump thickened in my throat.

I swallowed it down before answering, “As I said, it was a good summer for me. Good memories.”

“Because your mom finally divorced your dad?”

“That was a big part of it, yeah.”And you. It was a good summer because of you.

Charli nodded, her attention returning to the photo. “You were so cute back then. When you came into my aunt and uncle’s house that night a couple weeks ago, I hardly recognised you.”

I recognised you straight away. As soon I’d stepped through that door and saw a woman standing in the hallway, my heart gave a swift, hard thump, her name echoing in my mind.

Charli.

“You didn’t?”

She shrugged, looking shy. “You’ve changed a lot.”

The statement made me curious. “In what way?”

Charli handed the frame back to me, her fingers accidentally brushing mine. Her gaze flicked up, and a small smile shaped her lips as our eyes connected. I smiled back, my pulse ratcheting when her scent hit my nose. Sometimes I felt like I could happily drown in that scent. It wouldn’t be the worst way to go.

A second later, she withdrew her hand and returned to the seat in front of my desk, ending the moment. The faintest blush tinted her cheeks as her eyes lowered to her lap.

“Well, I guess, in certain ways you haven’t changed,” she said, answering my question. “Your personality is mostly how I remember it. You’re just older, a little wiser, maybe. You carry yourself with a lot more confidence, and you also look more, um …” She trailed off, and I started to smile.

“Are you trying to say I lost the puppy fat?”

Charli flushed harder. “Not that there was anything wrong with being a little chubby. Obviously, I liked how you looked back in the day.”

“Obviously,” I repeated and grinned, enjoying her rosy cheeks. It was a welcome change from her pale, wan complexion when she’d first arrived.

A beat of silence. The air between us thickened. Charli sniffed and glanced away before she continued, “I imagine your training when you joined the French Foreign Legion was intense. That probably helped a lot with weight loss. Did you … um, I mean, I remember your reasons for enlisting. I just wondered if it helped as you’d hoped?”

Charli’s expression was so sincere and open, but her question had me tensing. I knew what she was referring to. When I was a kid, I’d gotten it into my head that training to become a soldier would help me eradicate all the shit that had kept me awake at night. The stuff that had kept me scared all the time. And in a sense, it had. Having a purpose and being a part of something bigger than myself had made me feel more at ease in my own skin. And knowing how to defend myself against danger had made me confident when I was out in the world. But it had also been a rudimentary existence. Everything had been duty and routine. There had been no softness or comfort, and I’d had to develop a hard shell to survive.

I ran a hand over my jaw. “In a way, yes. But in other ways, no.” She blinked, looking both surprised and curious. Memories filled my head, those terrifying first few days after I’d presented myself at the recruitment office in Aubagne. There’d been about ten other blokes with me that day, and only four of us had gotten through the initial tests. It had been a good thing I’d started working out with Derek because one of the tests involved running almost two miles in less than twelve minutes.

Once I’d managed that and passed the medical, the other lads, many of them from Eastern Europe or further afield, and me had had our heads shaved. I remembered the feeling of freedom like shaving off all my hair symbolised a new start. A newme. Being assigned a new identity helped, too, as my father’s name in the recruitment documents had been changed to the randomly selected “Gabriel.” I’d felt untethered from my past, and it had been incredibly liberating.

But then things had gotten harder. We’d been sent off to Toulouse for four months of initial training. I’d had a decent amount of French since I’d studied it at school, but we’d also had to attend classes to become fluent. I’d never forget the day Piotr got punched for repeated failed attempts at pronouncing the wordChirurgien, which meant surgeon. I was pretty sure our superior officer introduced the word to our lesson on purpose because it was particularly difficult for foreigners to pronounce.

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