Page 35 of The Soldier's Homecoming

“And what exactly is that meant to mean?”

The tears were gone now, only to be replaced by a strong, calm anger that made him realize why she was so good at her job. Why his young wife had made sergeant. Why the United States Army was so darn keen to keep her in their service.

“I take it you were pretty easy the night you cheated on me.” She spat the words at him now. “Or have you forgotten about that already? Forgotten that when all we had was trust, when I was on the other side of the world and couldn’t do anything about it, you decided to throw our marriage away like it wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.”

“How dare you.” His body was shaking. “How dare you make out like our marriage means nothing to me?”

“HowdareI?” Penny jumped to her feet then. “I have never been unfaithful, Daniel. In all the years we’ve been together, I have never once been tempted by another man.”

They glared at one another. Yeah, he’d done something stupid, hated that he’d hurt her, but she didn’t understand. He hated himself for what he’d done. But he was hurting, too.

“You left me here, Penny. You left me and I had nothing.”

She laughed. “Nothing? You had our daughter, you had your family and you had your job.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. Sad now instead of angry. “I had no wife, I had to figure out how to look after a four-year-old girl on my own, and I had to deal with losing my identity. The navy had been my whole life, Penny, and it would have been different to give that up and come home to you. But it was the first time in my life that I’ve ever felt alone. Every time we spoke I pretended like everything was okay, but it wasn’t. I’ve never felt so sad and alone in all my life, okay? But I wanted to shield you from it and so I suffered on my own. I kept my mouth shut.”

She was still glaring at him, but she didn’t say a thing.

“Yeah, I stuffed up, but I would do anything to take that back. I’ve never, ever wanted to hurt you, and if I hadn’t been so damn drunk, so miserable, so lonely, I…”

“Am I meant to feel sorry for you?”

He reached for her hand, wanting this fight to be over. Wanting her to understand. Not knowing what to say or how to say it. Wishing he’d kept it all to himself again.

“If I could take it back. I would. I know it was wrong, but at the time, hell, I don’t know. I felt like I was sinking, at the bottom of a well with no hope of fighting my way to the top. I was stupid-drunk, I know that’s no excuse, but I swear on my life that I’ll never, ever hurt you again.”

“My mother fell pregnant with me to a man she thought loved her. And what did he do once she told him? He left her. Because he had a wife he’d never told her about.” She crossed her arms tightly across her chest. “I grew up without a father as the result of infidelity. Your own father cheated on your mother and left you without a dad to rely on.”

He stared at her.

“Don’t ever compare me to my father” He heard the coolness of his tone but was powerless to stop it. He despised the man.

“I grew up believing that I’d never find a man I could trust. That I could love. Because of what my mother had told me about my own father.” Tears started to fall down her cheeks again as she spoke. “But then I met you, Daniel, and I trusted you. I gave you my heart and never once doubted your love, or that you’d always be there for me. I loved you so much that it hurt sometimes, and now I have to think about that man whom I trusted so much with another woman. With his arms, his hands,his lipson another woman’s. And it’s something I don’t know how to forget.”

“I’m sorry, Penny. I know I’ve hurt you, but…”

“Screw you, Daniel.”

Penny spun around, his sweater falling from her shoulders, hair swinging as she flung the door open.

He stood still. He couldn’t do anything else.

In the ten years he’d been with Penny, in all that time of knowing her, he’d never seen such anger in her gaze. Never felt the sting like a slap to his cheek of Penny firing such venom-laced words at him.

Never. Not as a nineteen-year-old and not as a grown woman.

Daniel bent to retrieve his sweater, pulled it on then let himself out the gate. He needed to take a walk, even just down the street.

And he needed to give Penny some breathing space to gather her own thoughts, too.

Their discussion hadn’t gone well, but then he’d never really expected it to,

Although he’d never thought it would be quite that bad.

Penny was furious.Mind-jarring, body-shaking, wild kind of furious.

How dare he? How could he think that there was any excuse for the way he’d behaved? The way he’d hurt her?

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