Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“I met him in London. It was just a random night out when I was home on leave. Some pub in Soho a mate had dragged me to.”
The memory surfaced with unexpected clarity. The crowded bar, the wall of noise, Phil’s smile cutting through it all. Jake’s thumb traced the rim of his glass, round and round, the only outward sign of the tension building up inside him.
“He was a software engineer. One of those jobs you can do from anywhere with a decent internet connection.” Jake stared into the fire, unwilling to see whatever expression might be crossing Ru’s face.
“He was smart and quick witted. Fun to be with. And so different to the men I spent my life around. Which should have been a clue,” he added, bitterness tainting his words.
“How long were you together?”
“Five years in total.” Jake’s grip tightened on the glass again, before he forced himself to relax. “Good years, mostly. Or I thought they were.”
The rain surged briefly against the window, a sudden increase in intensity before settling back into its steady rhythm. Jake found himself focusing on the sound, using it to anchor himself in the present rather than the past he was forcing himself to revisit.
“My deployments were hard on him,” he continued, finding it easier to speak to the flames than to meet Ru’s gaze. “I was away for months at a time, our contact was necessarily limited. There was no way for him to know if I was safe.”
He swirled the spirit, creating a small whirlpool.
“I can’t blame him for that part. It’s a lot to ask of someone.
The waiting, and the not knowing. He used to say it was destroying him,” Jake said quietly, remembering the late night phone calls, the tense video chats.
“He said that every time I left, he’d wonder if it’d be the time I didn’t come back.
If—if he’d get that knock on the door, the official visit those left behind dreaded. ”
Jake abandoned his glass and rubbed his hands down his face. Pain bloomed in his chest as the story he’d believed he’d never tell was dragged out of the deep, dark place he’d confined it to. The urge to push it back was strong, but Ru deserved some kind of answer even if it did rip Jake to shreds.
“We’d been together for about a year when he first brought up the subject of me leaving the service.
” Jake’s jaw tightened against the memory.
“He said we could never build a real life together with me disappearing for months at a time, that we couldn’t plan a future around deployments and security clearances.
Almost from the moment we met, he’d talked about getting out of London.
” Jake forced himself to meet Ru’s gaze.
“He claimed he was tired of the city, of the noise, the pollution, and the constant pressure. Said he wanted something better, somewhere better. And that together, we could have that.”
Jake ground his teeth, his jaw cracking. He grabbed the bottle and sloshed some of the whisky in his glass. Taking a deep mouthful, he closed his eyes against the hot, alcoholic burn. “The countryside, he said. Somewhere open, wild. A complete change.”
Jake slammed his glass on the table, shoving it away. In front of the fire, Monty jumped up onto all fours, ears pricking, and on full alert. Jake bent forward, petting the dog, who settled down once more.
“So there it was. It was an ultimatum. Leave the service. Start fresh together. Or stay in, keep the life I’d built, and watch our relationship crumble under the strain.”
“You were given an impossible choice. Whatever you decided, it’d have torn you in two.”
“It did,” Jake said quietly. “Fifteen years in. First my regiment, then making it into the SAS. I was a part of something that mattered. It was never just a job, because something like that couldn’t be.
It was family, it was brotherhood. It was everything to me.
And I was being asked to turn my back on it all. ”
Jake fell silent, recalling the weight of the decision he’d been forced to make.
Now, like then, it felt visceral as everything he’d locked away and refused to think about came hurtling back towards him.
The sleepless nights as he’d weighed his career against the man he loved.
Because when you loved someone, truly loved them, how could you keep doing something that caused them such pain?
“You made the decision you believed to be right.”
Jake looked up, meeting Ru’s eye. He’d couldn’t miss the question beneath the statement: would you make the same choice again?
“I can’t even begin to tell you what it cost me, in here.
” Jake thumped a fist to his chest. “But I had to decide, one way or another. So I bought this place. Somewhere open and wild. Phil’s complete fucking change.
” He didn’t bother trying to keep the bitterness from his voice.
“When faced with the reality of what he’d claimed to want, he wasn’t quite so keen.
There’s no upmarket little village ten minutes down the road selling pumpkin ravioli and macchiatos. ”
Jake raked his nails through his hair. That wasn’t completely fair. Phil had relocated his work, happy to only have to travel to London, to the office, once a month. The man Jake had given everything up for had settled in. Or so Jake thought.
“As soon as we moved in, I started the business.” He glanced around the room, encompassing the life he’d built from the ashes of his military career. “I threw my back into it as I thought we were building a new life together.”
The next part was the hardest. Jake stood abruptly, needing movement, needing distance. He crossed to the window.
“I kept journals,” he said, the words coming slower now as he stared into the night.
“Had done since my first deployment. Observations and thoughts. Processing the things I’d seen and done.
Some of it, I knew, should never have reached the page because I was flying close to breaching the Official Secrets Act.
” He paused. “It was private and personal, and helped me deal with stuff. None of it was ever meant for anyone else.”
The silence in the living room was absolute, even the rain seeming to pause its hammering against the window. Jake made his way back to the sofa.
“Phil knew they existed. He also knew they were off-limits.” Jake’s voice had dropped to nearly a whisper, the words dragged unwillingly from some dark place he rarely acknowledged even to himself.
“I kept them in an old tin box. The lock was broken, but never thought, never imagined, I’d need to lock them up, or hide them from him. ”
“He read them.”
A statement, not a question. Jake nodded.
“We had some of his friends up for a weekend.” Jake’s throat worked as he swallowed.
“It was Friday night, and there’d been too much booze.
One of them made some comment about ‘Jake’s war stories’, mentioning something specific from Helmand.
Something I’d never told anyone except the pages in those journals.
I thought I’d misheard at first. Then another one of Phil’s friends joined in, mentioned a mission that had gone wrong.
Details no one could have known.” Jake’s voice had gone flat.
“Phil tried to change the subject, but it was too late. He’d been caught out gossiping.
I could see it in his face when I looked at him. Guilt, but no shame.”
“Fucking hell.”
Jake barked out a hard, humourless laugh. “Yeah, you can say that again.”
“What did you do?”
“I confronted him, later, when everyone had gone to bed. He didn’t even try and deny he’d read them.
He said they were fascinating, that I should contact the big publishing houses.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, he thought I was some kind of bloody Andy McNab.
He either didn’t get what he’d done wrong or he was refusing to admit it, to both himself and me.
It wasn’t a big deal. That’s what he said, that it wasn’t a big deal. ”
Jake hands bunched into tight fists, his nails digging deep into his palms as he relived the moment when everything he’d given up his life in the forces for began to wither and die.
“He’d been reading them for months, he said he was trying to understand me better, to ‘bridge the gap’ between my military life and our relationship.”
He looked up at Ru, at his sombre, serious expression, at the bruises across his nose that, though still livid, were beginning to fade, and at the compassion in his big grey eyes. Jake’s fists relaxed as something caught in his heart.
“When I told him those journals were the one thing I’d asked him to respect as private, he got defensive,” Jake said quietly. “He said I was overreacting, that partners shouldn’t have secrets. That if I trusted him, I wouldn’t be so upset about him reading my private thoughts.”
“Sounds like emotional manipulation to me. Kind of know what that’s like.” Ru’s lips curved downwards.
“My trust in him was gone after that. He couldn’t seem to get it, the way he’d violated a boundary, then tried to make it my fault for having the boundary in the first place.”
“Betrayal’s the worse kind of infidelity. There’s no way back from that.” No platitudes, just a straightforward statement of fact eased the tightness inside of Jake. “Especially with something so utterly personal.”
Jake paused, as he looked back over the years. Licking his parched lips, he continued.
“Things fell apart from there. Slowly at first, then all at once. He started complaining about living here. It was too isolated, too quiet, there was no ‘culture.’ The internet connection wasn’t fast enough for his work.
The nearest decent coffee shop was a good twenty miles away.
” A bitter smile twisted Jake’s mouth. “All the things about a life in the country he’d claimed to want when we were in London were suddenly the things he couldn’t stand. ”
“Do—do you think there was more to it? Other than him trashing your trust in him?”
“Are you asking if there was somebody else?”
“Sorry, I shouldn’t…”
“It would have been a lot easier if that’d been the case.
I think. But no. I’m sure about that. It’s not like there’s much opportunity around here.
Or not unless you have an unhealthy interest in sheep or ponies.
” Their eyes met, tiny smiles lifting both their lips for just the briefest of moments.
“The problem was that he’d destroyed my trust in him, trashed it like you say, but it also made me realise that we wanted fundamentally different things. That maybe we always had.”
He looked away again, finding it easier to continue without the weight of Ru’s gaze.
“We lasted about eighteen months, from when we moved in. I came home after a stint of rough camping with clients, and he was packing. He said he couldn’t do it anymore.
The isolation, the quiet, being so far from what he called real life, blaming everything except the one thing that had caused the rot in the first place.
He told me he was going back to London.”
Jake fell silent, remembering the cold finality of that moment. Phil’s suitcases by the door, and his undisguised relief to be leaving.
“He gave me his new address. To forward on any post even though he’d set up a redirect.
” Jake stared into the distance as he looked back over those last moments.
“He had a new job lined up and a flat already arranged. It was all very neat and well planned. He bundled everything into his car and drove off. I didn’t argue, didn’t beg him to stay, I just watched him go.
So that’s it.” His voice was laced with a weariness that went bone-deep.
“I’d given up everything I’d spent fifteen years building.
I left the life I loved and the purpose I’d found for a relationship that wasn’t what I thought it was.
For someone who turned out to be someone I didn’t know, and who never actually wanted the life he said he did. ”
Silence wound its way around them, broken only by the sound of the rain hitting the windows. Jake kept his eyes on his hands, unable to look at Ru, his story of failure leaving him stripped naked.
“It’s not easy, is it, feeling like you’ve been made a fool of. That what you thought was solid ground under your feet was really nothing more than shifting sand. Kind of looks like we’re two of a kind.”
“It’s not something I talk about,” Jake said, the words rough at the edges. “Ever.”
“I understand why. Thank you. For trusting me enough to tell me.”
Jake glanced up briefly, before looking away again. “I needed to explain. About how I’ve been, since we… That was the first time I opened myself up…” And it scared me to death. “I’m sorry. About how I’ve been. It’s not you, it’s me.”
“As the saying goes.”
Jake winced at the sharpness in Ru’s voice, but Christ, could he blame him? “I didn’t mean to shut you out. I’m not used to having to think of others. Reckon I’ve been on my own for too long.”
Alone. And lonely. His solitude had allowed him to lick his wounds in private after Phil had gone. He’d needed that time to heal as best he could, but it had become ingrained, a habit. A habit Ru’s presence had disrupted, challenging him from the moment he’d found him huddled in the barn.
“What happens now?”
Jake met Ru’s gaze. “I’ve got no bloody idea.”
Ru snorted. “You and me both.”
Jake watched as Ru hugged his knees to his chest and gazed into the fire, lost in the flames.
They both had a lot to think about. There had been no point in lying.
Jake had no clue as to what came next. He didn’t know if he was capable of being more than what he’d become since Phil had left.
Maybe it was time to try, to find out, but as he watched Ru stare into the flames, Jake didn’t think he’d ever been as terrified as he was now.