Page 30 of Duty Preserved

“Morning.”

Neither of us mentioned the giraffe or the conversation three nights ago or the silence that had lived between us since. I loaded my kit in the back and climbed into the passenger seat. He got behind the wheel and pulled out. The camp shrank in the mirror, and neither of us spoke.

The track ran east through open grassland for the first twenty minutes. Acacia trees stood at wide intervals, their flat canopies casting shadows that moved across the hood as we passed. A herd of impala lifted their heads and watched us go, then went back to grazing.

He broke the silence first.

“I owe you an apology.”

I looked at him. He kept his eyes on the track.

“The other night. What I said to you.” His jaw worked once, like the words cost him something. “I was an ass. You came to me with something you cared about, and I shut you down. That’s on me.”

I waited for the rest of it. The defense of his methods. The explanation for why he was right about the training. The part where he relitigated the argument and came out justified.

It didn’t come.

“That’s it?” I asked.

“That’s it. I was wrong in how I spoke to you. I’m sorry.”

He’d drawn the line so precisely it took me a second to find it. He wasn’t apologizing for the training or backing down from what he believed. He was apologizing for treating me like my concern didn’t matter. For the delivery, not the content.

“Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate that.”

He nodded once. The truck rattled over a washout in the track, and we both grabbed for the dash.

The silence after was different. Lighter. The air in the cab had lost the pressure that had been sitting in it since I’d climbed in, and I let myself breathe.

“I need to say something.” I pushed out the words.

“Go ahead.”

“Paris.” I let the word sit there. “I never apologized properly for that night. The whole disaster. The elevator and the—” I closed my eyes. “I am so sorry.”

“Sarah.” His voice was even. Almost gentle. “You had too much to drink, and something bad nearly happened to you. You don’t owe me an apology for any of it.”

“I threw up on you.”

“I’ve had worse on my shirt.”

“That’s not exactly comforting.”

He almost smiled. I saw the corner of his mouth move and then flatten. “Were you okay afterward? The next morning?”

“Honestly? I wanted to die. I woke up feeling like I’d been hit by a truck, and then I remembered what happened, and that was worse than the hangover.”

“The room service helped?”

I turned in my seat. “What room service?”

He glanced at me, then back to the track. Something crossed his face that might have been regret at having said it.

“Someone sent room service to your room that morning,” he said. “Breakfast. Coffee. Headache medicine.”

I stared at him. The memory surfaced slowly, distant and blurred by the hangover that had swallowed the entire morning. A knock on my door. A tray. Coffee and a bottled water with a covered plate of wheat toast and scrambled eggs and a foil packet of paracetamol.

I’d assumed that it was part of the hotel’s service or that Alyson had arranged it. I’d eaten everything on the tray and never thought about it again.