Battlescars (14 page)

“You’re good at that,” he murmured, giving her a grudging compliment.

She shrugged. “I had a lot of practice.”

They sat in silence, looking at each other, while she finished tending his injuries. She seemed to want to say something, but the last thing Dyson wanted was some lie or apology. He gave it to her straight.

“I saw you with the other guy.”

Kayla paused in mid-stroke with a cotton swab. Her eyes widened. “What other guy?”

“The one at the restaurant. The tall one with the fancy car.” Dyson took a deep breath. “The one who gave you a hug and held your hand.”

He saw the understanding dawn in her eyes, and then something else. Was it relief? She suddenly laughed hard, the sound echoing from the lockers and confusing Dyson completely. “That was definitely not what you think,” she said, and smiled at him in such a reassuring way that Dyson felt confused and hopeful. Had he been wrong?

“Who was he?” he demanded.

Kayla capped the bottle of peroxide and put it back in the kit. “He’s a private investigator. I hired him to find my father.”

Dyson stared at her for a moment with his one good eye, then looked down at the floor. His heart was pounding again, but not in a good way this time. Had he really misjudged her so harshly? Had he really been so wrong? Guilt and excitement warred within him.

“I think it’s time I tell you some things,” she said.

“Kayla…”

She held up her hand, silencing him with a smile. “I understand now why you didn’t call me. And to be honest, if the situation had been reversed, I might have done the same thing. But the things I need to tell you…well, they are things I just need to say. I’ve always been careful to not tell anyone, but I think that if we are going to have any sort of relationship, now is the time to come clean, so to speak.”

Dyson’s breath caught in his throat. Did she just say the word
relationship
? Was she really thinking the same things he was thinking? Could this mean they had a future?

Instead of plying her with questions, he simply said, “Okay.”

Kayla took a deep breath. “My father was a drunk. You already know that. You probably suspect that he turned his mean streak on me when he drank, and my mother got the worst of it. It’s the same sad story, isn’t it?” She shook her head. “It happens so often that it isn’t even shocking anymore.”

Dyson nodded. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

She nodded. Suddenly tears welled up in her eyes.

“He killed my mother.”

Dyson was glad he was sitting down. The impact of those four simple words was a shock greater than any he had been dealt during the fight. He reached for her, but she gently pushed his hands away. “I need to say this on my own,” she said to him. “I need to stay strong while I do this. Okay? I want to get it all out before I start to cry.”

Something about that struck a chord with Dyson. He understood the need to say your piece without interference. “I’m listening,” was all he could think of to say.

Kayla nodded and took a deep breath. “It was some stupid fight over whether he could drive while he was drunk. He swore he could. So he was going to prove it to her. He dragged her out to the car and put her in it and sure enough, he proved her right. He ran right into a tree, and my mother was the one who died. My father walked away.”

Dyson’s blood was boiling and his heart ached for Kayla. “Jesus Christ…”

“My father showed up at her funeral with his new girlfriend, and I didn’t see him again until the day he was sentenced to two years in jail for my mother’s death. He served a year of his time, was released early, and I haven’t seen him since that day in court. I don’t know where he lives, don’t know if he’s remarried, don’t know if he’s even still alive. I was so angry that I didn’t want to see him again.”

Dyson shook his head at the kind of man who could treat his wife and child so terribly. “How old were you?”

“Fourteen.”

“That’s…” He didn’t know what to say. Kayla smiled sadly at him.

“It was wrong; it was awful; it was a lot of things, but that wasn’t even the end of it.” Kayla took a deep breath. “Foster care was really tough for me. A girl with no family – no one to care about her – can run into some tough kids in foster care. My last foster mother was the best of the bunch, but I went through some pretty rough times.”

Dyson felt sick. He could imagine what had happened in those foster homes, the kind of hell she had been through, and what might have been done to her body as well as her spirit. He felt angry and powerless, wishing he could somehow go back and erase all of the hurt Kayla had lived through.

She took another deep breath. “There are reasons it’s called a ‘foster home’ and not just a ‘home.’ I’ve really been on my own since the night my mother died.”

Kayla was being so strong, while Dyson was on the verge of tears. He reminded himself that she had lived with her pain for so long that while it must still hurt her to think of it, she could at least talk about it without falling apart. The thought of her mother made him sad, and the thought of the foster homes did too. But the thought of her father filled him with utter rage. He clenched his bruised fists as he thought of a man who would willfully do such horrible things to the people he was supposed to love.

Kayla was watching him closely. Dyson cleared his throat. “I would gladly kill him for what he did to you,” he said simply, and he meant every word of it.

“You are such an honorable man,” she said. “That’s the word that always comes to mind when I think about you. Honorable.”

Dyson could have said a dozen different things, but what came to his lips surprised him. “The things I did in Iraq weren’t considered honorable.”

Kayla didn’t bat an eye. “What did you do?”

He closed his one good eye and bowed his head. It was a story he had told before a court, only to have the court discard his version of events and believe the lies that his fellow Marines had told. It was a story he had shouted about with his superiors and their superiors and anyone else who had questions about that day, but again, it was his word against those of several other soldiers, all of whom had their reasons for throwing him to the wolves. Would Kayla believe him?

“We were on a general patrol in Iraq,” he started. “It was just a normal day, which meant it was boring as hell. We came up to this little house where a woman lived with her children. I assume she had a husband, too, but I didn’t know for sure. All I do know is that she was really afraid of us, and so were her kids – especially her daughter. The moment we stopped, the woman ran into the house screaming. Her daughter ran out the back door and would have been gone if there hadn’t been men waiting for her.”

Dyson paused and took another deep breath. “I didn’t realize what that meant until later.”

He looked up. Kayla was watching him with wide eyes.

“The men I was with…they went into the house. Just walked right in. I remember one of them asking if I had ever done this before, like he was surprised that I was confused. Like this was something that anyone should have expected to happen, you know? Like everyone did it. Like it was a game.

“It all happened fast. I guess they knew they had to move fast, because if someone spotted them and happened to have a camera phone in that god-forsaken place, well…that would be the end of the line for their military career. So they were coordinated and smart, and it was obvious that this wasn’t their first time.

“I got to the door and that’s when I heard the screaming. The woman…she was in her kitchen. The guys had her backed up against the table. And they just ripped her robe off her – split it right down the middle. It was the heavy robe the women wear, you know?”

Dyson swallowed hard. He often had nightmares about that day, but he hadn’t said the words to anyone in a very long time. Now that he was, it was like he was right back there, right after it happened.

“They were going to rape her. And they knew her, you know? They had done this before. She had been subjected to this same thing before, who knows how many times. But this time I was there, and I just…I couldn’t. I couldn’t stand it. And I snapped.”

He paused, thinking about that word.
Snapped
. That’s exactly what it had felt like: Like a part of his mind had snapped with a sound as sharp as a twig breaking, that he had turned into someone else in an instant.

“I beat my commanding officer to within an inch of his life,” Dyson admitted. “I started with my hands and when that wasn’t enough I went for my gun and I beat him with it. I just kept hitting him and hitting him and hitting him…”

Dyson shook his head, trying to put distance between him and the visions in his mind. “There was blood everywhere. But I remember thinking that at least it wasn’t her blood, it was his, and that was better. That was so much better. In fact, that was just fucking fitting. I wanted to kill him.” He looked up at Kayla, who was still looking at him with those calm eyes.

“Honestly, Kayla? My only regret is that I
didn’t
kill him.”

She didn’t even blink. “You should have.”

Then it was Dyson’s turn to stare. Kayla had just heard his story, and she knew that he could turn into a monster. But she wasn’t pulling away, and hadn’t even flinched when he told her the truth about what he had done. The one question that had rattled around in the back of his mind ever since that awful day now surged to the forefront, demanding to be asked.

“Does that make me a bad person?” he asked.

Suddenly Kayla smiled. She reached out and put her delicate hand on his knee. “It makes you an honorable, upstanding man who did the right thing.”

The tension drained out of Dyson, and until it was gone, he didn’t even realize how worried he had been about Kayla’s reaction to his past. His knees went weak, even though he was already sitting down. His shoulders slumped and he brought his hands to his face. He had been so certain that she would see the monster he could be – the man who had beaten another man to within an inch of his life, not in the midst of a sanctioned fight, but out of pure white-hot anger – but she was instead seeing him through generous eyes that understood what he had done and why.

“Did you stop the men?” Kayla asked.

Dyson nodded slowly. “Yeah…that time, at least. The woman and her daughter saw what was happening and grabbed their clothes and ran like hell. I don’t know what it all meant for them, because I know that sometimes the men blame the women if they’re raped…I just hope that they got away in every sense of the word, and that they were able to pretend it didn’t happen, or cover it up, or have understanding husbands who would never take it out on them.”

He paused, thinking about the woman’s haunted eyes. “I wonder about those women all the time. I hope they’re okay.”

“Dyson,” she whispered, and he looked up to see a smile on her face. “Let’s not do this again, okay? Let’s not do the assumptions and the blame game and all of those things. What we have…what we could have…it deserves honesty like what we have shared tonight, don’t you think?”

He stared at her for a long moment, and then a slow smile began tugging at his lips. This woman was so gentle and honest, so loving and kind, and now she was making it clear that there might be something for them in the future. Something as good and sweet as she was. Dyson wanted to sweep her into his arms and kiss her, but he had to ask her something else first.

“Are you afraid of me, Kayla?”

She looked perplexed and shook her head. “Absolutely not.”

“But your father…he did terrible things. And I know I haven’t been a saint…”

“You are nothing like him,” she said vehemently, surprising him with her passion. “Absolutely nothing like him, not in the same ballpark, the same world, even the same universe. You could never be like him.”

The gratitude washed over Dyson and this time he gave in to what he wanted to do: He rose from the bench, slipped his arms around her shoulders and pulled her close, wrapping his arms around her and resting his chin on her hair. In any other case it might have been a sensual embrace, but tonight – in the midst of all the revelations – it was a moment that felt warm and safe and comfortable.

They sat there for a long time, just holding each other, lost in their thoughts. The locker room was so quiet that they could hear the footsteps coming down the hallway. Both of them looked up when those steps got closer and Chester looked into the locker room. He looked surprised to see anyone other than Dyson in the room, but his expression turned to delight. “So this is the girl.”

“This is the one,” Dyson said as he released Kayla so that she could be properly introduced.

Chester nodded to Kayla and turned to Dyson, clearly excited. “Good news,” he said, grinning.

“Yeah? I could sure use some after tonight.”

“You know the big fight going down in two weeks? The one that Scarsboro has been training for?”

Dyson knew it well. It was the fight that everyone at the gym coveted, because there would be national media there, and the winner would be invited to a host of higher profile fights. Dyson and everyone else had been envious of Scarsboro, but they’d also seen the immense pressure he’d been under to train for the fight of his life.

“Of course.”

“Well, Scarsboro has to back out. He got into a bad accident a few days ago and there’s just no way he’s going to be in shape for the fight. So you’re the backup guy. What do you say?”

Dyson was stunned. “Seriously?”

Chester broke into a huge grin. “Come on…you know you want this!”

Dyson did want it, so badly he could taste it. He could already feel the excitement building. He hadn’t even accepted yet, but he was already having visions of the victory dance at the bell…until he looked up at Kayla and saw the darkness in her eyes, the way she refused to look directly at him.

“Chester…” He paused, not sure what to say. He wanted this, but he felt – for the first time – that he needed to consider something other than simply his own desires. “When do you need to know?”

Chester seemed surprised at Dyson’s hesitation. “Soon. Like, tomorrow, man. We need to know so you can start training.”