Battlescars (18 page)

Kayla smiled sadly. “Maybe I do. But not right now, Dyson. I need to…sort some things out. I need to figure things out on my own.”

The panic was quickly turning to anger, but he tried hard not to let it show. He swallowed hard. “You said that we had a future together, Kayla. You said that we should always work things out – be honest and open with one another. Well, I’m happy to do that with you, but you have to meet me halfway.”

She was nodding as if she expected to hear this. He could see that she’d planned her responses. Kayla was perfectly calm when she said, “I understand, and I’m sorry. But I can’t meet you halfway when I don’t even have enough energy to figure myself out yet.”

She was being so reasonable that Dyson found no angle from which to fight. He clenched his fists under the bar and bit his lip, trying to keep his anger and sadness in check. He saw her out of the corner of his eye as he stared at his beer. She was eyeing him warily, and that made him even more pissed. What the fuck did she think he was going to do, anyway?

“I’m not him,” he said emphatically. “I’m not even close to being him.”

“I know that.”

“So why are you treating me like I’m the one who beat you?”

She didn’t seem to have an answer to that. But she was pulling away from him, not just physically, but emotionally as well. Dyson’s heart was pounding and his hands were shaking, and he wasn’t about to let her go without a fight. He hadn’t been to hell and back in Iraq to simply take something like this and walk away. She had to at least talk to him about this.

Didn’t she?

“You can’t do this,” he said, and suddenly she rolled her eyes at him.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” she snapped. “You’re acting like we’ve been married for ten years and I’ve just said I want a divorce. No, Dyson, we’ve only known each other for a few weeks and we’ve had some possibilities. Stop acting like this is the end of the world.”

The harshness of her words cut through him like a dull blade, ripping as it went. This was entirely unlike the woman he had gotten to know so far. “What the hell are you trying to do?”

She looked away and sighed. “I’m trying to be honest. I’m trying not to hurt you. But you’re making it hard, Dyson.”

“I’m making it hard.” He took another long drink of his beer. It was the last thing he needed at a time like this, but the fact is that he no longer gave a shit about much of anything. She had talked him into believing she trusted him, and forgave him so easily for the things he had done. She had made him think that it was possible to have the kind of relationship he’d always hoped for. As he looked at her sitting there on the bar stool, he wondered if it had all been an act, just some way to get his attention and see how far she could take it.

That couldn’t be right, though. That wasn’t anything like what she had shown him so far. He thought about the night before, how he had wondered if she had any example for a good relationship. He realized that she might not have that, but she sure as hell had a great script for a breakup. Maybe he would be more generous about the situation eventually, but right now, he was too hurt to think straight.

It was time to go.

Dyson backed off his stool. He took another long pull of his beer and pulled out his wallet, then slid a five across the bar. He nodded at the bartender, who nodded back, silent as usual.

Dyson looked at Kayla, remembering the first time he’d seen her, thinking about how much he’d enjoyed getting to know her and how much he cared about her, even though they’d only known one another for a brief time. He shook his head as he looked at the gorgeous and damaged woman in front of him, and he realized she had played her cards carefully and left him with only one option. He walked toward the door and turned to her before he walked outside.

“Call me when you come to your senses,” he said, his voice cool and calm.

And though his heart was breaking, though he wanted nothing more than to stay there and try to talk her out of her decisions, he turned and walked out the door.

K
ayla hadn’t cried so much in years. It was the kind of crying that never seemed to end, the tears that she woke up to in the morning and the flood of pain that finally wore her out enough to go to sleep at night. She had actually woken herself up in the middle of the night, crying after a terrible nightmare. It was the kind of crying that came from a heart that had been broken time and time and time again.

This time it had been broken over her mother, her father, her lost childhood, the time in foster care, the things she was missing now that she was an adult – and Dyson. She ached over the way she’d completely cut him out of her life, partly because she just flat-out missed him, and partly because he’d done nothing to deserve the pain she’d heaped on him by simply walking away and shutting him out. Kayla felt like she was in the middle of the perfect storm of her past and the present, the collision sending an explosion rippling through her life. Collateral damage was everywhere, all around her, and it pained her to know that Dyson had been right in the middle of it.

It was all her fault. This time it really was, and she knew it. If she hadn’t gone looking for her father, these painful memories wouldn’t have come up. If she had just left it alone, she wouldn’t be dealing with the awful flood of emotions that had overwhelmed her. She wouldn’t be set back so many years, and the hard work she had done to overcome the bad things wouldn’t have been completely wiped out.

But if she hadn’t done it now, what would that have meant for her future? What if she and Dyson had gotten involved, only to have her father resurface later in her life? How much worse would it have been to have wrecked a real, established romance just because Kayla had trouble dealing with her past?

Better to rip off the band-aid now, so to speak. Better to get it over and done.

When Dyson had stormed out of the bar with that last parting shot of painful words, she had wanted nothing more than to chase him out of there and stop him on the street. She had almost done it. She had almost told him she made a mistake, but she steeled herself until she was sure he had disappeared. She had to let him go, because what she had said was true: She didn’t have the ability to figure herself out, much less a relationship.

She had always known she hated her father, but now she knew there were varying degrees of blind rage. She had hated him before for taking away her childhood and her mother, but now she had another layer of fury to place on top of that – the fact that he had invaded her adulthood through the memories that the mere sound of his name could dredge up. No one deserved to have that kind of power over a person, but there it was.

Kayla wished she could simply wave a wand and he would be gone, vanished into thin air. She wished he’d abandoned her mother before Kayla had been born. It would have been hard, yes, but it surely would have been better. If there was anything she had learned during these last several years, it was that being alone was much, much better than making a mistake.

So that’s where she was now, trying hard not to make the same mistakes her mother had made. The truth was that she was afraid of falling in love with Dyson, scared of putting all of her hopes and dreams into the possibilities with him, and terrified of letting herself be swept away by the intensity of her feelings for him. Things had been moving so fast that if she was making a mistake, she was too caught up in the haze of infatuation to see it. She had to slow down, had to pull back and make sure she wasn’t doing the wrong thing. The problem was that she might never know. How long would it take before a woman knew that she was making the right choice and not a mistake? How long did it take for her mother to realize she had made the wrong choice? Would Kayla fall into the same trap? She was her mother’s daughter, after all, and so much like her in so many ways.

Those were some of the questions she needed to ask her father. The more she thought about it, she knew that she would never get answers about the drinking and the abuse or even about that terrible night. But were those the answers she really needed? She thought perhaps she needed a few deeper answers, like what had brought her mother and her father together, what had made her stay, and why he had felt like it was okay to act the way he did. She needed to know how it had started and why it had continued. She needed to know that she could break the cycle.

And Dyson – well, he wasn’t like her father, but he wasn’t a saint, was he? She believed that Dyson had been honest with her, and that scored him more than a few brownie points. But in being honest he had confirmed what she had suspected: that he was a man capable of great violence and righteous anger. Granted, what he had done in Iraq was completely justified. But what he did in the ring on the weekends – what did that mean? Was that his way of getting out the anger that coursed through him? What if he didn’t have that outlet? What was it about beating other people up that drew him? What was it that made him put himself through punishment in order to get a little prize money and a little notoriety?

Kayla had to admit that seeing him fight made her cringe, because it reminded her of her father. And now she knew that it wasn’t just a hobby, but something that he wanted to do for the rest of his life. It was something that was an integral part of him, and if she were entirely honest with herself, she wasn’t sure that she could ever be truly comfortable with a man who wanted to do those things.

She was thinking about that as she made the walk to the animal shelter on Saturday. She took the long way around, to get some fresh air and get some time to think. She also wanted to avoid running into anyone she knew in the usual places, because frankly, Kayla knew she looked like shit. She had been crying so much that it seemed to be her new normal, and it had taken a toll. Her eyes were bloodshot, her skin was breaking out, her mouth was constantly swollen and her nose was red and sore. Kayla knew she looked like hell, and she didn’t want to have to answer any questions.

But the animals – they would ask no questions. They would just be happy to see her, and they would demand nothing more than good cuddles and fresh food and a clean place to sleep. All of those things she could willingly and easily provide, and that’s all she wanted right now: Some part of the world that required only love and not a bit of thought.

The back door was already unlocked, so she let herself in. Mr. Marbles was waiting for her at the door, his tail wagging so hard that it made the rest of his body sway back and forth. Leon was sitting on top of the cages, staring down at her with his cool eyes. She saw both of them and her heart swelled with the first burst of happiness she had felt in days.

Kayla dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms around Mr. Marbles. That sent the dog into spasms of joy that turned into little barks and wags so hard that it was tough for him to stay upright on all four legs. When he started licking her face, she laughed. The sound was foreign to her, as though she hadn’t laughed in weeks and weeks.

Leon stood up and stretched, arching his back, and gracefully leapt down from the top of the cages. He sauntered over to her, giving Mr. Marbles a look of cool contempt, and graciously permitted Kayla to pet him, accepting her attention as his due.

Kayla took a deep breath and exhaled slowly as she realized that she felt better than she had in a long time. Things seemed okay for the first time in days, and she realized that somehow she would find a way to deal with the mess that her life had become. For the moment, though, she decided to simply enjoy her refuge at the shelter and to lose herself in caring for the animals who’d known abuse and neglect. Those were problems she could fix.

She hugged Mr. Marbles again before she stood up. “You two are my saving grace, you know that?”

Kayla walked down the center aisles of the shelter, stopping to say hello to every one of the animals. She noted that two of her favorite tabby cats were gone, and that made her smile. She had known they would be adopted soon, and though she wished she could have scratched their ears one more time, she knew that they were in a forever home where they would get all the love they had ever wanted.

She then came to the front of the shelter, where the new arrivals were housed. A little momma cat had two kittens in her cage with her. Her hair was scraggly and her eyes were wide with fear, but her babies were fluffy and clean, with plump bellies that said they were well fed and healthy. Kayla stood at the cage and cooed to the momma, trying to calm her down.

But before she knew it she was crying again.

She stood there and hooked her fingers through the cage door, looking at the momma cat as tears ran down her face. “You’re such a good momma,” she whispered. “You’re taking such good care of your babies. You’re teaching them all the right things. I’m so glad we’re here to take care of you so you can take care of them.”

She looked at the cat for a long time, thinking about her own mother. She stood there until Mr. Marbles jumped up on her again, trying to get her attention. She scratched his ears, then jumped when she heard a deep voice: “Are you okay?”