Over the Edge (27 page)

Pressing both hands flat on his chest, she said, “Seth, I don’t think—”

“Thinking can wait.” Somewhere Seth realized he’d lost his shirt. Now if he could just get Callie to do the same.

“No, Seth.” Callie ducked her head when he came in to kiss her again. “We passed over thinking before, and I ended up with a baby to raise alone.”

“You’re not alone anymore, Callie.” Seth caught her by the waist and pulled her back. “Surely you’re noticing that I’m here.”

“Stop!” She slapped him on the chest, hard. “Stop or I’m throwing you out of this room.”

He fought with his self-control, which awakened in him the memory of fighting for survival during the Civil War. The thought helped him to relax his grip and step away from her. “I’m sorry. You’re right.”

She was so wrong.

“I don’t want you sleeping on the floor, Seth.” She moved closer to him then. Under the circumstances he’d’ve preferred she stay far away. “But if you don’t behave, that’s exactly where you’re going to end up.”

The woman had a bossy way with words. Seth pondered for a moment the notion that he’d married someone like his big brother. He looked at her black hair, escaped again from its braid. Her lips swollen from his kisses. Her slender figure swathed in white cotton. Her black eyes flashing in the lantern light.

Well, not a
lot
like his big brother.

“Now turn down the lantern and go to sleep before I decide to throw you out of here.”

It was an order Seth was glad to obey. The bed was set so a window was behind Seth’s back when he faced her. The moon shone blue on her raven-black hair. She lay on her side, her head propped up on her right fist, her left hand resting on him. Her black eyes studied him.

“Go to sleep, husband.” She lifted her hand from his chest and caressed his chin with her fingertips. “We’ve found each other again. You clearly like the notion of being married. So do I. But give me some time. We got married too fast. I realized after you left I knew almost nothing about you. I didn’t know you weren’t thinking right. I didn’t understand how upset you were by the war, or how sick you still were. I barely knew enough to begin hunting for you. Now we are going to take some time and get to know each other. I don’t think I can honestly trust a man I don’t even know. So let’s go about this marriage business in the right way.”

Seth nodded, but mainly because he was afraid of what might come out of his mouth if he unclenched his teeth. He had his own ideas about what was right. And nothing felt so right as holding Callie, his wife, in his arms.

She pulled up the blanket to cover his chest, as if she were tucking in a child, then went and fetched Connor and his drawer, rebraided her hair—which Seth regretted fiercely—climbed back into bed, rolled onto her side so she faced away from him, and fell asleep.

Seth was mighty slow following her lead.

Chapter
25

Callie ripped out of a deep sleep.

She grabbed for her rifle. It wasn’t there.

Before she’d finished fumbling for it or figured out what the danger was, she was on her feet, escaping.

“Fire! Rafe, help. Ethan.”

Her muddled thoughts cleared enough to know her husband was having one of his stupid nightmares.

“I’m burning!”

The poor tormented lunatic.

Help came in a rush and she hurried to the door and opened it before it could be knocked down. Heath stood outside. Connor was fussing in his makeshift crib, sitting up, rubbing his eyes while Seth screamed.

Callie picked Connor up. “I can wake him up.”

“Rafe, help.”
The screams from Seth were bloodcurdling. “
Ethan!”

“He’s been in the war.” Callie knew just how shocking it was to be awakened by screaming. Oh, did she ever know. “A lot of men who went through war are bothered by it.”

“Hasn’t the war been over for a long time?” Heath tried to give Callie his usual sullen look, but Seth’s shouting was too upsetting.

“Ethan! I’m burning!”

“Not long enough, I reckon.” She watched Seth slap at his horribly scarred arm and the back of his head. The full moonlight pouring in lit up the room nearly as bright as day. “I can wake him.”

“You need help?” Heath had seen her wake Seth before.

Callie hesitated. Then she had a real bright idea. “Can you take Connor and get him back to sleep?”

Heath reached for the baby, then looked at Seth and flinched. “The war did that to him? Is that where his scars came from?”

“The worst of the scars are older than the war, though he got some new ones during the fighting. But what happened to give him the old scars is part of his nightmare.”

Seth’s cries got louder and wilder. Connor broke into a full-throated howl. He sounded a little too much like his pa, confound it.

“Go now,” Callie said.

“If you need help, just holler.” Heath looked past Callie as Seth screamed for his brothers.

Shaking his head, Heath took the baby and left. Callie swung the door shut and turned to her husband, her heart breaking for him.

She’d been strong in denying him earlier, but this tore at her and weakened her good intentions. She knew how it always ended when she woke him.

Thrashing, casting the covers aside, he shouted as if he were in agony.

Callie approached him with caution. “Seth, wake up!” She said it over and over again. One of these days maybe he’d hear her.

Then she thought of his brothers throwing water on him. They claimed it was fast and there was truth in that. A lot of truth. But it was downright mean.

Seth threw himself onto his stomach, and in the moonlit night Callie saw the terrible scars and couldn’t stand to be unkind. She really had to insist he wear a nightshirt to bed so she could be stern with him.

Flinging himself over again, she knew she had to stop the shouting for the sake of the rest of the household, as well as to bring the nightmares to an end.

With a careful eye she ducked inside his flying fists and landed flat on top of him, locking her arms around his neck. “Seth, Seth, wake up.”

She kissed him.

The shouting cut off instantly.

Clinging to his thrashing body, it was more a wrestling match than an embrace. Suddenly Seth’s arms came around her so hard it was almost a blow. But it felt wonderful.

He held her tight and returned the kiss. The fight went out of him and he whispered against her lips, “Callie, Callie, I found you.”

The affection she heard in his voice was impossible to resist. He rolled with her and tucked her beneath him just as his eyes opened fully.

He was with her again, awake and rational. Though his face was shadowed by the night, she felt the wildness in his burning blue gaze, the rigidity in his muscles as he realized he wasn’t fully sure how he’d come to be lying in her arms.

“I didn’t hurt you, did I?” His voice broke. He rested his forehead against hers. He always asked her that.

And she always answered, “No, you didn’t hurt me at all. You were having a bad dream. I woke you up.”

His strong hands slid into her hair, caressing as if the touch gave him intense pleasure. And there went her braid again.

“I’ve missed you so much.” He went to kiss her again.

“No, Seth.” Her last ounce of common sense stepped forward and she slapped both hands flat on his chest.

Common sense, which she had in good supply, had told her even back in the hospital that she shouldn’t put much stock in a man so riddled with nightmares, not even if everything about him spoke to the deepest, most vulnerable place in her heart. She hadn’t listened then, and she’d paid a high price for it.

He froze. She could feel him gather himself, and nearly a minute passed when finally, slowly, he moved away. Lying on his back beside her, he said, “Well, at least come here and let me hold you.” He pulled her against him, and she couldn’t resist resting her head on his shoulder.

“I’m glad you’re here, Callie Kincaid. And I’m going to prove to you that I’m a man to be trusted.”

Callie didn’t say it out loud, but inside she was fervently hoping it didn’t take him too long.

She rested her head on her husband’s chest, listening to his heart pound. She wanted to cling to him. She wanted to show him how much she loved him. But she couldn’t risk another baby until she was sure of him. She hadn’t begun to let him know how harsh her father had been when she’d turned out to be with child. Or how many nights she’d cried from the loneliness. She was terrified of going through that again.

After their marriage, the nightmares hadn’t appeared at first. Callie remembered her foolish belief that her love had healed him. Then he’d had another terrible nightmare. There’d been passion after she awakened him. But when the morning came, she found herself alone.

She thought of that now as they lay together in each other’s arms. “Seth?”

“What, honey?” Seth caressed her arm as she rested against him.

“When we were in the hospital, I thought your nightmares were about the war. And they were, at least partly. You talked about cannons and battles, but you also talked about fire and called out for your brothers.”

Seth rubbed his face with his free hand. “I had bad dreams right after the accident in the cavern for a long time, but they faded—mostly. The war started them up again.”

“I think you need to tell me what happened in that cavern, Seth.”

“I told you when we were down there.”

“But there’s more, isn’t there?”

Seth tightened his arm around her. “How am I supposed to get it out of my head if I talk about it?”

Callie shrugged. “Not talking about it hasn’t done any good.”

“It did, back then. They finally stopped. Almost. They will again.”

“After how long?”

Silence stretched between them, and she decided he wasn’t going to answer. Maybe his brothers would tell her, but getting Seth to talk was the whole point.

“I had nightmares,” he said, “for about three years.”

Callie gasped.

“I tormented my family for three years. I destroyed my family with my nightmares.”

“No, you didn’t, Seth. A sick child can’t destroy a family.”

“It wasn’t just being burned. It wasn’t even just the nightmares. It was the cavern, too. After the burns healed, I went back down there. I couldn’t help myself. That cavern . . .” There was a long silence before he added, “I couldn’t stay away. That made everything worse. Rafe drove himself into the ground trying to protect me. And Ethan didn’t seem to be part of the family anymore. He wouldn’t come out and run the hills with me like he’d done before, hunting and practicing our tracking. And he never once came to the cave. He was the first to leave . . . well, not counting Ma dying and Pa running off. Before that accident the three of us were together all the time, working and playing. I ruined all that.”

Callie whispered, “Can you tell me more?”

He kissed her forehead, her hair, her eyes, and for a moment she thought he meant to distract her from her question. She suspected she’d let him.

“We were just kids. Just dumb kids. I look at Heath and see a little boy but with grown-up ways. Rafe was like that. I can’t say I thought of him as a father; we were too close in age. But more like—like the
leader
. He and Ethan and I were always pretending. War or Indian raid or stagecoach holdup or hunting grizzlies, always some crazy pretend game. And whatever the game, Rafe was the leader. Eth made it fun. I made it reckless.”

“Sounds like normal play for a boy.” Callie prayed silently that he would go on talking.

“We ran wild all over our property. I can’t remember a time we didn’t just take off from the house and go wherever we wanted. Ma and Pa didn’t seem to care. And then we discovered that cavern. We went down every chance we got. I loved it. I was always looking for a chance to spook Rafe and Ethan. Of course they were too tough to ever show it, but I got ’em good a few times.” Seth chuckled at the thought. “Rafe was always so careful. I told him he ruined our adventures.” His smile faded. “Until I almost killed us all and did end up killing our family.”

Chapter
26