He looked around the room, his grandparents’ old master bedroom. The climate was cool here, not hot or arid. Nothing smelled like blood. “Yes.”
“Let me get you some water.”
“That’s okay.”
But she was already clambering out of bed before he could finish speaking. He rubbed his knee through the blanket, but stopped when she came back from the bathroom.
She turned the light on the nightstand on, and sat on the bed next to him. “Does your leg hurt?”
Couldn’t get much past her. “No. Thank you.” He accepted the glass of tap water.
“You were rubbing it.”
“Sometimes it aches when it’s cold out.” Or when he had this dream, where he was shoved back into that horrific night.
“Can I see?”
He didn’t want to show her, but he couldn’t deny her anything, so he shrugged. She flipped the quilt, shoved his sweatpants up, and examined his naked leg.
“It’s ugly,” he said gruffly.
She traced the scars with a feather-light touch. “No, it’s just you.”
He made a deep noise in his throat, and drained the rest of the water.
“Is that what you dream about? This injury?”
Jas shook his head. Then he nodded. Then shook his head again.
The door widened and Doodle came padding into the room. The animal put her paws on the bed and hopped up, shoving Katrina aside to plop on Jas’s chest. Katrina chuckled. “She seems to really be warming up to you.”
“I snuck her scraps at the table.” Jas scratched the dog’s head and let some of his fear and sadness seep into each stroke. “Most animals aren’t so receptive.”
“Why do you think they don’t like you? Are you a werewolf?”
The unexpectedly silly question made him smile. “Do animals not like werewolves?”
“So I’ve heard. I also assume werewolves are taciturn and have perfect eyebrows.”
He squinted at her. “Perfect eyebrows, eh?”
“Beyond perfect.”
He shouldn’t feel so happy over such an odd compliment, but it was still a compliment, so he’d take it. “I don’t know why animals tend to be, at best, indifferent to me.” He scratched Doodle’s neck. “It used to make me feel bad, but I learned to get over it.”
“Why did it make you feel bad?”
“Animals are excellent judges of character, aren’t they?”
She side-eyed him. “Or they’re animals, and somewhat fickle and unreasonable?”
His smile was faint. Doodle hummed and scooted closer to him. “I suppose that’s possible.”
“Can you tell me about your dream, Jas?”
He hesitated, that same warring urge rising inside of him. He wanted that euphoria of unburdening himself, but he also wanted to bury it deep. To compromise, he switched into as robotic a tone as he could manage, eager to get through this with as few emotions as possible. “I led my infantry platoon. There was a bomb, a roadside explosion that killed two of my men. We got a tip about this guy who they said was the weapons supplier for the cell that placed and detonated the IED. Our superiors questioned him for two weeks before letting him go. There was no proof he was connected at all.” Jas had looked at the Draft Intelligence Information Report later. The suspect had been a civilian, by all accounts a quiet villager who lived with his mother and daughter. There had been nothing to tie him to the crime except a rumor.
She rubbed his knee, and he leaned back against the pillows. It was odd to have someone petting him like this, but the soothing massage calmed him.
“One guy, McGuire, he was best friends with one of the men who was killed. He and another soldier were supposed to take the suspect back to the village, but he stopped on the way.”
“Oh no.”
“Yeah.” Jas squeezed his eyes shut, as tight as he could manage. He couldn’t block out the memory, though. “I don’t know if he planned the whole thing, or if it was a spur of the moment terrible idea. The sergeant with him, Lorne, she slipped away and came and got me. We raced back. We found the translator terrified and huddled away from the scene, the suspect naked and tied up, with McGuire screaming questions at him. The man had been hurt badly.” It was getting harder to remain emotionless.
“Did he kill the suspect?”
“He tried to. The guy went to stand up, and McGuire shot at him. Lorne and I rushed him, and he shot me twice in the struggle.”
Katrina’s touch on his knee turned soothing. “This is what you had to testify to at the trial?”
“Court martial. Yes. We all did.” His eye twitched, recalling the angry glares of McGuire’s parents and supporters. They’d called him and Lorne the traitors, held firm in their belief that their son had been doing his job the best he could.
Bullshit. Jas had seen the aggression and rage in McGuire’s face, up close. All he’d cared about was exacting vengeance on anyone he could.
“Tell me he was convicted.”
“Twenty-five years.”
She sighed. “Good.”
“He served five before he was paroled.”
Her lips curved down. “Oh.”
He ran his tongue over his teeth. “Looks like he’s probably going to be pardoned.”
She inhaled. “Oh dear.”
“Yeah.”
“What can you do?” She came to her knees.
“Nothing.”
“But . . . but that’s not fair.”
It wasn’t. He shrugged, her outrage making him feel a little better. “That’s how it is.”
“He tried to kill a defenseless, unarmed man. It’s only because of your intervention that he didn’t succeed. And he tried to kill you! And . . . nothing happens?”
“Right.”
“Is your name going to be in the press or anything?”
“I’ll make sure it doesn’t lead back to you.”
Katrina made an annoyed sound. “That’s not why I’m asking. I’m asking for your sake.”
“It’s possible.” Jas shrugged. “There’s so much going on in the news now, that I imagine this will be a blip on most people’s radars.”
“How can you be so calm?” She clutched her hands to her chest. “Aren’t you angry?”
“Of course.” He hesitated, unsure of how to explain. “Anger can be a useful emotion, but if I’d stayed angry when I came back, I would never have been able to move forward. So I buried the anger down.”
“Sounds like you buried everything down.”
Jas thought of the love he had for Katrina. “It’s not like I don’t feel things.”
“You just don’t talk about most of those feelings,” she noted.
“That’s not—” He paused. “That may be true. I’ve never been forthcoming, but now I’m pretty far out of the habit of confiding in anyone.”
“I’d like to know when things make you happy, or sad. I want to know when you’re hurting, even if that means I can’t get something I want. Like coming here? I had no idea it would hurt you. You should have told me.”
He caught her fluttering hands and gave them a squeeze. “I came here because I wanted to, too. I missed this place, and since I’d gotten news of the pardon, all I’d wanted was to run away. I was glad to have an excuse to come here. Honestly.” Every word he spoke came from his heart. He would never have thought to come stay here for days had it not been for Katrina. This trip had nourished him, like her food nourished his body, first thing when he woke up.