Chapter Twenty-Two
Micah watched the panic fade out of Darcy’s body as she composed herself. Her eyes were closed, but she’d stopped hugging herself.
Up until this moment, he wasn’t sure why it was so important to him that she open the topic. Now he understood. He didn’t want to blindside a sensitive woman who didn’t like horror movies.
A gentle rain began to fall as she finally lifted her lashes. Anger and steadfast resolve stared back at him. The anger wasn’t for him, he thought, but on his behalf. It was the way she’d first appeared to him when she burst into his office.
“How did you escape from that camp,” she asked, her voice falling low, “and what does it have to do with Fernando?”
There it was. The door to hell had been opened, and this strong woman was going to step through it with him. “Come with me.” He went to the lounge chair, encouraged when she waited for him to make room for her, and sat on the end of it, her knees tucked up so she faced him. The press of her shin against his leg was the tether he needed to ground him in the present.
“There are days when I’m both thankful and angry that I was in the Colombian café that day,” he began. “An hour one way or the other, a craving for another kind of food, hell, if my flight back to Toronto hadn’t been delayed at all, I wouldn’t have been there when those gunmen came looking for the Brits they were after. Maybe it was fate.”
“Micah—”
“Please, just listen. I realize now if it hadn’t happened, then I never would have become who I was supposed to be.”
“I’m sorry. I’m listening.”
“They knocked me out with the butt of one of their rifles because I fought them,” he continued, closing his eyes because he couldn’t bear to see her imminent disgust. “I woke up in that stinking tent with a throbbing head, surrounded by terrified faces I recognized from the café. I remember thinking they’d all have families who’d be frantic with worry, and nobody would care if I died. It was devastating, but also empowering.”
“That’s why you told Fernando to cut you instead of them. Because you thought you deserved it, and to spare the others.” She folded her fingers around one of his tight fists, and he flinched.
“And to save the boy from having to choose.” Only Darcy’s hand squeezing his own kept him from disappearing into the memory. “Although he winced while he was…while it was happening, Fernando held his emotions. When he snuck back to the tent in the middle of the night with medical supplies, though, he was crying. He cleaned me up gently, whispering that he was sorry in Spanish. I had a stupid thought that God had planned this for me, and that’s why I was born to my parents, so they’d teach me the language I needed to understand Fernando.
“That was when the epiphany hit me. Here was this boy who lived a horrific life with a psychotic father, and he still found the strength to rise above it. He took care of complete strangers despite the risk to himself. I was so ashamed.
“Every day, his father tortured us in some way. Every night, Fernando came and took care of us. The touch of kindness after that kind of pain was indescribable. He talked about how he wanted to play baseball and find out what happened to his mother, who’d disappeared after he was born. I promised to help him find her, and he untied me every night for a while so we could play ball with a stone he kept hidden beneath one of the toilet buckets. He asked me about my life and my dreams, and I lied to him, because I didn’t want him to stop coming. He’s the only reason I didn’t go completely insane.”
Darcy clamped his hands between both of hers. “You loved him.”
He nodded. “I suppose I did.”
“Something happened to Fernando, and you blame yourself. Did he set you free? Is that how you got away?” Her voice was carefully controlled, professional, but not without compassion. It gave him strength to keep going.
“No, he was too afraid of his father, and for good reason. The big boss, who’d orchestrated the whole thing to get his primary chemist out of prison, upped the stakes for his game with the British government and had promised to kill one hostage every day until his brother was released. My fellow captives had become friends, or at least sharing that kind of trauma with them made it feel that way. Watching one of them violated in every possible way, and then die at the sadist’s hands, broke me.
“When Fernando came that night and untied me for our baseball lesson, I stole his knife and freed the others. I begged him to come with us, but like your grandfather’s daughter, he ran back to what he knew, back to his father. I knew that bastard would come back and what he’d do to us. My arm was broken, and I had a fever from infection setting in from all of the gashes on my body, but I took six people from that tent, fought our way through three guards, and ran into the jungle.”
The sensations of leaves slapping and cutting his face, and the sounds of alarm rising in the camp behind him, washed over Micah. His lungs convulsed, and only her hands that were suddenly on his face kept him hovering above it all.
“Stop, Micah, please stop. It isn’t your fault Fernando ran.”
“I should have tried harder.” He leapt up, throwing a fist into the empty air in front of him. “I should have forced him to come, knocked him out, something. He’s dead because of me!”
She gasped, cutting it off short. “I’m sure that’s not true.”
He kept his back to her, terrified of what her expression held. “We only ran for a few minutes before I heard him cry out, ‘Please, Papa, stop!’ I’d been teaching him English, and he learned fast. I think it gave away who was responsible for us escaping, and that sadistic fuck took all his rage out on his own son. Between his screams, Fernando shouted at me to run. He was still thinking of me.” Micah’s whole body trembled, and he drew in a shaking breath. “I stood there with six people pleading with me to save them, too. They were all weak and dehydrated, mentally broken. I knew they’d never make it if I didn’t take them.”
“Fernando’s father would never have let them kill his own son. Why do you think he’s dead?”
A shot echoed through his ears, rattling down to his toes. “Because his screaming stopped at the sound of a gunshot. We were far away, and I could barely hear him anymore, but it was so loud inside my head. His silence was louder than the shot. I should have gone back. He was just trying to be a good boy, and I used him and left him in the hands of a sadist.”
“You would have died.”
“At least my life would have had a purpose!”
“Look at me.” There was demand in her tone now.
He shook his head, fighting the need to crumple under the pain in his chest. “I’ll take you to the mainland whenever you’re ready.”
“I finally understand why you brought me here, why you took me to the pond, and why you won’t look at me now. You said you can read people, and I think you knew instantly that I wear my opinions and emotions on my face. You wanted me to be your judge, jury, and executioner, because I can’t lie to you. And I won’t. So turn around and look at me.”
It was true. The judgment he needed would be there for him to see. All he had to do was turn around and face it like the man he wanted to be. For Darcy, for himself, for all those he fought to protect in Fernando’s name.
Opening his eyes, he turned. She stood there with her arms loose at her sides. Rain had soaked her hair and dress, and he couldn’t tell if the rivers running the lengths of her cheeks were from the rain or from tears. But there was no horror. No accusation. No disdain.
Why?
“I see a man who found the hope he’d lost in the form of a small boy in the middle of hell,” she began. “I see a man who, for a short time, gave that boy the selfless attention he, himself, received as a boy. It gave the man back the life his mother wanted for him.
“Lastly, I see the warrior who was born the day he watched a friend die. He’s the one who knew Fernando couldn’t be saved, the one who stole the boy’s knife and fought off the guards with a broken arm and a raging fever. He’s also the one who knew if he’d gone back for Fernando, he and everyone with him would have been tortured and killed.”
He couldn’t believe what he was hearing, nor could he move when she came to him, held his face, and kissed his scars. “And now you’re left with survivor’s guilt,” she continued, “and there are no words to make that go away.”
Although Micah pushed at her, she didn’t relent. It made no sense, the pain she carried in her body and voice for him, and what almost seemed like a sense of relief. “Don’t,” he growled. “How can you still want to touch me? I used a child and left him to die.”
“No, you loved him as his father should have, and now you protect other children in his name. You couldn’t have saved him, and that’s the hardest part for you to accept, I think. You need to forgive yourself and let him go.” She kissed his chin, setting her palms carefully on his chest, as if afraid he’d crumble without her touch. He might have. “If he’s really passed on to the next existence,” she continued, “then he’d be proud of you, and so would your mother. So am I.”
She swallowed his protest with a kiss that unlocked his lungs and his bones. Never had he been so confused, so shocked, and relieved all at once. Did she not understand what he’d said? No, she was perceptive, and she still touched him as she had last night and this morning, as if he was worthy of the life he’d stolen for himself.
The last of his resistance crumbled under her touch, her raspy moans chasing the stone from his muscles. She slipped into his heart and lit it up. No shadows could survive his bright star. How could he bear to let her go on Saturday? No, he wouldn’t think about their inevitable parting, not now.
Her breath shuttered as she drew back, her eyes shining. “God, I’m sorry. You just gave me your deepest wound, and I…all I can think about is the story about your parents and the amazing day you gave me. And the kiss that first night. How can I be so insensitive? What does that make me?”
That incredible stillness settled over him. “What it makes you, lucerito, is exactly what I need tonight.”
A quick sweep of his arms had her scooped into them. Her squeal cut off short as he claimed that sassy mouth again. It took a little while for her to open to him that time, but finally, her breath caught, and her muscles softened.