“She put up with my injuries. Not just the physical manifestations. Put up with my moods, which were uglier than my injuries.” He contemplated his beer bottle again. “Don’t know if she put up with it because that’s who she was, or because Jason was pressuring her or guilt or the determination to get to the altar.” He gave her a shamed look. “And I still don’t know how much of that is my own paranoia. She could have just loved me. But I was fucked up and angry, and she was there to take it out on.
“Don’t get me wrong, she wasn’t a long-suffering angel. She was as laid back as Jason, but she also had his temper. She could be a cutting bitch when she wanted to be.” He said it with affection.
“That night wasn’t the first time I’d hurt her in my sleep. But she refused to sleep anywhere else, convinced it was a phase, that the nightmares would get better. Convinced us both. I think she really thought she could will them away. I wanted to believe it, too; deny it was happening.”
Cassidy asked, “Did Jason know? Did anyone?”
If he was startled by her question, he didn’t show it. He jerked his chin upward. “A version.”
“What does that mean?”
“He knew I was struggling. He knew I’d dragged her out of bed once, threw her on the floor. He didn’t know she’d had to leave the bed because I’d punch in my sleep. He knew about the waking outbursts—locking myself in a bathroom with a gun—pretty shit like that. Urged me to get professional help.”
“Didn’t take,” she said, echoing Jason’s words from months ago.
“Got worse,” Mac confirmed. “I don’t know. Maybe it didn’t, but I was in therapy when we were on vacation for a family getaway. We went to sleep, nothing unusual about the night. Fucked and went to sleep. I woke up being pulled off the bed. Jason was screaming at me. Everyone was frantic. Josie looked dead. I tried to get to her, but her dad dragged me from the room. Her mom was screaming, crying.” He raised the beer to his lips and finished the bottle in one go, eyes looking out into the night, at a memory far away but also close by.
He set the empty bottle down. “Just going to go get another one of those.”
Cassidy held hers out to him. Mac considered it, then her. After a few seconds’ contemplation, he took it.
“So, yeah, I’ve done it before,” he said, pinning her with a pained look. “I’ve hurt someone I cared about and had no memory of it afterward.”
Cassidy looked away briefly, thinking there was no comparison. Josie had been his fiancée—he’d loved her—but herself? He didn’t care about her; they’d been tentative friends, at best.
“I only got off because of my service, my injuries, my trauma; not sure I should have,” he said quietly. “No, I know I shouldn’t have. But her family went to bat for me. Buddies. My therapists. Cops, even. My lawyer, of course; something called a pretrial diversion. I shouldn’t have been eligible for it, so I don’t know how he pulled that off. It came with a lot of strings attached, but I let them pull ’em.”
He glanced up as if to gauge how much she was judging him. “We don’t all come back like me. Grady didn’t; Jason didn’t. I’m my own special kind of fucked up. We’re all different fucking people reacting to fucked up situations…” He shrugged. “Not excuses… And I know I’m lucky to have the people around me I had. I nose-dived anyway. Lit a match and burned bridges as I walked away. Walked? Fuck, I ran. Found comfort in alcohol and between the legs of anonymous women.”
Her lips twitched; always special to be referred to as an anonymous woman.
“Until you.”
Cassidy’s eyes were glued to his, on guard even though her heart again took off at a gallop. Was he saying she hadn’t comforted him or that she wasn’t anonymous?
Without elaborating, he continued, “I should have let her go. I know that. At first, it wasn’t me who couldn’t let go, it was her mother. I wanted to rip off the band-aid and dwell in the pain. Her sister always wanted to end life support. But a part of me was becoming dependent on the idea of keeping her alive so I wouldn’t be a killer. It became less about Josie and everyone else and all about me.
“I bounced in and out of VA programs; some of those part of the conditions of the diversion. After the mandatory ones I had to attend, if they didn’t let me drink and fuck, they were useless to me. I lived with Jason in DC for a while, but that wasn’t working; for a while, I moved near Grady in the Bronx. Mom’s there, too, but since Josie, I couldn’t…” He shrugged. “Then here.” He took a drink, eyes roaming over her again. “I wanted the isolation but needed… access.”
Cassidy added wryly, “To women.”
He smiled humorlessly. “That’s right. This place was perfect.”
Cassidy scrutinized the cabin again with a different perspective. “So, the basic creepiness of the place, the lack of furniture—it’s on purpose.”
He watched her.
“Other than your whole… personality. I mean, I know you don’t invite attachments, but…” Her eyes went to the bedroom window behind him. The cot. “No opportunity for history to repeat itself.” She looked at him.
He said again, “Until you.”
She was irritated by how her heart tripped over the way he said that, like it meant something. And like before, she wondered why she needed it to meananything. Tilting her head, she asked, “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t Jason, if he was so worried?”
Mac blew out a breath as he raised a hand and rubbed the back of his neck. “Why didn’t Jason? Don’t know. He would’ve if he’d known about us. Gonna guess he didn’t want to hurt me by divulging that if he didn’t have to.”
It made sense as far as Jason. Now she was waiting for his explanation.
“Why didn’t I?” he asked softly, refocusing on the bottle between his legs, swinging it between his fingers in a sort of dance. “Same as Jason, I suppose, at first. Not something a person wants out there, you know? And like you said, we don’t—didn’t—share. I was here to get lost in booze and fucking.”