22. Garrett

22

GARRETT

I didn’t know if it would work. I was going off gut instinct and what worked for me.

After the desert, when I’d come back here for a spell, I’d found the horses were better than a thousand therapists. I only had to lay my hand on one and the pain and anger seemed to drop back a little inside me.

And I could feel it working for her, too. I still had my body pressed against hers from behind because I wasn’t sure how steady she was on her feet. I could feel the tension in her muscles slowly ease as she calmed. I didn’t say anything. Sometimes, nothing’s all that needs to be said.

I put my hand between her shoulder blades and felt her breathing slow. But it was still too early to talk about it. She needed to get well clear of the fear, so it didn’t grab her again. So I said, “Always did prefer horses to people. Most folk, anyway. Horses don’t need you to talk to them.”

She turned a little, laid her cheek on the horse’s back and let out a long sigh. She reached up along his neck and scratched him just right, just where they really like it, and he gave a little snort of pleasure. “Horses are loyal,” she told me. Her voice was still shaky, but it was getting stronger. “They’ll never stab you in the back, or manipulate you, or cut you up in the press.”

I frowned. It felt like she knew horses, but how could that be? Horses, in my mind, were for country folks. Rich folks don’t like getting their hands dirty. And royalty: didn’t they just go from air-conditioned jet to air-conditioned limo?

She glanced up and caught my look. “I love horses,” she said softly. “I used to ride, until my mother said it was too undignified.”

Well, I’ll be. Maybe we did have something in common.

She looked up at me, her cheek still pressed to the horse’s back. “Thank you,” she said. “I feel better.”

And then suddenly she wouldn’t meet my eyes. I knew that feeling, the shame that follows a flashback or a nightmare. She was feeling exactly like I did after I froze in the motel. “Hey,” I told her, taking that delicate chin in my hand and turning her to look at me. “You don’t have to be embarrassed.” She looked doubtful, then tried to turn away again. “Look, you already figured out... I got some of that stuff in my head too. From the war.”

When I said the last word, she looked right at me, eyes huge and liquid.

Aw, hell. I’d known that was a rough time for her country but I’d imagined she’d been protected, locked away in a palace miles from the front. “Something happened to you, didn’t it? In the war with Garmania?”

She gave a jerky nod.

Before I knew it, my hands were on her shoulders, pulling her trembling body against mine. Her breasts were pressed against my chest and that soaked, filmy nightdress might as well have been tissue paper. But it wasn’t about wanting her, right then. It was about something deeper, truer. It was about letting her know she was safe, now.

I cursed whoever had hurt her. I wanted to run off and find them and tear every one of them apart with guns and knives and my bare hands. I was good at that stuff.

But it wasn’t that easy. She didn’t need a soldier.

What she needed was something I wasn’t any good at. But if I wanted to help her, I had to do it anyway. I pressed my chin into the top of her head. “You want to talk about it?”

I felt her nod. Then, “But I need to be outside. This place is too dark. Too small.” She hesitated. “But it’s going to be too cold out there. And I don’t want to be back in the house, where people will hear.”

I rubbed my hands over her shoulders. “I know a place.”

I took her by the hand and led her out across the field to the barn. Held the ladder for her while she climbed up into the hayloft. It was mostly empty, a cavernous space, but sheltered from the wind. Moonlight trickled in through a million little gaps and chinks between the wooden boards and tiles. She looked around in wonder and then nodded. Perfect.

I sat down with my back against a hay bale. She came and sat between my legs, her back against my chest.

And she told me what happened in the war.