Dalton nodded. “Food deprivation is an often-used torture technique. It’s not a pleasant experience to feel like your insides are twisting and turning as if they’re munching on themselves.”
“Have you…?” Steff couldn’t make herself finish the sentence.
“Yeah, I have. I and one of my other SEAL teammates got captured. We were held for forty days. I’d rather do Hell Week again than go through what we did.”
“How long ago?” She clutched her bowl tight, as if that would keep her grounded. She could feel the threads of panic creeping up on her, but she took some deep breaths. She didn’t want to have another attack in front of Dalton.
“Over ten years ago. It was my first mission. I wasn’t with Fox and the others at that time, I was with another team. They needed someone last minute, and I got the call up.” Jag paused. “I’m not sure I should continue.”
“Because of how it might affect me?” Considering how easily she could fall into an episode, his concern didn’t surprise her at all.
“Yeah. I sometimes still get nightmares about it, but I worked through it with the doctors on the base.”
“To get through what you did to become a SEAL, you’d have to have a certain resolve that not everyone has, right?” She certainly didn’t. She was afraid to go outside most of the time. And she couldn’t remember the last time she had anyone in her personal space.
“That’s true.”
Maybe to face what she’d been through, she needed to hear someone else’s experience. Whenever she and Cynthia talked, they never spoke about what they’d gone through. Cynthia had tried a couple of times, but Steff had shut her down. After that, she hadn’t broached the subject.
Perhaps they should’ve. Perhaps she should’ve been brave enough to talk about it the way Cynthia had seemed to be.
“Please tell me. I want to know.” And she did, because what Jag went through shaped him into the man he was now. Perhaps that was why she felt drawn to him. Some inner instinct reassuring her that he was safe.
She’d certainly felt safe in his arms at Teresa’s place.
“If it gets too much, interrupt me, okay?”
“I will.” Steff was determined to hear him out. To let him tell her everything he went through.
“Okay.” Dalton took a sip of his drink before he started. “So, the team I was put with had been together for years. They had a rhythm and a way to communicate that most teams develop after working together for any length of time. I didn’t know any of that, plus I was so green. So new and gung-ho, ready to throw caution to the wind and see what happens.”
“Like any new SEAL would do.” Steff could picture a younger Dalton eager to please his fellow SEALs and do what he could to protect the world.
“Maybe, I know better now. Anyway, Astro and I were patrolling, and out of nowhere without any type of warning, two guys came up behind us and clubbed us on the back of the head. We were out before we hit the ground. When we woke up, we were in cells in the depths of a cave in the mountains. We couldn’t see anything, it was that dark. There had been a huge rainstorm after we were taken, which washed out our tracks, so our team didn’t have any idea where we were. As you canimagine, we were seen as prizes and weren’t treated the best. I’d just about given up hope that we would be found, when we were. The whole ordeal hit Astro hard. He chaptered out the moment he could.”
Steff had a feeling there was more to the story and that Dalton had decided, even though she said she was fine, not to go into too many details. After hearing what she had, she was kind of glad that he hadn’t. “Do you still see him?”
“Nah, he married an English woman after he got out, and they moved to the UK to be close to her family. I think Astro needed the fresh start. I recently ran into some of the guys from his old team and they said he was doing well. Had a new career and a couple of kids.”
“Do you think he still thinks about that time?”
“No doubt, it was a defining moment in both our lives. We didn’t see each other the whole time we were captive, but I heard him when the rebels were trying to get information from him, and I’m sure he heard me.” Dalton turned toward the picture of a waterfall she had on her wall. His demeanor pensive, as if he was now battling the demons from that time. Which, of course, he was. He’d have to be a robot not to be.
Talking always made everything seem so fresh. It was one of the main reasons she never spoke about what was done to her. It had taken her therapist hours of gentle coaching and coaxing to get Steff to tell her what had happened. And then she’d stopped going because she believed that once she’d put it out into the world, she would be fine.
She’d been so wrong.
“Thank you for telling me,” Steff said after a few beats of silence. “I know that couldn’t have been easy for you.”
Dalton shrugged, and while it may have looked casual, Steff suspected it was anything but. “Making yourself vulnerable canbe difficult, but when you’re with someone who you trust, it’s easy.”
Steff breathed in deeply at what he said. He trusted her. Trusted her with something that darkened his soul, knowing that she would guard it like a precious stone. There was no way she was going to tell anyone about it.
He looked like he belonged in her apartment, and she didn’t know how she felt about that.
“Thank you for saying that. It means a lot.” She wanted to say more, but didn’t know how to articulate the thoughts running rampant in her mind.
“How about I clean up, and then we can chat some more? I know we haven’t talked about what I said on the phone. Although I just hinted at how I feel about you.”
