Page 78 of Four Promises to Love

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“That’s too bad because you are going to.”

“Are you always this dictatorial?” he asked wearily.

“When I have to be.” She gentled her tone. “Tell me what is going on.”

He planted his elbows on his knees, raking his hands through his hair. “Talking about it will not help. It might make things worse. I might become a raving lunatic.”

“I’m willing to take that chance.”

“You are like a dog with a bone, do you know that?”

“Then you might as well stop delaying and give me what I want.”

Feeling his radiating tension, she prepared to do battle.

“I watched a man die.”

“In Afghanistan?” she asked carefully.

“Yes. God. But also, here.” He let out a ragged breath. “In this very spot.”

She listened as he described his mad chase after a villain who’d been blackmailing his family. Her disquiet grew as he shared the struggle on the crumbling bank, which resulted in his foe falling into the stream. He had tried to save the man—and failed.

“I saw his eyes the instant before he went under,” Owen said dully. “I’ve seen it in my dreams countless times since. He was terrified, didn’t want to die. He begged me to help him. But I…I couldn’t.”

“It is not your fault.”

“I let his hand slip from mine. Watched the current claim his life.”

“Even so.” She sat shoulder to shoulder with him. “You did your best; you could not have done more. Given his malicious actions, the fact that you risked your life to save his is probably more than he deserved.”

Owen frowned. “I couldn’t leave a man to die.”

“Plenty would have. The world is not a kind place.”

“I know.” His voice roughened. “The truth is…it is not just him I see. In my dreams, I mean—and sometimes, I’m not even dreaming but wide awake. I get these…these flashes.”

“Memories,” she said quietly.

She had them too. Of the attendant’s sausage-like fingers holding the cheroot. The nauseating smell of her own burning flesh. There were smaller horrors too. Sleeping in cold, rat-infested alleys after she and Iris escaped the orphanage. Starving so badly that they’d nearly given up and said yes to the bawd with the painted eyebrows, who’d offered them bread in exchange for their bodies⁠—

She jerked when Owen laid an arm over her shoulders.

“Memories,” he agreed.

They sat, leaning into each other’s warmth.

“I saw my entire company fall,” he said. “They picked us off like partridges in the bowl of the mountain, gunfire raining on us from above. There was no escape. The soldiers who managed to evade the bullets and climb the slope were greeted by the enemies’ tulwars.” At her questioning glance, he clarified, “Curved swords, lethally sharp. I’ll never forget the sound of them cutting through air…and flesh.”

“That sounds terrifying.”

“I hear it sometimes, that whistling out of nowhere, and I dodge—even though nothing is there.” He slanted her a glance. “I sound like a madman, don’t I?”

“It is not mad to react to a memory. It is instinct.” She hesitated before sharing, “I feel ill when I smell a cheroot.”

He held her tighter. “During the fighting, I managed to find cover under the rocky outcropping. That is when I saw him.”