You're Not Broken (5 page)

She gave the top of his bald head a wobbly smile, grateful for his concern. Her wonderful uncle, her silent and strong guardian. “You’re right, Uncle Do,” she said. “It’s too early to be worried.”

              But was it?

              For the first three months he had been away, they had written with somewhat regularity. And Jason had seemed just as eager to write back as she had been. He had regularly written how much he wanted to walk in the library park again with her.

              So why the sudden silence?

              After another few weeks, a horrible thought came to her. What if he had been killed in action? If Jason had been killed, no one would know to notify her. After all, she must look like a trumped up pen pal at best to anyone from the outside. No one would think to let her know of his death.

              Panicking, she had thrown herself on her computer, trying to search who she could get in contact with to find out about Jason Daniel’s whereabouts. She looked up numbers and names at Fort Bragg. She wrote emails.

              But it was all for nothing. She wasn’t family. She wasn’t a wife or even a girlfriend. And the military wouldn’t give out information to a complete stranger. Kat truly began to despair that death had been the reason for this sudden silence from Jason.

              She saw the sideways looks she was getting from her brothers and Uncle Doughy as she doggedly tried to find one crumb of information on her soldier. She could tell they were thinking she had finally come unhinged.

              Then finally, she got lucky.

              An older lady who must’ve been a civilian employee answered one of her calls. She sounded flustered and quite confused before Kat could even introduce herself.

              “Daniels? Jason Daniels, Staff Sergeant?” the woman said, echoing Kat’s words. A sound of computer keys tapping and papers ruffling crackled across the phone. “Daniels, Daniels,” the woman muttered to herself.

              Kat bit down on her lip, hoping against hope she wouldn’t be turned away again. She usually never got beyond this point.

              “Wait, Jason Daniels, Staff Sergeant of 2
nd
Battalion, is still deployed in Iraq, dear,” the woman said, sounding like she was reading off a computer file. “He’s not available here. Why did you need to meet him again?”

              The woman, flustered and confused, had unwittingly given Kat the very answer she had wanted. And had dreaded.

              So he hadn’t been killed in action, thank god. He was still on the Army files as deployed in Iraq. So that only meant one thing—he didn’t
want
to write anymore. He didn’t want to talk to her. Jason Daniels had moved on from her.

              “No, I’m not meeting him,” Kat said softly, feeling her heart sink into her belly. “I’m not meeting him again.”

Chapter
Five
Two Years Later

              Jason took another swig of his beer. Reggie’s was in full swing it looked like for the night. The sizeable bar, which even held a small ring for amateur boxing, was packed. Unusual for a Wednesday night but not impossible.

              Jason sat back in his wooden seat as he surveyed the seedy looking crowd. Reggie’s was an institution around Fayetteville. Jason snorted and shook his head. No, not an institution. More like a stubborn stain that wouldn’t go away.

              Reggie’s only attracted the darkest, roughest, and surliest elements around a military base. And that meant for very rough nights.

              But this was where Jason felt most comfortable. After leaving the Army, he had never been able to walk into a normal bar without feeling an itch at the back of his neck. He felt too exposed and too vulnerable in a regular bar that only served beers and not knocked out teeth or broken noses.

              So he haunted Reggie’s regularly to take his mind off of things and to actually relax. Although most people could hardly call the place relaxing.

              The rowdy crowd was loud and rough. Already two fights had broken out and a table broken and it was hardly past 10 PM.

             
One more beer
, Jason thought. And then he’d go. He just needed enough alcohol to help ease his nerves. He could feel his muscles twitch underneath his shirt from how tensely taut they were.

              He closed his eyes.

              Would the haunting nightmares never cease? Would he have to always live his life filled with one blood soaked memory to the next? He had left the Army as soon as he had come back from Iraq but it had been too late. The damage had been done and his soul had been ripped one too many times.

              The table suddenly jerked underneath him.

              Jason sat up abruptly and opened his eyes, his body even more tense and ready for action. But immediately he sighed and relaxed.

              “Jesus, Al, you nearly spilled my beer,” Jason chastised halfheartedly as he righted the table.

              Al Bozer sat across from him. In his late fifties and with a head of wild graying hair, he looked like an eccentric bum. Jason realized that except for being employed as his foreman, Al essentially
was
an eccentric bum. He had a small flat in downtown that he only used to sleep in. He ate wherever he found food, worked when he needed to, and the rest of the time, spent his hours at Reggie’s. The Army had left its dents in Al as well.

              Not just the Army, Jason reminded himself grimly. He looked at the long faded scar down Al’s right temple. It had bled like hell, he remembered. Jason flexed his right fist. He wasn’t sure if it had been his right or left fist. All he knew was that it had been
his
fist that had cut up Al’s head like that.

              Al shook his head, dismissing Jason’s words. His wide brown eyes were sparked and clearly excited. “There’s a girl in here!” he said, leaning forward in excitement.

              Jason shook his head but couldn’t help grinning. “Al, you’re fifty eight years old. You say that as if you’d never seen a girl in your life.”

              Al shook his head again, his wild gray hair flinging about. “No, man,” he said. “This is a
girl
girl. She’s no Army floozie. She’s wearing a
sweater
.” He said the last word as if it were a sacred word only meant to be used in church.

              Jason’s brow furrowed a bit. Although Al sounded a little crazy to be worked up so much over a sweater, Jason understood what he meant. The only kinds of women that populated a rough bar like Reggie’s were women who knew exactly what they wanted. Usually, it boiled down to a one night fling or a wedding ring. Army benefits were nice when you could get them and a lot of these women were on their second or third Army marriage.

              Most of the soldiers from Fort Bragg were warned not to patronize Reggie’s but that didn’t stop infantry soldiers. They knew where their people were and damn the brass.

              But no nice, decent girl came into these kinds of bars. They would be eaten alive.

              “Where’d you see her?” Jason asked, debating whether he wanted to get involved or not. He had only wanted a few beers after a particularly rough night of sleep the night before. The nightmares only seemed to be getting worse not better.

              Al pointed towards the back where the bar was. “She was heading towards the bar. I heard her asking about Reggie,” Al added in a confused voice. He was clearly perplexed as to how a nice girl in a sweater would know about a man like Reggie.

              “Hmm,” Jason said, taking another swig. “Maybe she’s not such a
girl
girl like you think. Not if she knows about Reggie.”

              But before Al could respond, there was a loud crack like the sound of wood splintering followed by raucous shouts. Over at the far end of the room, towards the bar, Jason could see a huge ball of angry fists and leather jackets tumbling together. Violence at Reggie’s grew like tornados—it swept up everything in its path.

              Jason would’ve just waited it out till the tornado eventually petered out like it normally did when he suddenly caught a flash of a color he had never seen in Reggie’s.

              Mint green.              

              He jerked to his feet and peered through the shouting crowd and saw a girl wearing a mint green sweater. He only caught the side of her face, which was obscured by her long caramel colored hair, but he could tell by her hunched and frozen posture that she was terrified.

             
And as well she should be, the dumm
y
,
Jason thought in irritation as he quickly shoved his way towards the bar. This was no place for someone like her. She looked like a rabbit caught in a wolf’s den. And if he didn’t get to her soon, she’d be eaten whole.

              The crowds yelled and cheered whoever was fighting. Jason was quite sure even the instigators of the fight had forgotten why they had started fighting. Jason shoved and ducked as he made his way through the thick crowd to the bar.

              The crowd shoved to the right as one body as the fighters pushed towards the opposite end of the bar. Jason could see a burly arm raised for a powerful punch towards his opponent who was standing right in front of the girl.

              With one great lunge to push himself free from the tightly packed crowd, Jason wrapped his arm around the girl, pushing her against his chest, then turned in one swift movement so his back faced the brawlers.

              The punch landed on its intended target but the power of the punch sent its victim reeling, knocking hard into Jason’s back. Jason grunted as he felt an elbow dig deep into his ribs as the man hit him with the full impact of the blow.

              Shaking himself free, he pulled himself and the girl free from the crowded and now wrecked bar. It was slow moving with how thick the crowd was. Jason could feel the girl squirming against him but he kept his arm tight around her, not giving her an inch to get away. She’d be mauled and he’d be damned if he let this dummy do that to herself.

              He could feel under his hands the slenderness of her shoulders. Her bones felt as delicate as a bird’s. The top of her head barely reached his shoulders. He felt the heat of her shuddering breaths against his chest.

              And this frightened little rabbit is thinking to squirm away into this mob? Jason snorted as he tightened his arm and continued to push their way out.

              It took nearly fifteen minutes but finally, they reached the cool night air. Bursting free, Jason took in a deep, refreshing breath as the girl wrenched free from his arms. This time, he let her go.

              The girl wrenched free and whirled around, turning her back towards him. She wrapped her arms around herself, taking in deep breaths of the fresh air.

              Jason took in another breath and leaned against the outer brick wall of the bar. Crossing his arms, he leaned his head back.

              “I don’t know who you are,” Jason said, looking at the turned back, “but you’re a damn idiot to be here. It’s too fucking dangerous.”

              The slender mint green shoulders heaved up and down as if the girl was trying to regain her composure. He waited, not in any hurry to return to the mess inside. Perhaps it was just as well. Maybe the universe was telling him he’d had enough beers for the night.

              Just when Jason was about to give up on the silent girl and call it a night, she turned around. Her long caramel hair flying behind her in a cascading waterfall. Luminous almond eyes looked up at him, delicately shining through a sheen of tears. Her fair skin glowed in the evening light.

              Jason felt his heart stop and his limbs go numb. He felt like he couldn't distinguish whether this was a dream world or the real world.

              “You,” he breathed, feeling the cool night air blow across him.

              The almond eyes widened in surprise. The tears that had been so carefully held in check suddenly fell with the shock of the sight before her.

              “You,” she echoed, her voice just as shocked.

              He hadn’t thought he’d ever be able to see her again. At least not in the waking world. He had dreamt her of her often. She was the only clean thing left in his memories—the beautiful angel that had stopped to give him a moment of humanity and pie. She was the shining beacon of hope from home that wrote him constantly and made him remember that not everything in the world was covered with blood and rage.

              And here she stood before him.

              And of all places.

             
Katrina. Kat.

              “What the hell are you doing here?” Jason demanded, his voice stronger by the sudden fear in realizing it was actually Kat that had been in danger rather than some stranger. He imagined Kat being caught up in that brawl, taking a stray punch or elbow to her face. His blood rushed in delayed panic and fear.

              He reached forward to grab her arm, to demand an answer, to reassure himself that she was indeed safe.

              But she took a step back, putting herself out of reach.

              She looked up at him with a look of confusion but also coolness. There was a wall up around her and he could tell she was being careful to keep it there. “I’m looking for Reggie,” she said defensively.

              Jason stared at her, mindboggled. So Al had heard right after all. A stranger
had
been looking for Reggie. No, not a stranger.
Kat.

              “What do you want with Reggie?” Jason asked, unable to help himself from looking over Kat from head to toe. It had been two years since he had seen her but even he could tell she had lost some weight. There was a hollowness in her cheeks that hadn’t been there before. And he could dark smudges underneath her eyes that spoke of her lack of sleep.

              Something was wrong. Something was causing her too much and stress to allow her to get a proper night’s sleep.

              Kat pressed her lips in clear hurry and frustration. “It’s none of your—” she started and then just shook her head. “I need to speak with him. He knows my uncle.”

              Uncle Doughy! It brought back a sudden jolt of warmth to hear such familiar names again. Jason almost felt as if he was hearing about family.

              “Then he should’ve come down instead of you. Why would he send you to a place like Reggie’s on your own?” Jason demanded. He was sure Uncle Doughy would know what kind of place this is.