Crystal Cove (Friday Harbor #4)(26)



College hadn’t mattered after that. Nothing had mattered. He’d left school and home and everything familiar, in the attempt to find meaning in something.

“I’m so sorry,” Justine said.

He gave a quick shake of his head, not wanting sympathy. “It was a long time ago.”

Her hand crept toward his. Jason let his hand open naturally, palm exposed. Her touch was tentative, warm.

“What about your dad?” Justine asked. “Do you see him at all now?”

Jason shook his head, still staring at their adjoined hands. “If I did, I might kill him.”

Her fingers stilled against his palm. “He was a bad father?” she asked in a neutral tone.

Jason hesitated before answering. You could either describe a man like his father with a hundred thousand words, or one. “Violent.”

As a residential plumber, Ray Black had had no shortage of work supplies to use in disciplining an unruly son: wrenches, pipes, brass chains, flexible plumbing line. Jason had endured more than a few emergency-room visits, joking with the nurses and doctors about what a clumsy teenager he was, always getting contusions and fractures. High school football injuries. Got his bell rung again, that was contact sports for you.

“Your father knows he went too far. He promised it won’t happen again. Smile and say it was an accident.”

And Jason had done what his mother asked, smiling and lying, knowing it was far from the last time. Knowing also that the way to be as different as possible from Ray was never to lose control.

“Before my mother died,” he heard himself say, “she asked me to forgive and forget. But so far I haven’t managed to do either.”

There were no reserves of forgiveness left in him. The details of his childhood were as indelible as headstone engravings. He remembered things he didn’t want to remember. Although no one could understand him without knowing at least some of those details, he’d never brought himself to confide in anyone. His past was not something to be used as a bargaining chip to force someone’s sympathy. And so far he hadn’t seen any benefit in having someone understand him.

Justine’s fingers slid across the inside of his wrist, rubbing lightly as if she could feel his heartbeat. “I haven’t managed it, either,” she said. “My mother and I are estranged. We blame each other. She can’t forgive me for—” A helpless pause. “So many things. Mostly she can’t forgive me for not wanting her life.”

“Which is?”

“Oh…” Justine shrugged and looked away from him, her smile evasive. When her gaze cut back to his, she seemed to look at him through a hedge of secrets. “She’s … different.”

“Different how?”

“She’s very committed to what you might call an alternative religion.” Another weighted pause. “Nature based.”

“She’s Wiccan?”

“Sort of beyond that.”

Jason stared at her alertly.

Her hand began to pull away, but Jason closed his fingers over hers in a gentle snare.

“I was raised pagan,” she said. “Most of my childhood was spent at psychic festivals, spirit gatherings, magical arts meetings, drum circles … I even marched in a couple of pagan pride parades. I’m sure it looked pretty crazy to outsiders. It looked crazy from the inside, too.” Justine smiled and tried to sound light, but a vein showed on the porcelain surface of her forehead, a delicate blue longitude of tension. “I was always different,” she said. “I hated it.”

Jason wanted to touch her face, smooth away the signs of distress. Instead he let his thumb skim her knuckles in soothing strokes.

“At Halloween,” Justine continued, “I never got to dress up in a costume and go trick-or-treating. Instead I had to go to a Samhain dinner and sit next to empty plates set for the spirits of deceased relatives.”

His brows lifted slightly. “Did any of them show up?”

“I can’t tell you, or you’d freak out and run away.”

“Not before dessert.” He paused. “I’m getting the impression that your paganism involved some elements of … witchcraft?”

She blanched and kept silent.

To her astonishment, his eyes contained a glint of irreverent humor. “So are you a good witch,” he asked, “or a bad witch?”

Recognizing the quote from The Wizard of Oz, Justine tried to smile but couldn’t. “I’d rather not be labeled.”

She had told him too much. And even worse, it had all been true. What was it about him that turned her into such a blabbermouth? Feeling vaguely ill, she tried to pull her hand away again, but Jason wouldn’t let her.

“Justine,” he said quietly. “Wait. Can I just say something?… I’ve spent the past ten years creating complex fantasy worlds full of dragons and ogres. It’s the kind of job that a normal person couldn’t do. A couple of my closest friends, who both happen to work with me, have been known to wear pointy latex ears or hobbit feet to office meetings. And as I’ve already told you, I’m a pathological workaholic insomniac with no soul. So a little dabbling in the black arts during your spare time is hardly a problem for me.”

Justine was afraid to believe him. But she stopped trying to pull away. And the sick feeling was fading. Her fingers were tucked firmly in his now; she wasn’t going to let go.

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