Crystal Cove (Friday Harbor #4)(44)

Amid the turmoil, she was aware that Jason had come into the room. Rosemary told him harshly to stay back, that Justine was out of control and would hurt him. Somewhere beneath the rage, Justine was terrified that Rosemary was right.

Ignoring the warnings, Jason reached Justine in a couple of ground-eating strides and pulled her close. He took her head in his hands, forcing her to look up at him. “Justine,” he said, his voice low and urgent, “look at me. It’s okay, baby. Remember what I told you?… Whatever you do or say or feel. Look at me.”

Gasping, crying, Justine dragged her unfocused gaze to his. She was held by those midnight eyes, by the way he stared at her as if he knew her inside and out. He was calm and steady, compelling her to be there with him. Guiding her out of a storm, once again. “Are you hurt?” He smoothed her hair back. “Did you step on any glass?”

“I don’t th-think so.” She felt the white-hot energy draining away. But the anger, and the anguish, were still raging. She couldn’t look at either Rosemary or Sage. “This is why,” she told Jason, trembling and laughing, tears leaking from her eyes. “The truth or dare question, remember? Why I broke up with my boyfriend. He was afraid of me. You should be, too. You should—”

Jason hushed her, kissing her forehead, stroking back a lock of hair that had stuck to her wet cheek. He reached for a nearby roll of paper towels and tore one off. After blotting Justine’s eyes, he held the paper towel to her nose, and she blew obediently.

Sage sighed as she saw that the tempest had passed. “We’ll take care of this,” she said to Jason as he glanced over the mess in the kitchen. “Thank you, Jason. We’ll finish talking to Justine, now that she’s—”

“No.” He was staring at the flatware and the knife stuck against the refrigerator. “I’m taking her upstairs.”

Justine stiffened as she followed Jason’s gaze. He should run from her, like Duane would have. Instead he put a hard, bracing arm around her shoulders. “Careful where you step,” he said. “I’m good with hypothermia, but I’m damned if I can do stitches.”

“She has more ability than we thought,” Rosemary said to no one in particular. “Possibly more than I’ve ever seen in one individual. And she can’t control it at all.”

Exhausted and sullen, Justine remained silent. Her jaw trembled as she stiffened it against more crying.

“I think we’ll call it a night,” Jason said in a deliberately pleasant tone, guiding Justine from the room.

“There is something both of you must know,” Rosemary said.

“It can wait until later,” Jason replied.

“No it can’t. You see—”

“Rosemary,” Jason interrupted firmly, “with all due respect … it’s time to shut up now.”

The older woman opened her mouth to disagree, then closed it and glanced at Sage, looking rueful. “Perhaps it is.”

Fourteen

Consciousness came to Justine by degrees. The sound of rain … the bruised soreness in all her limbs … the scent and softness of clean cotton sheets. The bleak gray light of morning slipped beneath her eyelids, and she closed them more tightly. The air in the tower bedroom was cold, but it was warm all along her back and bottom and legs, as warm as sunlight. Jason was with her. He had slept in his clothes, on top of the sheets and blankets, using one of the quilts to cover himself. Justine was in her nightgown, cocooned deep under the covers.

Memories of the previous night came to her. She had talked without stopping, although it must have been difficult for Jason to make sense of the words wedged between hiccuping sobs. He had held her and listened patiently while she had told him things she never told anyone in her life. Whether Jason believed in anything she had said or not, he had held and comforted her when she had needed it most, and she would always be grateful for that.

Even now she still couldn’t believe that her own mother had cursed her. A controlling act disguised as love. It was impossible to accept the contradiction of that; there seemed no way to make sense of it.

“It will never make sense,” Jason had told her, “because it doesn’t.”

He had sounded so certain that Justine had almost believed him. “Are you sure?” she had whispered, resting in the crook of his shoulder. “Rosemary and Sage believe it was for my own good. Does that put me in the wrong? Do I get to be angry about it?”

As he had replied, his hand played with her hair, gathering the long wild locks into a single stream. “Justine, whenever someone says ‘this is for your own good,’ it’s a guarantee they’re about to cause you some kind of damage.”

“You sound like you know what you’re talking about.”

“My father used to pound the hell out of me,” he had said. “With plumber’s line, lengths of chain, anything he could get his hands on. But the screwjob wasn’t the beating. The screwjob was when he said it was because he loved me. I always wondered how love could translate into an emergency room visit.”

Justine had put her arms around him and stroked his hair.

After a moment Jason had said, “My point is, when someone is hurting you, they can call it whatever the hell they want. They can even call it love. But words lie, actions don’t.”

There had been a measure of relief in hearing the truth, no matter how painful.