After (65 page)

“There's a dinner on in a few hours, for everyone to get together, meet and celebrate. The refugees and the rebels and the founders.”

What, as in Founding Fathers? Her gut went tight.

“I hope you'll come,” he said.

“Sure.”

He gave her his sad smile. It pissed her off, that sag of guilt in her belly for not putting on an act, making him feel better.

“What you said earlier. That it's me hurting you.” She could hear that he was working at not crying. “I want to believe that will change. That here, where you're safe, that with enough time, it won't hurt you to let yourself feel. And I'm willing to wait, as long as it takes. Weeks. Months. Years. Anything, Nix. To be with you. To find that small happiness we were making together, before, and grow it. But if you tell me it won't change, that me being here hurts you, that it's always going to hurt you, I'll go. You've earned your peace. More than earned it. I won't be the one to hurt you, now that you're here. Now that you can finally be safe.”

“No. You should stay.”

A fragile, hopeful smile widened his mouth and that sag of guilt in her gut went hard and sharp. She hadn't meant to trick him.

“I'm going back, Gareth.”

“Back? Where?”

“Over the line.”

No glint of defiance. No sign of surprise after the first, split-second ripple of shock. He hadn't thought of it, but her words pierced him with sudden, total inevitability.

Only his own want had blinded him to the obvious certainty of it, from the moment she'd revealed the plan to him. Now his face just sagged in total, final defeat, in sadness.

“I had to see. Faith wasn't good enough. But now I know. When I help a pregnant woman or a pack of girls from the orphanage or the sex hotels go east, they're not just running into some other slavery. Now I know it's not for nothing.”

“You'll go soon,” he said.

“I need a rest. I know that. I'll stay for a few days.”

“And you won't let me come with you.”

“No.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Before the communal celebration, Kayla came back, with her warm smile and bright eyes. “Have you gotten a chance to sleep with all this commotion?” she asked in her low lilt.

“I'll sleep tonight.”

Kayla slipped a bag from her shoulder. “I noticed earlier, your bandages. If you'll let me have a look, I can dress them properly. We have a good supply of medicines here.”

One thing Nix knew, sometimes the easiest way to neutralize someone was to give them what they wanted and get it over with. So she surrendered to the woman's ministrations. Let her peel away the dirty bandages Nix had haphazardly re-applied after her bath, let her smear her pungent salve over the abrasions on her neck and wrists with her fingertips, so small and delicate compared with Gareth's huge hands. Each time the other's lambent eyes turned up to find hers, Nix expected the inevitable question, the pledge of understanding. But Kayla left her waiting, never asked, “What did they do to you?” or “I know what you've been through.” When she'd finished with her neck and wrists, Kayla stooped, touched Nix's ankle, and brought her foot onto her lap.

“You walked a great distance.” Her soft, warm voice poured over Nix, smooth and soothing as the salve she was touching, now, to the spots where her boots had rubbed her skin away. Then Kayla wrapped her delicate hands around the arch of Nix's foot.

Startling, the strength in those smooth, thin fingers. With the pads of her thumbs Kayla found every ache and knot in the ball, the arch, the heel of Nix's foot, in every toe, in her ankle and calf. The pain that had sprouted under the strength of those small hands softened, warmed, melted into a lulling fatigue and flowed through her.

The late afternoon light seeping through the window behind Kayla put a halo in her black curls. How did she do it? Make her presence, her looks, even her touch so painless, when the nearness, the voices, the glances of everyone else chafed so? Big brown eyes, all light and mischief. Impish, Nix's aunt would have said.

Maybe there was a drug in the ointment she'd used. So that when she set Nix's feet on the floor and slid around behind, Nix let Kayla sweep her hair aside, brush her fingertips along her nape, caress and rub her neck and shoulders and back until her whole body was as soft and lax as her feet and calves. Swirling, warm and light, Kayla's caress feathered over her skin, but somehow Nix didn't feel she was being touched. It was like the bath, water enveloping her, seeping between every finger and toe, filling her navel, all her creases and hollows, or the wind, how it would wash over her face, tug her hair back, slip inside her shirt, waking nerves at the base of a million invisible hairs.

But the water, the wind, there was no seeking, no want behind the touch. That's how Kayla's caress felt. Undemanding. Like Nix didn't have to do or give anything. Fingertips feathered through her hair, across her brow, her temples, her eyelids, the lobes of her ears, her cheeks, her lips, her chin. That selfless touch.

Nix stiffened. Her gaze sharpened. Kayla lifted her fingers, broke contact.

Her gaze soft, defenseless, with her impish smile Kayla said, “Was it relaxing?”

“Very.”

“I'm glad.” It was a trick of the light, that halo, but where she was standing, her back to the window, to the pink and gold of the setting sun, Kayla seemed to be exuding luminance. “I'll go now, if you'd like to be alone. Or I'll stay, if you'd like.”

“And do what?” Nix asked, the warmth, the ease Kayla's touch had worked into her leaking away.

A wide, warm smile. “What would you like? We could talk. Or, if you'd like to lie down and rest, I could sing something, just softly, to distract you from the chatter out there.”

“And if I want you to keep touching me?”

“I'd like that,” Kayla said, her lilting voice mellowing, softening.

“And if I want to touch you?”

Smiling, Kayla drifted across the few feet separating them, touched Nix's hand with one slim finger, read her gaze, then lifted Nix's hand, and laid her cheek in her palm.

“You're offering yourself to me,” Nix breathed.

Kayla lifted her lids, fringed with impossibly long, thick lashes, and gave Nix a lingering, soft, warm gaze. Nix tore her hand away from Kayla's cheek. Backed away from those huge eyes.

“They sent you to me. And to how many others? To...what? Thank me for my years of service to the resistance? By showing me it's no different here? Not really.”

“No. I've done a poor job of explaining.” Now Kayla's smile was small and hid her teeth, but her gaze was still warm. She was as light, as bright as ever. “No one made me come to you. It was my choice. Something I wanted.”

“Just me?”

“No.”

“Just you?”

“No.”

“So you, some number of you, you'll go to all of us?”

“Yes.”

“Some kind of rehab?”

“Maybe. I suppose that's a way of seeing it. I think of it as a welcome. A way for you to feel safe, to feel good. Nourished. Like the room and the food. Some women come here, they've never felt a touch that didn't hurt, that wasn't about wrenching something from them. When we go to them, and they learn to be touched, what it's like to feel warmth and gentleness, for some women, for a lot of them, it's a first step into life. To feeling their body is something more than a cage against their spirit, a solid thing that can be locked up, tied down.”

“And what happens to you, if you decide you don't want to do this welcoming, any more?”

“I suppose I'd find another purpose. But it's hard to imagine what else I could do that would bring me as much joy.”

“No one forces you?”

“No.”

“But it's organized. Someone keeps track. To make sure everyone who comes over the line is...welcomed.”

“Yes. And to ensure that everyone knows the solace of loving touch, now and then, as long as they live.”

“Loving touch. Sex, you mean.”

“Sometimes. Some people never want that. But they enjoy being hugged. Held as they sleep. Enjoy the kinds of touches you let me give you today.”

“And you go to the men, too?”

“I do. Most of us do. But not all. And some go only to the men. None of us go to anyone, not wishing to. If I'd decided, earlier when I came to invite you down to the meal, that I didn't want to offer myself to you, I wouldn't be here.”

“Today, tonight, you and the others are going to the resistance men?”

“Do you have a man here?”

“I know someone.”

“If there's a bond, we won't intentionally trespass—“

It seemed to startle Kayla a little when Nix laughed. “I'm not jealous. The man I know, it would be good for him, someone like you going to him. Offering him...your welcome.”

Kayla's soft gaze went bright and moist.

“You care for him. Selflessly. That's rare, I think, in any place or time, even under the best of circumstances. Love is so often selfish. And when I meet someone, like you, a resistance woman, I'm amazed; I'm in awe that you could learn to care for a man, at all. For anyone.”

Nix didn't say, “I don't.” Or, “I can't.” Denials like that, they're just invitations.

Provocations. Confessions.

“And for you?” Kayla asked.

“For me?”

Kayla gave her warmest smile, her softest gaze. Moved close, but didn't touch.

“My welcome. Now that you know it's truly mine, will you accept it?”

* * * *

As the dozens of women and the few men from her building poured out the doors and slipped into the confluence of people streaming from the horse-shoe of buildings, over the rectangle of rolling lawn toward the great hall where dinner was to be served, Nix found Gareth in his room. Even though he looked sad, his body sagging slightly, his gray eyes clouded dark, he smiled when he saw her. Silent, they walked together down the stairs, through the double doors of dark, polished wood, and let the stream of women bear them along toward the dining hall.

Little by little as the procession flowed forward, the happy chatter, the fragile laughter died down, until the river of women surged on in tense silence. They'd all been told ahead of time what to expect. Though the train had been packed full with refugee and resistance women, and the horse shoe of residence halls had been set aside for the newcomers and reflected the same demographic, the campus as a whole looked more like the rest of the world. Mostly men. Still, it was a little startling, that sea of men lining bench after bench from one side of the dining hall to the other. Sitting among them were a few women, women like Kayla, light and smiling and bright-eyed, at least one among the ten or so men at each table.

One-by-one emissaries from each table greeted the crowd at the door, each leading a small group—a resistance woman or man with three or four refugees in tow—

back to his table. The Sewanee men nodded and smiled, but seemed to be keeping themselves in check, their gestures small and infrequent, their voices quiet, soft, in an effort not to overwhelm the newcomers.

Still, in her gut, Nix felt the familiar cold coiling, constricting. The room, despite it's soaring ceiling and myriad windows smelled of men, was warm with their bodies and breath. However softly they talked, their baritone murmurs filled the air, settled on her like a net.

“Welcome. I'm Brian.”

Shorter than Gareth, but even wider across the shoulders, a blond youth with eyes blue as a summer sky. Unless invited they weren't supposed to touch, Nix knew, and young Brian's hands stayed by his sides, not reaching for a shake of greeting, not touching the back of an arm to guide as he parted them from the others by the door and led them to his table. Along with three others, holding their babies tight against their chests, Melissa and the young mother she'd befriended followed Nix and Gareth to Brian's table, where a dozen men greeted them with smiles and soft murmurs of welcome. The Sewanee woman in their midst, blond and blue-eyed as their usher, cast the light of her bright smile over them. In a voice surprisingly rich and timbered for such a gossamer beauty, she told them her name was Marjory, and introduced the rest of the men to the newcomers.

It was hard to eat, even though the bounty and the aroma of the food was beyond her imagination after eking out an existence by digging up roots and nuts and plucking berries, pears and apples when she could find them. There was too much in her belly, already, coiling and flexing, heavy and cold, so each time she took a small bite and tried to swallow, the food seemed to stick in her throat.

She distrusted these Sewanee men. The lightness, the brightness which in Kayla and Marjory inspired a feeling of awe, of wonder, in the men provoked suspicion. They were guilty. Had to be. Most of them, anyway. So what if they were reformed? It was obscene that they should be there, eating so well, living surrounded by the enduring beauty of the campus, none of them too burdened by their past to look right into the faces of these women who'd endured such horrors, and smile without shame.

“He's a cute little guy,” the man across from Melissa said, his broad smile pushing his cheeks up so a fan of deep creases opened by each eye.

Melissa clutched her curious baby, grabbing for the gleaming spoons and butter knives, tight against her chest.

The smile and fan of wrinkles fading a little the man said, “Mine's just over there, with Adel.” He pointed to a plump, buxom brunette three tables away, a baby with a thick head of dark curls at her breast. “Bet they're about the same age. Thirteen months?”

“Twelve months, two weeks, three days,” Melissa said, not taking her eyes off the crown of her son's head.

“She's more fun every day, that little one of ours. Smiling, laughing. That jibber jabber—she can go on for an hour.” He laughed. “Just like me. What's his name?”

Eyes still fixed on the top of her baby's wispy head, Melissa shrugged.

“Doesn't he have a name?” the man tried again, his voice gentle, coaxing.

“It was Mark. After his father,” Melissa said, so quietly it was hard to hear her over the din of the hall, even for Nix, sitting right beside her. “But I don't want to call him that now.”

“Sure,” the man said in a kind tone, “you should call him by a name you like.”