Mystic Memories (24 page)

“I was beaten and whipped within an inch of my life many times,” he said quietly, the clamminess becoming a cold sweat. “The first few times, I prayed to live. After that, I prayed I would die and be done with the pain and the . . .”

He could not bring himself to say the rest, mortified by the sudden, vivid, ugly remembrance of the things that had been done to him. Cara’s hands reached for his, holding him, becoming his anchor.

“For many months I endured their abuse. I lost all faith in anyone or anything that would save me from the hellish service to those vile bastards. When I was too weak or too battered, they took other boys from foreign ports of call, leaving them behind when we sailed again. But never me. They never left me behind no matter how much I prayed. I was their favorite . . .”

Gulping great gasps of air, Blake broke away from Cara and shoved himself off the bed. He staggered to the table and braced his hands on each side, curling his fingers around the edge. The memories of his violation slammed into him with renewed pain and torture. Deep, wrenching sobs broke through as a vivid scene unfolded in his mind.

“There was a boy . . . He was younger than me . . . I saw—” He squeezed his eyes shut. His hands gripped the table. “I saw Landers and Bamsdall murder that boy, smothering him in the midst of—” Crying in anguish, he hung his head in shame, feeling responsible for not being able to stop the violence. “Th-that child died because he hadn’t pleased the captain.”

A roar of outrage erupted from his lungs. Lifting a chair and heaving it to one side, he screamed, “THOSE GODDAMN BASTARDS!”

Blindly, he bellowed and swore and lashed out, slamming his fist into the bulkhead, then smashing another chair against the door. Wood splintered and flew. His tirade escalated as he ranted at his abusers. He saw nothing but black fury. Someone burst through the door and grabbed at him. He swung and felt the satisfaction of his knuckles smacking into flesh and bone with a crack.

A punch caught him square in the stomach, doubling him over and knocking the wind out of him. He gasped for air, then came back with another animal roar, ramming his head into his assailant like a bull with horns. He punched wildly, both arms pumping blows into the belly of the beast.

A fist clipped his temple. His head whipped to the side. His knees started to buckle. Hands grabbed his shoulders from behind.

“Not again!” He cursed, fighting against two now, instead of only the one. “
Never
again!”

His arm swung back to ward off the person in back of him. As his elbow struck hard, he heard a woman scream, distracting him for a mere second. Long enough to take a hit under the jaw. He reeled backward and went down.

Through a red haze of dissipating anger, he saw Cara and Keoni kneeling on each side of him, leaning over him. The
Kanaka
cupped his hand over one eye, swearing at Blake in his native tongue.

Cara was wide-eyed with a dazed yet concerned expression. Grasping his left hand, she brushed her fingertips across his forehead. Her gentle touch cleared the ugly, debilitating mist of his past. When she grazed his temple, he winced. More from humiliation than from any physical pain.

“I warned you,” he growled at her. Misery and degradation suffocated him. “I didn’t want to remember . . . Now I understand why.”

“It’s better to have had it come up now.” Her voice was achingly gentle, filled with an emotion that sounded a lot like love. She attempted a weak smile of reassurance. “At least you took it all out on your furniture . . . and a friend who won’t hunt you down and kill you for a few fists in the face.”

Blake pushed himself up to a sitting position, then looked up at his friend. “I’m sorry you had to walk in at the wrong time.”

“Better me than her.”

“I never would have hurt Cara.”

“Oh, no? Who do you think screamed?”

Blake’s gaze jerked to her and he spied a reddening mark on her cheekbone. “Tell me I didn’t—”

“It’s nothing. Just a bump.” Her dark eyes were unable to lie.

He reached out to her face, recalling that his elbow hit something when he’d swung it around. Now he realized she’d taken the blow. “Please forgive me,” he whispered. “You must think I’m a monster.”

“No . . . never.”

Keoni rose to his full height. “I betta get somethin’ for my eye, eh? We talk tomorrow. Maybe you explain. Maybe not. Make no difference. I go. Leave you two.”

Cara smiled up at him. “
Mahalo nui loa, kaikunāne
,” she said, thanking her new big brother. Blake echoed her sentiments, offering his hand.

Keoni leaned down, grabbed the hand, and hauled Blake up for a big
Kānaka
embrace. In his Island language, he spoke a private message, much of it in words unfamiliar to Cara. “You my brother for life. Nothing change that. Fighting don’t change that. Women don’t change that. But you have something very special in her, more special than you know. Don’t lose her from your pigheadedness. It is time to make her your wife.”

“She is already my wife.”

“Not in your heart. You make love. You let her in. She is your destiny, little brother.”

Without words to speak his emotions, Blake could only nod. Then he embraced his friend and bid him good night. Keoni turned to Cara, who had stood up, and kissed her on the cheek. “One hell of a welcome into our little family, eh, little sister?”

As she smiled a sad smile, he went out the door laughing at his sense of humor. After he’d closed the door, the room fell silent for a few minutes.

She asked, “Do you want to talk?”

“No.” The pain of the memory was too new, too raw and too mortifying. To recall his past had been bad enough, but to do so aloud for another to know of the violation compounded his shame. “Don’t hover, Cara. I am through breaking furniture.”

She reached out to him. He stepped back, closing his eyes against the hurt he saw in her eyes. Hating himself for putting her through more anguish, he couldn’t help the way he felt right now.

“Blake,” she begged.

“Please don’t touch me. It is when you touch me that I remember. I don’t understand it, but I have to believe it because I experienced it. And it hurts too much. I cannot take any more memories. Not tonight.”

Turning his back on her, he fought to make sense of a past so dark that he’d buried it for years. He needed to do so alone.

As she walked over to the bed, his heart followed her. He thought of what Keoni had just said to him. His
Kanaka
brother possessed a deeper knowledge of spirits and such, of which Blake knew only through his limited education from the Island elders. Perhaps Keoni knew more about Cara, understood more about the mystical woman. When told of Cara’s gift of insight, he’d seemed almost indifferent, accepting the stories as if there was no question of their credibility. Despite his friend’s example of embracing the unknown, Blake remained leery, unable to drop his guard, unwilling to let anyone in.

And now he knew why. Or, at the very least, he might have stumbled upon the beginning of some answers. But for the time being, the memory of his horrid past was not something he wanted to think about. Tomorrow, maybe.

Bud moved in the corner, drawing Blake’s attention to his dog’s bewildered expression. He went over and gave the Lab a comforting pat on the head, yearning for someone to give him similar reassurance.

You have Cara.

No, he told himself. She was more the cause of this turmoil than the cure. His life had been content until she had arrived and pushed him to remember his past.

Refusing to believe that she was anything but trouble for him, Blake sat down in one of the remaining chairs and removed his shoes and stockings. Methodically undressing, as in his regular nightly ritual, he failed to remember that he could not crawl under the blankets in his usual state of undress. Not while she was there. He pulled his long shirt over his head, sufficiently covering himself.

After extinguishing the lantern, he walked through the dark to the berth. Hesitating, he considered sleeping on the floor, then thought of the unforgiving hardness of the wood. Unwilling to waken to stiff joints and sore muscles in the morning, he mildly chided himself for the irrational notion of suffering another sleepless night when there was a mattress large enough for two to share. Quietly, he slipped beneath the covers, trying not to touch his wife.

Cara felt Blake pull away, though the warmth of his body still caressed her back. She held back a sigh, wanting to do something to ease his torment. But she was the last person in the world he would trust right now. Nothing she could say or do would allay his fear of her. And she couldn’t blame him.

She’d been through this before. She should be used to it. But every time it happened, her heart ached from the pain of being rejected for something she couldn’t change any more than she could change the color of her eyes or the pigment of her skin. She was different. She was psychic. It was not a disease of the mind that was somehow contagious. Yet she was a pariah to those who didn’t understand or could not accept the evidence of a supernatural world around them.

None of the previous hurts had affected her as much as this one from Blake. His rejection was the hardest of all. But it wasn’t his fault. Sometimes even she didn’t know how to handle the psychic phenomena that could crop up. After the strange vision in the cave, he’d looked at her as if she were a two-headed monster. God, how it hurt to see that distrust in his eyes. She balled her fist and pressed it to her mouth, holding back the sadness.

Love him, Cara. Give him your heart
. The voice was not her own, but held the soft, Spanish cadence of her great-aunt Gabriella.

But I can’t, she silently argued. He won’t let me even touch him, Aunt Gaby.

Do not judge him by what you see or hear. He needs you.

He doesn’t want me! He said so! Do you know how much it hurts to hear him say that?

Look beyond the fear in his mind and search for the love in his heart. It is there, Cara. So deep, so hidden, that Blake cannot find it.

I’m not the one to help him, Aunt Gaby. I thought I was, but I’m not. I was wrong.

Touch him, Cara. Heal him.

No, I can’t.

Trying to block out the disembodied voice of Gabriella, Cara covered her eyes with the palms of her hands. She refused to go through with the request that had been made of her. She couldn’t risk putting herself out there on a limb only to have Blake shove her away. He had made it perfectly clear—he didn’t want her.

A small twinge of pain came from her belly. It was the same feeling she always got when she didn’t want to do something she’d been prompted to do.

No, she couldn’t listen to her gut this time, preferring the pain of a little stomach acid over another, deeper kind of pain. She couldn’t afford to create more complications by consummating their phony marriage. If she managed to reach past the barrier around his heart, then went back to her own time with Andrew, where would that leave Blake? Where would it leave her? Both of them would be worse off than if she’d left well enough alone.

She shifted to her back, but the discomfort in her abdomen only increased. She rolled to her other side, facing Blake’s back. Her stomach clenched tighter.

You’re not playing fair, Aunt Gaby.

Love him, Cara
, repeated the gentle voice.

I want to love him, but . . . what if he won’t love me back? What if he can’t?

Cara tentatively reached out to Blake. Her hand paused over his shoulder blade, not quite touching him.

With a silent prayer for guidance, she splayed her fingers across the soft cotton yoke of his shirt.

“Don’t.” The threatening tone gave her a start, but she kept her hand in place.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” she whispered.

“Leave me alone.” He rolled his shoulder forward, shrugging off her touch. His rebuff stung, yet somehow she found the strength to continue. She slid her hand to his waist, drawing her body up close to his.

“I’m not sorry I made you remember everything. Now that you’ve faced the horrible truth about your past, I want to help you put it to rest.”

“Go to sleep, Cara.”

Her hand moved up his chest.