Page 52 of Tell Me Lies: Manlove Edition

He shakes his head. “Because of war crimes.”

I’m not certain I want to hear this, but I also know I’ll lose him forever if I don’t hear this.

He watches me steadily, waiting for me to speak. When I say nothing, he points at his missing eye. “This only happened when they figured out who I was. Apparently, some of my old friends recognized me by the color of my eyes.”

Laur lifted his right hand. “Happened one knuckle at a time over a couple of weeks. After they’d shot or beheaded most of the rest of us. They kept me alive, even though I pissed them off the most because I could translate.”

He twists to point to his side. To the word carved there. But then untwists and sets his hands down. He doesn’t want to tell me about that … not yet.

“And you know, it’s never for knowledge. No one who gets caught knows shit. I certainly didn’t. Neither did anyone I ever—”

His gaze falters glancing at the diner’s door, then back at me.

“So, if it’s not about intel, it’s gotta be about vengeance and intimidation. You’d find the bodies—mutilated bodies, partly healed—and that’s bad. But survivors are worse. I used to let people escape. If you’re good you can follow them home to their friends and leaders. You’ve made them so afraid of meeting you again, they get reckless.”

His gaze unfocused. I lean over to touch his knee.

Laur resumes as if remembering his place in a script. “Once they started working on my legs, I knew me and my boys were going to be a demonstration. Nothing as kind as beheading. Well, I didn’t want to be a before-and-after on Fox News, so … well.”

He grins and it’s the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen. “Let’s say improvised explosives go both ways.”

Jesus Christ, he did it to himself.

“I wasn’t supposed to survive the explosion. It was the distraction my guys needed to escape. My guys weren’t supposed to carry me out. I’d ordered them to run and escape.”

“That’s the kind of order people always ignore.”

He’s unimpressed. “People I talk to about this usually think that time is the thing that haunts me, you know. The pain. Watching the mutilation. That’s why they left—”

Laur waves his hand dismissively. “It’s not the prison. It’s the town. Whose name I don’t remember.”

I tilt my head.

“The rest of the army found us within a day. And in the next hour they wiped that whole town off the map. I can’t find it today. Those people didn’t know what the fuck was going on. Some of them saw us escaping and gave us food and water. Bandages. Some little girl had a flag— one of ours, I mean. Young enough, she just learned to wear the headscarf, still had hair showing, you know? Not old enough for a burka and she wanted to show her flag to me, to this broken and bloody man who she certainly didn’t think was going to outlive her. Then, the whole town goes up like the Fourth of July. And why? Vengeance and intimidation.”

The words swirl in my head. What he’d said, what I might say. Silence is best.

“Anyway, that’s what happened. Any more questions?”

“No,” If I asked for more, I’d get it. But there’s a door you can’t close once you open it, a darkness that gets into you. He’s given me enough of a peak to know why he keeps that door closed except with the people who carry that same darkness. “Thank you for sharing.”

“Whatever.”

I’d had some idea that knowing would bring us closer, but he was correct. I’m not sure what to do with that information and sit in silence for a moment.

But for now, that was the closest he could get to saying he loved me. Trusting me with something he didn’t give away easily.

He’s also correct about the place, doing it in public. The waitress comes back to take our order, and suddenly we return to the surface of life and not the dark depth that both of us already know too well. Back to smiling and setting her at ease. Then it’s easy for me to ask him more details about his official job and for him to get the list of classes I teach at the gym.

And before the bill comes he reaches across the table and takes my phone.

“You ought to get some kind of security on this thing,” he mutters. Then saves his number in my contacts as that asshole who loves you.

The End

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