Page 77 of War Games

But she was more to me now. She was the one who was here, for one, but it wasn’t just that. It was her quiet vulnerability, her fierce love that held nothing but honesty, her wisdom, and all the mystery that would have terrified me before. Now, I was drawn to her, needing her wisdom, wanting her opinion on things, wanting her to know me and to know her.

Things were coming to a head in the argument.

“Why couldn’t he just trust me?” I asked softly, feeling the aching pain of having wanted his approval, the support that saidI could do no wrong, and if I did, he would bandage me up and let me try again without judgment.

“Because the trust he should have had was shattered by others. Not just by the werewolves who killed Liza, but by Liza herself. He’d trusted how he trained our children, trusted their judgment, trusted that they would listen when situations were dangerous. Liza didn’t, and she died. He didn’t just stop trusting the world, Jacky. He stopped trusting himself as a father, a mentor, and a teacher. His grief overwhelmed him.” Subira crossed her arms around the staff. “Then he started making the very mistakes he had never wanted to make.”

“Well…” I made a face. “I’m not ready to forgive him.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

“How can you still…” I didn’t finish the question, knowing it was a terrible thing to ask.

“Stand by him and love him?” Subira seemed nonplussed by it.

I winced.

“Because I know who he is and who he’s not.” She nodded toward the memory of Hasan, his fury uncontained. The room exploded, all the furniture becoming tiny pieces of debris. Almost instinctively, I thought how I didn’t want to get cut up by all of it and it froze, leaving me and Subira in a snapshot of the memory, much like the memory of fighting Rainer had frozen.

“He’s not the man I confronted that day. He was fighting a lot of demons that day, just like we all have personal demons to fight, as you know. He never wanted to be the man he was that day.” Subira waved a hand. “Let it continue. We’ll be safe.”

I took a deep breath and did.

I wasn’t ready to have peace with Hasan. Understanding didn’t mean I had to forgive. That was the high road, certainly, but it wasn’t just what he had said or done to me. It had been about how he treated Dirk.

“I tore the family in half,” I said, fighting the guilt I felt. It wasn’t enough guilt to make me back down from how I felt about Hasan, though. If I could just do as he asked, none of this would have happened. I put on a brave face and vented frustrations, but deep down, I still felt terrible for all this. I also wouldn’t change a single thing about it. I would defend Dirk and Landon until the day I died. I was going to marry Heath Everson, and no one was going to stop me.

“No, you didn’t. You drew an important boundary. You stood up for what you believe in, for those you promised to stand beside. You’ve done it with our family before as well. You didn’t break anything, Jacky. And we both know that those thoughts and feelings don’t come from this moment, not entirely. They are from something from a different time and place, from the eyes of someone who can’t tell the difference between this and what happened back then.”

“I don’t remember what happened when I was young, Subira,” I reminded her, shaking my head. “Hard to go to a memory to confront it, if I don’t remember it at all.”

“You don’t?” Subira turned and stood in front of me, ignoring the argument she had with Hasan that day. “Are you sure?”

“Positive,” I growled softly, not liking what she was implying.

“Jacky, if you didn’t rememberat all,then it wouldn’t haunt you. Something in you remembers.”

“No, it doesn’t. My human family treated me pretty badly. It’s probably just like?—”

“Hasan was mean. He said cruel things. I know all of this. He’s reacting to a feeling caused by someone else in our lives you remind him of. You remind him of the circumstances. He’s scared for you.”

“And?”

“And he recognizes how badly he hurt you because he wasn’t the first to do it. Just like you aren’t Liza, he’s not your biological father.”

Those words slapped me.

I wasn’t sure why, though.

“I know he’s not. I thought you weren’t going to try to make me forgive him.”

“I’m not trying to make you forgive him. I’m trying to make you think of the girl who is holding on to the pain. Not the grown woman in front of me. The little girl you claim you forgot, but clearly, your body remembers. Your heart and your mind remember, Jacky, and we need to get to it because it has lived with you far longer than anything else.” Subira pointed at Hasan. “He is not your biological father.”

He wasn’t my biological father. I knew that. I knew he was consumed by grief, and that caused him to be irrational. I wasn’t stupid. He said mean things. They were awful.

He never hit me.

Those words went through my head, and terror gripped me.

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