Page 40 of Breaking His Exile

She’d walked in on a lot of things in her life. Men and women both doing worse to themselves than this. It was one of the downfalls of living on the road. You see all of the fucked up shit people do to themselves when they are sad or lonely or desperate.

He didn’t make a move to cover his arm, or pretend he hadn’t been sitting out here in the dark burning himself.

She stood in the doorway, rain running off her hair, and stared at his arm. There were so many scars, old and new.

Then she looked at him. “Why?”

His jaw worked. “Go back inside, Rainey.”

“No.”

She stepped into the shed. The door was narrow, and her shoulder brushed the wood as she passed. Tilly stayed put in the mud outside, rain dripping off her blocky skull, dark eyes fixed on her person.

Rainey stepped inside. The shed felt smaller with both of them in it. “You’ve been doing this the whole time, haven’t you?”

He scowled, but said nothing.

“Sleeping on the floor. Digging trenches in the rain. Eating standing up. Always pushing yourself past your breaking point. And now this.” She reached for the cigarette and stabbed it out on the workbench before taking his arm in both hands and studying the burns he’d given himself. “You’re punishing yourself. Over and over again. Why?”

Still nothing.

“Is it because you let yourself want something?”

He didn’t answer. But he didn’t have to.

She could see it in the rigid set of his shoulders, in the way his free hand had curled into a fist at his side. She’d hit the truth dead center.

“It was the kiss,” she said. “You kissed me, and you wanted it, and that scared you more than the Sons of Sin ever could.”

His arm was warm under her fingers. The new burns stood out red and raw against the pale constellations of old scars, and she hated them. Not because they disgusted her—she’d seen worse, lived through worse—but because each one was a record of a moment like this one. A moment when he’d let himself feel something good and then punished himself for it.

“Rainey.” Her name came out like gravel. “Stop.”

“No.” She kept her grip on his arm, light enough not to hurt, firm enough that he couldn’t pull away without making it a thing. “Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me you didn’t come out here because kissing me made you feel something you didn’t think you deserved.”

His breath left him in a rush. She felt it against the top of her head, warm and uneven, and she realized how close they were standing. The shed was small, the lantern light throwing shadows up the walls, and the rain was a constant roar on the tin roof. It felt like the whole world had shrunk to this tiny space.

“I came out here because I needed to think,” he said.

“Bullshit.” She said it softly, but the word cut anyway. “You came out here to hurt yourself. Same way you’ve been hurting yourself since I got here. Maybe since long before that.”

He looked away. The lantern caught the line of his throat, the scar along his jaw she hadn’t asked about yet. She wanted to touch it. She wanted to touch all of him, every broken piece, and make him understand that she wasn’t afraid.

“You think you’re protecting me,” she said. “By pushing me away. By punishing yourself for wanting me. But all you’re doing is proving that you think I’m too fragile to handle the truth.”

His gaze snapped back to hers. “That’s not⁠—”

“Then tell me the truth.” She released his arm, but she didn’t step back. If anything, she moved closer, close enough that her chest nearly brushed his. Close enough that she had to tip her head back to hold his eyes.

“Tell me,” she said again.

Evander’s throat worked. He looked at the cigarette stubbed out on the workbench, at the lantern, at anything but her. Then his shoulders dropped, barely, a fraction of an inch that spoke of a man who’d been holding himself upright for too long.

“I was a Recon Marine,” he said. “Scout sniper. Six-man element, long-range surveillance, overwatch. We found a high-value target in the Korengal. Command ordered us to break contact, exfiltrate. Enemy reinforcements moving in. Air support unavailable. Possible compromise.”

His voice had gone flat, the same register he’d used describing mountain lion tracks. Rainey kept her grip on his arm, light, grounding.

“I disagreed.” He paused. “From the ground, the target looked like he was preparing to disappear. I believed command was working with delayed intel. I believed I saw something they couldn’t.”