Page 49 of Beautiful Savage
"In any case, I don't want to move." Her voice carries that certainty again. "This is where you fell in love with me. I'm not leaving it. We could find ways to make this work better."
I wish she would put me out of my misery and tell me she loves me too, but it is what it is.
Standing between her legs at the counter, my hands find her hips. The positions familiar now. Her above me for once, looking down. Time to give her what I've been holding back.
"The day I took you," I start, my voice flat. "I made a misreading. Thought your father was doing reconnaissance for Hallstein. The man I've been building a case against for nine years. Thought the painting was cover."
She doesn't interrupt. Her hand finds mine on her hip.
"I've known for weeks Nicolas was innocent." I force the words out. "Your father was just a painter who found an open gate. The kidnapping was wrong."
She goes very still. "When did you know?"
"Day fourteen."
"You've kept me here two weeks past knowing."
"Yes."
"That's all kinds of fucked up."
"Yes."
She studies my face, and I let her see the truth. That I would keep her another fourteen days, another fourteen years.
Then I give her the last secret. My real name.
"Brian." Just the name, no setup. "Brian Porter. That's who I was before the discharge, before the Delgados, before I became the monster everyone crosses streets to avoid."
She says it once. "Brian." Testing the syllables like she tested that lemon, learning the weight of them.
Then: "You're Gunner. The man who gave me his shirt, who tends secret gardens, who just told me he loves me by a lemon tree. Brian was someone else's ghost. But I like knowing his name."
She's given me back both versions of myself. The man I was and the man I've become. The gift of it makes my throat tight.
"Are you ready to tell me about your discharge? I know you left the Army, and I know that man Hallstein had something todo with it. And you were accused of something. But what am I missing?" She runs a finger through my hair. "I want to know everything about you."
I've never said this out loud before. I've hinted at parts of it, to Jorge, to Marisol, to Logan, but I've never said the full story.
For the first time, I want to.
I look her straight in the eyes, meeting her gaze.
"Helmand Province. 2017." The dates come out clean, like a report. Everything else won't.
I keep my hands where they are, on her hips, because if I move them I'll start moving around the room, and I've spent nine years pacing this story out alone. Tonight I stay still. Tonight I look at her.
"There was an officer. Hallstein. He outranked me by a lot, and he had a habit nobody talked about. He'd go out to the villages on his own. Said it was relationship-building. Hearts and minds." My jaw works. "Local women started disappearing. Then they'd turn up. What was left of them."
Daphne goes very still. She doesn't pull her hand back from mine. She doesn't do the thing people do when a story gets too big for the room — the flinch, the softening of the face into pity. She just keeps her eyes on me.
"Six." The number sits between us. "Six that I could account for. There were probably more. I only ever got two of their names. Fereshta Sahar and Nazaneen Karimi." I make myself say them, because they deserve to be said out loud in a kitchen by a man who's still breathing. "The rest I couldn't even hold onto. That's the part that—" I stop. Reset. "A man should at least be able to keep their names."
"You found out what he was doing to them," she says. Quiet. Not a question.
"I found the evidence. Took me three months. I had photographs, I had timelines, I had a witness." The witness whorecanted under pressure three days later, but I don't put that on Daphne yet. "I did everything you're supposed to do. I went up the chain. I reported him."
"And."
