Now, Lia had moved to her side and was facing him, one hand beneath her cheek, her legs drawn up. Cav was surprised she hadn’t gone into a full fetal position—he’d seen it often in Afghanistan with young Afghan children who slept like that. It was a defensive position adopted when people didn’t feel safe, aware that they could die. And hell, over there? Yeah, every village he’d frequented as a SEAL had been a potential gateway to death.
His brow furrowed as he kept his eyes on the road. Although he didn’t want to go there, he flashed back to the eighteen years he’d been living at home. He’d slept in a fetal position every night. He might have started out lying on his back or side, but when he woke up in the morning, he was always curled up on his side like a frightened animal with knees to his chest.
Had he been frightened? Hell, yes. Every day. Once, when his mother had tried to step between his father and Cav, his father had jerked a butcher knife from the kitchen counter, holding it in such a position that eight-year-old Cav thought it would slice his mother’s throat open. Even today, he could feel the same icy fear grip his throat and gut when he remembered that scene.
Luckily, his father still had some control and hadn’t followed through. Today, Cav often read of men who killed their spouses and children. What a piss-poor state this world was coming to! Hell, he’d personally gone through that potential scenario so many times he’d lost count.
His damp fingers moved around the steering wheel, even though the air conditioning in the van kept it comfortable. Every time Cav relived those years, which he hated to do, he would experience a physical reaction. His hatred for his father had made him grow up fast. When he was fifteen, his father had pulled out his belt to use on him once again. Finally, Cav was ready to fight back.
Unconsciously, he rubbed the bridge of his nose. It still had a bump to remind him how his father, high on coke, had gone ballistic when Cav had yelled he was never going to get belt-whipped again. Cav didn’t remember a whole lot about that event. He knew what it was like to “lose it.” Once he’d picked himself up off the floor, his nose running blood, he’d attacked his father.
Although his father had broken his nose and bloodied him, Cav had gotten in some serious punches, blackening his father’s eye.
Only when his mother rushed into the house after work and found them on the kitchen floor pummeling each other did she scream. That scream finally broke up the fight.
But Cav was ecstatic. He’d given his father the worst of it, the culmination of fifteen years of rage from the abuse he’d received. And while his mind had blanked out some of the details, his scars were there to remind him of the day he’d physically resisted his father.
Afterward, the house had quieted. It was almost like a morgue. His mother was shaken and tried to help him, but he walked unaided to the bathroom and took care of himself. That wasn’t new. Cav had always taken care of himself since he was essentially on his own as a kid.
Normally, the highlight of Cav’s day was going to school. It was a peaceful place compared with his crazy household. Because he hated coming home in the evening, he tried to arrive there as late as he could. But he knew that if he wasn’t there for dinner, his father would beat him, so he always managed to get home on time.
He loved school because it was a place of protection for him. His teachers liked him, supported him and most important, cared for and praised him. He wasn’t the most brilliant student in the school, but he wasn’t stupid, either. And Cav was great at sports, math and science.
He was useless in English and composition, for sure, and even now, he was a man of action, not letters. Cav had learned to accept who he was, and he rarely had regrets about the man he’d become.
Glancing momentarily down at a sleeping Lia, he again wondered what it was about her that turned him inside out and made him yearn so badly for time alone with her. He actually felt as if his soul was urging him to learn what lay in Lia’s heart, her mind. What events and people had shaped her? Clearly, she was a rural woman, raised on hard farm work. That tended to breed discipline, common sense and responsibility in a person, in Cav’s experience.
Just seeing the soft slope of her cheek, slightly pink, looking like velvet, made him want to feel it beneath his fingertips. He also noticed that Lia was definitely underweight. Didn’t they feed her enough up there at La Fortuna? Or was she working so hard, she skipped her own meals in favor of the teachers’ or students’ needs?
Lia had a big heart, just like Dilara. She had to—what other kind of woman would want to do this kind of work daily, nonstop. He’d seen the fire in Lia’s gray eyes, the determined set of her jaw during the meeting, her commitment to ensure that her children would not be left in the lurch from the catastrophic events of the past few days.