Jazz peered inside the dojo curiously, and couldn't help staring at the sight of Brandon wielding what looked like two short staffs. His face was wrought with concentration, but she could see that some frustration was also building by the way he carried his shoulders. Watching his exercise was both exciting and daunting.
I always figured the guy could take care of himself in the physical department, but he looks intense. Those turtles are absolutely lethal, and I wouldn't put him that far behind them. If Brnadon lost control, he could hurt someone really badly.
She shook her head, silencing the thought even as it crossed her mind. There's no reason to think something like that. Not everyone deals with the PTSD the same way. Just because he might have similar symptoms to my brother doesn't mean he'll react in kind.
Brandon is coming closer to dealing with his demons than my brother ever did. Of course, if James had received the proper support, who knows what could have happened? If my father had been more concerned with helping him and less determined to contain him, maybe things would have been different.
Jazz allowed silence to prevail in her mind for a couple of seconds, leaning against the doorframe. It's not my father's fault either though. He tried to help James at first too. My dad could lead hundreds of men in the most complex battle plan. He just didn't know what to do with his broken-down son. In other words, my dad was in the same clueless boat as the rest of us, except that he was truly unprepared to deal with the emotional crap.
"Jazz?"
The young woman blinked, and realized that Brandon was gazing at her.
"Were you waiting on me?" he asked.
"Yeah." She recovered quickly. "The others are on their way back. Jen asked me to let you know, and then I got…distracted."
Brandon gave her an easy smile. "I don't put on much of a show. It's more interesting to watch the guys."
Jazz folded her arms with a smirk. "Are you telling me you've never used any of your moves to get a girl?" she teased. She could see the small blush her challenge had elicited, and bit her lip to prevent herself from chuckling.
"Maybe when I was a young, stupid kid, but I haven't done anything like that in years."
His shy smile faded back into a clouded countenance that made Jazz sad to see.
"I wasn't trying to embarrass you," she said softly.
"No, this isn't about you," he said. "I'm just down in general. I can't stand being sidelined at a time like this."
"If it makes you feel any better, I don't think anything happened up there," she offered.
"It's going to though," he said wistfully. "I was there with them the last two times, even when I didn't know what I was doing. It feels like I lost my job."
Jazz shifted from one foot to the other as she considered her response. "You're still valuable to them," she said finally.
"Oh, I know." He blew out an irritated breath. "It's hard to explain how this feels. Even though they're walking into a situation that could spell certain death, I'd rather be doing it with them than waiting on them to come home. We were a team."
"You still are," she tried to encourage him.
Brandon clutched both of his staffs in one fist. "Yeah," he murmured, as if he didn't know what else to say. "So they've got some more time to stew before they get to see action."
The young woman shrugged. "Don said the head guy never showed up at the building."
The man wiped away sweat that was sliding down his forehead and then fidgeted with his damp t-shirt. Jazz felt like he wanted to remove it altogether, but Brandon hesitated.
"I wouldn't mind giving you some privacy," she suggested.
He stared back at her steadily instead of answering, and took a step backwards to sit down on the wooden bench. Jazz wasn't sure what the move meant, but it didn't look like he was kicking her out. The man stared down at the mat for another beat of silence, and then his golden brown eyes flicked up to meet hers.
"They're just scars," he said faintly. "Sometimes I don't know why they bother me so much."
"I think…it might be because you see them as disfiguring," Jazz said slowly. "I've seen a lot of war wounds, Brandon…and people tend to have different opinions about them. I guess it's easy to see them as a negative reminder of the awful things that you've been through, but I try not to think about them that way."
"What would you call them?"
"To me, scars are the sign that you're still living. Sure, it hurts to get them, but they also mean you're a survivor. You got through it, and you lived to tell about it. You can look at them like they're the proof that you almost died, or the symbol that you were tough enough to make it."
The man's shoulders slumped. "I don't feel tough, Jazz. In my mind, I'm still lying on the floor in a thousand pieces."
"I don't think you give yourself enough credit," she told him. "I mean…I may not have known you before any of this junk happened, but I see strength inside you, Brandon. It was clear as day when you were playing with those sticks."
Brandon snorted. "They're called Bahng Mahng Ee. It's a Taekwondo thing."
"Not Ninjutsu?"
"No, that's how the turtles were raised. My older sister and I got into Taekwondo as teenagers, and both of us kept up with it. My style has been impacted by the way I mix it up with the guys in training and sparring, but I'll never be exactly like them."
"I think you're more like them than you realize."
He shook his head. "Jazz, nobody is like them. Sometimes just being in the same room as the turtles still feels like breathing rarified air."
"They've got a pretty high opinion of you, Brandon."
Brandon leaned against the wall with a sigh. "They have a way of bringing out the best in you, and believing in you even when you can't believe in yourself."
"That is a unique gift," she acknowledged. "A lot of people like to form opinions first and ask questions later."
"The guys don't have the luxury of being able to give people the benefit of the doubt, but when it comes to seeing through somebody, straight to the heart of a matter…That's their specialty."
Jazz laughed. "Reminds me of my first meeting with Donny. It'd be kind of nice to have that type of intuitive feeling over people, don't you think? To be able to look them straight in the eyes, and know without any doubt that they'd never do anything to hurt you." She held Brandon's gaze until she felt awkward and forced herself to turn away. "Most of us will never come close to reading people that well."
"I'm a firm believer in taking a second look," Brandon replied. "First impressions aren't always correct, as both of us know very well." He laughed shortly. "I think that everyone deserves another chance."
She nodded. "We all screw up. If we didn't give people another shot, we'd have a world full of punks who never talk to each other."
He chuckled. "That would be one lonely planet."
Jazz leaned forward, resting her arm across her knees. "I haven't practiced the art very much," she admitted. "I was burned badly by people I thought I could trust. I'd come to feel like it wasn't worth the risk to rely on anyone, particularly with the chance of rejection factored in."
"You expect them to push you away before they get the chance to know you," he filled in.
"If they had the chance to get to know me, I'd only let them down anyway. It can be utterly exhausting to disappoint everyone you know."
"You family has to factor into this. It can't have been easy to deal with your parents leaving you to fend for yourself."
Jazz didn't expect an emotional reaction, and she wasn't prepared to restrain it. She'd cauterized the old wounds so many times, she hadn't thought she was capable of feeling such acute regret over the relationships. She clenched her jaw tightly as she focused on blinking back tears.
"It's okay to say that they hurt you," Brandon continued. "No one is invincible to being injured, even when you try to tell yourself that it's in the past, and it doesn't matter. It can still have power over your life. I ought to know."
Jazz looked at him, grateful for the momentary distraction from her own past. "What do you mean?"
"I have a terrible father," he explained. "He was abusive to my mom when I was growing up, but she lived with it. When he turned his fists on Kat and me, she ended up kicking him to the curb."
She grimaced. "I'm sorry. You've never had a relationship with him?"
Brandon shook his head. "No. That was the last I heard of him for several years. My dad didn't pop back up on our grid again until my mom died…and then he set his sights on Karina."
"Your younger sister?"
"Right. He preyed upon her desire to fill the empty place that his departure left in her life, and he took advantage of her. My mom had a Dance Studio. It was her life's work, and she spent all the effort she had inside her to keep the doors open.
"Kari was the one who followed in her footsteps, both in dancing and teaching. She took charge of the Studio after my mom passed, but there were a lot of problems. There were property tax issues, and many things were in disrepair.
"My dad swooped in like a superhero to save Karina's day, but he was only out to screw her over. Under the guise of helping fix tax issues and taking charge of paperwork, he transferred the property into his own name, and sold it right out from underneath her. Then he disappeared back into hiding."
"My God." Jazz couldn't think of any other appropriate words. "I'm sorry. I didn't know about any of that."
"I buried my anger and hurt over him so that I wouldn't have to deal with it, but it still came back to bite me. Don't be like me, Jazz. It's a waste of time."
A couple of tears escaped before she could stop them. "This is why I don't want to get near people. It's not until you get close to someone that they have the real power to destroy you. When some stranger hurts you, you might get mad, but you can brush it off. When it's someone you care about, it's not that simple."
Brandon exhaled softly. "It's not much of a life though, is it? Talk about a lonely planet. Human beings weren't designed to live in a bubble, Jazz. You can save yourself some pain in the short-term, but the life you end up leading is…empty." He winced as he said the last word. "I'm sorry," he said swiftly. "I'm not trying to judge you."
"No; you're right," she replied. "A week doesn't go by that I don't feel the weight of my isolation. But I thought it was worth it to protect myself, at least…" Jazz faltered, bracing her arm on the bench next to his. "I think I fooled myself into being satisfied, until I came here. Now everything is upside-down, and I don't know what I'm supposed to do."
"Nobody wants you leave, Jazz," he reassured her.
"I know they wouldn't say that outright—"
He surprised her by laughing. "Don't you feel it?"
"Feel what?"
"That magical sense of belonging somewhere. You don't have to be born into this clan to be a family member, Jazz."
"I've barely been around them long enough to know the difference."
"If you've lasted this long, it's a pretty good indicator that it's meant to be."
The young woman sniffed. "I'm still kind of afraid to accept it. I'm waiting to wake up to my own reality, and be so disappointed that I can't breathe."
His hand covered hers briefly. "There will come a point when this family feels like the one true reality, and all the crap on the surface fades into the background. It's an unusual way to live, and the guys tend to feel like they're holding us back. It makes me wanna laugh. They don't seem to be able to grasp how much fuller our lives are from knowing them than they could ever be otherwise."
Brandon removed his hand from hers, and she felt goose bumps run up the length of her arm. She was too distracted by the sensation to respond immediately, and when she did open her mouth she felt a little tongue-tied.
"Do you guys have to vote?" she asked weakly. "Or is there some unspoken rule about a certain length of time spent in their home guaranteeing automatic induction into the family?"
Brandon grinned. "If they didn't want you around, you'd know it."
"Does that go for all of you, or are some of you better at hiding your distaste for girls who are on the freakish side?"
"Do any of us seem normal to you, Jazz? Your everyday life was more typical than ours."
"True enough. Maybe I'm just freaky enough to blend in down here."
He nodded. "Definitely."
"You realize you just called me freaky, don't you?" she said impishly.
"It's the unifying factor among all of us," he said tongue-in-cheek, tapping her across the shoulder.
Jazz smiled, though she still felt like she was shaking off goose bumps. This is getting harder to contain.