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More silence follows, and it’s awful. I force myself to open my eyes.
She’s staring at me, utterly baffled. “Why would I ever be disgusted by you?”
I find Zeb and Phineas again. They don’t speak this time.
They’re leaving it up to me, what I say. How much I tell her.
I swallow hard. Brace myself. And I yank my shirt over my head.
I can hear the moment she sees it all. The way her breath hitches in a tiny gasp. The small exhalation of shock that follows.
Maybe the floor could open up and swallow me. Maybe the power could go out, letting darkness take us long enough for me to run.
Neither happens, but that doesn’t stop shame from rising like a tidal wave eager to make me drown. I scramble to pull my shirt back on. “I-I’ll go. I’m sorry. I?—”
Her hand catches my arm. I freeze all over again, my eyes darting to hers on instinct.
The fierceness in her gaze stops my world.
“Did…” Her voice is a growl, and she shudders like she’s holding her Hyde back. “Did he do this?”
My head twitches in a tiny nod.
Her hand shakes, her fingers tightening on my arm. But a pained look starts to creep into her eyes as the seconds tick by. “Did you think I wouldn’t want to be with you because of it?”
Shame grows. I can’t hold her gaze.
I shrug.
She’s silent for a moment. “May I touch you?”
My eyes snap to her in shock. “You… you want to…?”
“Only if it’s okay with you.”
I manage to twitch my head again, and I can’t breathe while her hand comes toward me.
But she’s going to change her mind. I know it. She has to. At any moment, she’s going to?—
Shivers course through my body when her palm gently rests on my abdomen. I watch as her fingers trace across my skin, mapping the pits, the valleys. The old burns and the twisted scars. Slowly, she walks around me, her hands ghosting across the puckered bullet wounds on my shoulder. The acid and cigarette burns on my ribs. The places where he carved into me, just because he could.
Her breath catches at the slashes that crisscross my back. “He whipped you too?” she whispers.
“H-his friends, mostly. Before… other things.”
Air rushes from her, but her fingers stay on me, drifting along until she pauses directly behind my back.
I tremble, wondering if it’s too much. If she’s been suppressing her revulsion until she was beyond my line of sight, and now she?—
Her lips touch the place where my neck meets my shoulders. The marks are bad there. I’ve seen them in the mirror. He tried to hang me that day.
I can’t breathe now either.
“Is he dead?” she asks. “Are all of them?”
I nod and try to find my voice. “After Phineas healed me, we tracked them. We found his friends near Boston. Found him three months later outside Cincinnati. He… he was trying to start another collection.” A shiver runs through my body. “I made sure none of them could hurt anyone ever again.”
Mabel circles me, her hand lingering on my skin until she’s in front of me once more. Her eyes meet mine. “Good.”
