The older girl turned toward me and froze. I watched her eyes widen. Her gaze snagged on my jaw, where the scarring was worst, visible even in the shadow my hood provided. Her lips parted, but no sound came out. She just gave me a dead-eyed stare, the kind people usually reserved for roadkill they couldn’t quite identify.
“I just need a bandage,” I said, slow and clear enough for even an imbecile to comprehend what I was saying.
Still nothing. She just kept staring at me.
The bell above the door jingled again. Another gust of damp, cold wind barreled through, hard enough to blow my hood off my head.
Shit.
The air hit my face like a slap.
I didn’t need a mirror to know what they were seeing. Scar tissue dragged from my temple to my jaw, across my cheekbone and down my throat. It was twisted, raised, and ugly as fuck.
Once upon a time, I was handsome. Too handsome, if I’m being honest. Before the accident, I had a sharp jaw, good bone structure, and piercing blue eyes, paired with dark hair that always looked artfully messy, even when I didn’t try. I used to have a face that made people smile at me before I even said a word.
Now?
Now they stared at me for entirely different reasons.
The scars stole everything soft and handsome from my features. The ones on my throat tugged my expression just enough to make my resting face look cruel. The ones on my cheekbone caught the light in a way that made people flinch. And the ones beneath my hoodie, the ones that ran down my chest, over my ribs, across what used to be a body worth showing off? Well, those were just for me. And Henry, I supposed. And the surgeons who’d pieced me back together after I hit a fuckingfourteen point buck in a two-door sports car and it came through my windshield, of course.
The older girl behind the counter recoiled, and the younger one hid behind her. The gum popper’s hand fluttered near the register on instinct, like I might rob the place next.
“Are you fucking serious right now?”
The voice came from behind me. It was sharp as a blade, feminine, and righteously pissed off.
I turned toward the sound and froze.
A young woman stood in the doorway, her dark brown hair windblown from the walk across the lot, a space heater box clutched tight in both arms. Her beanie was red, her cheeks pink from the cold, and her coat looked like it had been patched once or twice over the years. It was clean, but worn at the cuffs, like everything she owned had to stretch a little farther than it should need to.
She had big brown eyes, freckles dusted across her nose, and her brown hair was in a messy braid, frizz curling at the edges from the humidity. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-one or twenty-two, but she moved like someone who didn’t have the time or the patience to be fragile.
She zeroed in on my bloody hand, then on the girls standing behind the counter, staring at me like I was the fucking boogeyman.
“You see this man standing here bleeding, and y’all are just… what? Practicing to be extras in a horror movie? Quit gawking and hand me the damn first aid kit.”
The cashier flinched like she’d been slapped. She shook off her stupor, fumbled under the counter, came up with a dusty ass first aid kit, and slid it toward the woman who’d walked in, like I might bite her if she handed it to me, instead.
The girl with the beanie slammed the heater box in her arms down on the counter and grabbed the first aid kit, dusting it off.
“That piece of shit space heater you sold me doesn’t even turn on. I bought it with my own money to keep my grandmother warm in the nursing home, and you better believe I’ll be getting a working one before I leave this store. But first?” She popped open the lid on the first aid kit and grabbed gauze and alcohol wipes. “You’re gonna let me help this man, and y’all are gonna sit your asses down and shut up while I do it.”
The brunette turned back to me, her dark eyes scanning the cut on my palm with practiced ease.
“Sit,” she said, nodding to the stool near the window.
“I’m fine.”
The words came out as a growl.
She arched a brow at me, completely unfazed by my brusque response.
“And I’m a fuckin’ unicorn. Sit down… please.”
I sat.
As she prepared to clean the wound on my hand, she didn’t flinch. More than that, she didn’t stare at my face. My scars didn’t seem to give her pause, not even for a second. She didn’t even acknowledge them.
