I let her look. I’m not shy about my body. Never have been. But I am aware of what it says before I open my mouth. Violence. Survival. A history I do not usually put on display for women like her.
For women like anyone.
She finally turns around, marches into the bathroom and returns with a first-aid box.
“It’s not as dramatic as you’re making it in your head,” I say.
That draws her out of it. She blinks, then looks up at me. “You don’t know what I’m making it in my head.”
“No?” I tilt my head. “Go on, then.”
She steps closer instead of answering. That surprises me more than the gasp did.
She is still nervous, I can see it in the way her fingers curl slightly at her sides, but curiosity wins. It usually does with her. That, more than anything, may be what undoes us both. Her hand lifts slowly. She looks at me first, checking. Asking without words.
I don’t stop her.
Her fingertips touch the scar high on my shoulder. Too lightly to hurt, but enough to make every muscle in my body go aware.
“This one,” she says softly, “wasn’t glass.”
“No.”
Her fingers trace the edge of it, careful, reverent almost. The tenderness of it unsettles me in a way gunfire never has.
“What was it?”
“Bullet.”
Her eyes flick to mine. Wide. Then back down. She follows another line, lower, flatter, uglier. “And this?”
“Knife.”
Her breath catches. She looks at the old scar over my ribs. “And that one?”
“Bullet.”
She goes very still.
The room is quiet enough that I can hear the rain against the windows. Her fingers stay on my skin, warm and hesitant, and I realize I am letting this happen because I want to know what it feels like when she touches something damaged and doesn’t recoil.
Most people look at scars and see threat. She looks at them and sees questions.
“Who are you?” she asks again. Not the shaken version from the road. Not frightened this time.
This is quieter. More deliberate. She wants the truth now, or something close enough to it that she can stand in the same room with me and understand what she’s touching.
I could lie. I should lie. I should give her some polished version of danger she can digest. A hard childhood. Business rivals. Security concerns. The kind of vague rich-man nonsense that keeps girls curious but not informed.
But she’s standing in front of me with my blood on her fingers and my secrets already halfway under her skin.
So I say, “I come from a family that does things outside the law.”
She looks up at me at once.
My tone stays even. “My grandfather built an empire. Real estate, ports, logistics, money moving through the right hands. Some of it legitimate. Some of it…” I shrug once. “Less so.”
Her hand drops from my side. “How less so?”
