And could only thank her lucky stars that he didn’t take it like a compliment.
“Right, but I mean, it’s less defined.”
“Something being less defined is not a bad thing.”
“So you like it thicker like this, you like more of a belly.”
“What the fuck does it matter, Seth? That’s not the point.”
She flushed even harder at the end of those words, thoroughly flustered now and not sure how she had somehow made everything worse. Though, thankfully, he still didn’t seem to notice. “Right right right, the point is the scar I’m trying to show you,” he said.
So now all she had to do was go with this.
“I don’t see any scar,” she tried with as much confusion as she could muster.
Then almost let out a sigh of relief when he seemed to seize on it. “Exactly.Exactly,” he said, like a mad scientist gasping that he’d proven his deranged hypothesis. “There used to be a ten-inch groove in my side right here, where things didn’t go back together properly. It was so deep I could put my finger in it up to the first joint. Foryears. And now look. It’sgone.”
Then he actually made the gesture with one hand. That magical poof gesture.
All of which made it even easier to stick to the meat of this conversation.
“What, as in you lost it somehow?”
“Lost it? What the heck,no.”
“Don’t say ‘What the heck’ at me as if what I said is so absurd, Seth. Yesterday you told me vampires exist. I watched your face grow fifty extra bones and a thousand more teeth. Things wandering off your body is not that far-fetched by comparison.”
“Okay, and that’s fair. But nothing wandered. I drank the soup, and ithealed.”
He said the last word in a breathless, almost hushed tone. Like that mad scientist hadn’t just proven something deranged. He had proven something awe-inspiring. Something that was going to make her mind melt right out of her head—if she would only dare to really look.
And it was this, more than anything else, that made her reach forward and lift the jersey he’d just dropped. Just with one finger, just enough so she could see the side he’d pointed to. No big deal, she told herself. She could be cool and scientific about it.
Only it didn’t feel scientific, once she was there.
Because the thing was,he let her do it. He didn’t act weird about it, or wonder aloud what on earth she was doing. He simply watched her expose his body, in this almost curious and kind of eager sort of way. And for some reason, the curiousness and the eagerness made her go even hotter than just seeing him had. Her whole body flushed the second she realized his eyes were on her; suddenly her hand seemed to be shaking.
Even though he was only doing this because of the scar.
He just wanted her to see what was there. Or more accurately, what wasn’t there.
Because once she had managed to get herself under control, she could see he had told the truth. There was definitely nothing. No marks, no grooves, no scars. Not even any evidence of what must have initially mauled him into being a werewolf. His skin looked flawless—better than flawless, in fact. It was as if he’d started using some kind of rejuvenating moisturizer, of the kind that made everything dewy and glowy and healthy looking.
Though she still wasn’t sure if she should concede.
“Well, maybe you’re mistaken,” she said.
So of course he hit her with an exasperated look. “How could I possibly be?”
“Maybe the scar was on the other side.”
“You think I might have gotten the position of a ten-inch groove on my own body wrong. And then failed to check all the places it could have possibly been.” He shook his head. “Man, your opinion of me is really at an all-time low.”
Good, think that, she thought.Believe that I think nothing of you.
But the problem was, she knew she was only trying to paper over her own weird feelings. About the quarry, about his body, about the way he had looked at her. So she couldn’t exactly go with something like that. “It isn’t. I just. You know. Maybe all this body horror messed you up.”
“Oh, this body horror hasdefinitelymessed me up. But notenough to get this wrong. There was a hideous half-healed scar right here, and now it’s not. And it disappeared about thirty seconds after I took your medicine.”
