Page 116 of Jay Bird

Willow stared at the water for a few seconds. “Jay saw them this morning.”

“Them?”

“My scars. I’ve never really shown anyone voluntarily. The doctors saw them when I was in the hospital, but that was different.” She looked down at her hands. “Jay knew what happened to me. He knew Chen hurt me, but knowing it and actually seeing what he did are two different things.”

“How did Jay handle it?”

Willow couldn’t keep the small smile from forming.

“Like Jay.”

Alex laughed softly. “That could mean several things.”

“He was angry, but not at me. He kept asking before he touched me. He told me I didn’t have to show anyone until I was ready.”

“Sounds like Jay.”

“He also offered to buy every cover-up in Virginia.”

Alex snorted. “That also sounds like Jay.”

Willow smiled, but it faded as she looked toward the pool.

“It’s different here. There are so many people.”

“I get it.”

Willow glanced at her.

Alex was studying the water. After a moment, she looked at Willow.

“Want to see something?”

Before Willow could answer, Alex shifted and turned slightly away from her, pulling the back of her cover-up down enough to expose part of her shoulder and upper back.

Willow’s breath caught. There were faded scars across Alex’s back.

Her eyes snapped to Alex’s.

Alex adjusted the fabric. “I can’t tell you exactly where I got them or give you most of the details because Uncle Sam gets cranky when I talk about certain things. But I can tell you a very bad person did that.” Alex paused for a moment before she continued. “I spent a long time hating mine. Sometimes I still do. I’m not going to feed you some line about how you have to love your scars because they’re part of you. That’s bullshit. I didn’t ask for mine, and I’m guessing you sure as hell didn’t ask for yours. But I stopped calling mine scars a long time ago.”

“What do you call them?”

Alex smiled. “Victory marks.”

“Victory marks?”

“Yep. The people who put them there wanted them to be reminders of what they did to me. Screw that. I decided they would remind me that I survived them instead.”

Something tightened in Willow’s chest.

Alex nudged her shoulder gently. “You don’t have to call yours that. Hell, you can call them Fred and Ethel if you want.”

Willow laughed.

“The point is, they’re yours now. Nobody gets to decide what they mean but you.”

Willow stared across the pool. Chen had taken so much from her. He had taken her freedom, her choices, and three years of her life. Even after escaping him, she realized there were still pieces of herself she was allowing him to control, like the clothes she wore, the fear she carried, and whether she could swim with her daughter on a hot summer afternoon.