A Deal With the Devil (Boys of Preston Prep 2)

Her hand freezes midway between us. “Your bruise. It looked like it hurt pretty badly.”

The thought of her seeing my back makes me feel physically ill. It’s a permanent reminder of what happened that night, less visible than her limp, but still my cross to bear. It’s horrific, gruesome, and in no way should usurp her own pain and injury. I don’t want her pity any more than she wants mine. “I can’t,” I say.

Her forehead creases, hand dropping to her lap. “Why?”

My hair is already a mess because I hadn’t washed it after practice. I run my fingers through it now, agitated, thinking that it makes me sick, but that if anyone is entitled to see it, it’s the girl sitting next to me. It’s not an apology, but maybe it’s… something, this evidence that I didn’t come away from that night without its gnarled mark upon me. I grab the hem of my shirt and elbow it up my chest, pulling it roughly over my head. Her eyes follow the motion, darting down to my chest, my defined stomach. I hold her gaze for a long moment, seeing her confusion at the resignation I’m wearing.

I twist around, presenting it to her like some disgusting gift.

Her sharp intake of breath is so soft, that if I hadn’t been waiting for it, I might not have heard it at all. She’s still on the couch, and I can feel the heat of her eyes taking it in. I know what she sees. A wide swath of deformed skin, gnarled like melted vinery. There’s a three-inch square on my right shoulder that’s smoother than the rest, but no less grotesque. Near my collar, there’s an indentation where the tag of my shirt had melted into my skin. It’s hideous.

I feel her move, and even though I know what’s coming, I still flinch when her fingertips graze the scar. “I didn’t know,” she breathes, voice strained. “No one told me it was this bad.”

“It wasn’t.” It’s all at once the truth and a lie. The scars are bad. The injury was nothing. Not in comparison.

“Is this…?” She touches my right shoulder, and I nod.

“Skin graft.”

“Where did they—”

“My thigh.”

She asks, “Does it hurt?” fingertips, trailing to the left shoulder.

My tongue feels stuck to the roof of my mouth. It’s been years since anyone’s touched me there, that I’ve allowed anyone to touch me skin to bare skin. “I don’t have much feeling in most of it.”

I don’t tell her about the other stuff, like having to wear compression bandages for months. Or how sometimes the nerves will randomly flare to life, and how it feels like an electric shock. Or how I had to do stretches during the healing process to get any kind of elasticity back, and how that PT was cut short on account of life at Mountain Point, and how the scars could probably be better if it hadn’t been.

Her hand falls away and I feel her shifting. I gather the courage to look over my shoulder, prepared for whatever I see in her expression—disgust, pity, revulsion.

I am not prepared for the sight of her topless.

She’s shucked her shirt off. My eyes instinctively fall to her chest, to the dark outline of her nipples beneath the delicate fabric of her bra, before I whip my head back around.

“Christ, V.”

“Look.” When I don’t, she stands, turning to me. “Please.”

When I turn, her pale stomach is right there. Because of this, the long scar slashed across the skin is the first thing I see. It’s not like mine. This one is thick, raised, and precise. Surgical. There are little dots above and below it, staples having at one point held the skin together. Someone could walk into my house and cut me open in the same place, and I’d probably feel less gutted than I am right now, looking at this.

/> “My pelvis was shattered,” she explains, turning so that I can see how it goes all the way around to her back, stopping at the base of her spine, where there are other obvious surgery scars. “I have some metal in there now.” She turns back to me, but I can’t tear my eyes away from the raised flesh, two shades lighter than the skin the rest of the world sees.

She doesn’t flinch when I curl my fingers around her waist. I rub the pad of my thumb against the scar, as if I could smooth it away, wipe the damage clean. This used to be flawless, this skin. She used to be sound. Pure.

“I’m sorry.” My voice is gravel when it gives her this, rough with my quiet secret. I don’t mean to say it—I never wanted to—but I find that I don’t regret it. It’s not sour, like I thought it’d be. It’s as easy as the space between one breath and the next, and suddenly, the thought of not saying it feels like absolute agony. I barely have to tip forward to bury my head into the warm, marred skin of her stomach. My hands clutch her waist, holding her close, as if I could press the truth of this into it. As if it could hide the way the corners of my eyes sting. “I’m so fucking sorry, Vandy.”

I feel her hitched breath in the jump of her stomach below my face. “Reyn...”

“It’s my fault.” I can’t bear to hear her say it’s okay. “I’m sorry.” Like a floodgate opening, now I can’t seem to stop saying it, over and over, “I’m so fucking sorry.” I think I’m shaking, and I’m holding her too tight, but she doesn’t push me away.

Her fingers thread through my hair, holding me to her, and she doesn’t say it’s okay.

Softly, she says, “I forgive you.”

“Don’t.” That single word holds multitudes. I want to tell her to take this and just leave it. Let the silence hang. It’s what I deserve, we both know it.

“Reyn,” she insists, voice thick with tears. “What happened to us was an accident. A horrible accident. We both suffered because of it, but you didn’t mean for that to happen. I know you didn’t.”