Wounded (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 24.5)

He grinned suddenly. It made him look years younger and more real than the careless, almost-flirting look of seconds before. "Then you'll be the only one who hasn't asked."

I smiled back. "I know, you get sick of answering the question. When you're still in the hospital people ask the question. I always want to answer, 'I feel like shit, how are you feeling?'"

He laughed then, and it was like the grin, younger. I liked both; it made me see the little boy I'd known since he was in kindergarten. "I like that, I like that a lot, but Mama would have a fit."

"How many of them have asked, 'How are you doing?'"

"A lot," he said, rolling his eyes.

"Next time, say, 'I got shot, how you doing?' See what they say."

"Anita," Mercedes said, "don't teach him to be a smart-ass. He's already bad enough." But she was laughing.

"I still get stupid questions about the scars," I said.

He gave me serious eyes as he said, "Micah said you got hurt bad once."

"More than once, but this is the one that the doctors thought would cripple me."

His eyes flinched, but I'd used the word deliberately. He gave me narrow eyes; it wasn't entirely a friendly look, but it wasn't unfriendly either, more a considering look, like I'd done something interesting.

"Most people won't say the word, they talk around it, but you just say it: cripple. I'm going to be a cripple."

"Bullshit," I said.

He gave me wide eyes, and almost smiled. "Why'd you say that?"

"From what I hear, if you do your physical therapy you'll be walking just fine, and if you add more weights and gym work you'll be running, too."

His face darkened, eyes suddenly angry. "They won't promise I'll run again."

"But if you don't do your PT, they guarantee you won't run again, right?"

He gave me the full force of those angry eyes, his mouth set in harsh lines. He looked bitter. It didn't make him look older, really, but it did something unpleasant to him, as if his entire energy changed. I understood in that moment that this wasn't just about Tomas's body, or even his emotional recovery, but something more profound. Bitterness can spoil you for life. It eats away at all the good things and makes everything seem bad, if you let it.

"I'll never run like I could before, so what's the use?"

I held my arm out to him, flexing my hand downward at the wrist so the bend of my elbow was very flat and the scars were very clear. It wasn't like they were ever not visible if I wore short sleeves, but I'd had them so long that I just didn't think about them much anymore. They ran white and thick across the bend of my arm, mounding at the elbow and running in thin ropes of scar tissue away from it. I'd been told I should have asked for a plastic surgeon when it happened, but once they told me I might lose the use of my arm I hadn't really worried about scars. Now they were a part of me, like a freckle, or a mole, just something on my skin that had always been there, though of course, the scars hadn't been there always.

Tomas's voice was almost hostile as he said, "I've seen them before in the summer."

"I don't try to hide them, any of them."

His gaze went lower on my arm to the cross-shaped burn scar, now a little crooked from the claw scar that a shapeshifted witch had given me. I pointed to a much smaller scar on my arm near the shoulder. "This was my first bullet wound."

He looked at the slick, white mark. "I know you got shot this year, but you healed it, you healed all of it because you're like . . . magic"--and even to him it sounded lame, because he looked angry, eyes uncertain, as he added, "You know what I mean, you heal it all."

"Every scar you just looked at was before I could heal it all. There's a few more, including one from the same vampire that tore up my arm. He chewed at my collarbone until he broke it."

He gave me suspicious eyes.

"I swear it."

His eyes narrowed, and I wondered where he got the attitude. It couldn't be just since the kidnapping, because it took time to build a bad attitude. I should know, because I had one of my own.

I pulled down the collar of my shirt enough to show the very edge of the collarbone scar.

His eyes widened a little, some of the suspicion fading, but then he said, "I believe you have all the injuries, Anita. But Mercedes just wants you to tell me to be good and do my PT."

"She's your sister, she's supposed to want you to get better, right?"

He frowned harder.

"Would you like it better if Mercedes didn't give a damn about you?"

"No, of course not."

"Then, yeah, she wants me to talk to you about what I did to keep my arm."

His eyes widened just a touch, the sullen teenager slipping around the edges. "Papa didn't tell me you almost lost your arm."

"They weren't going to cut it off or anything, but the doc told me I could lose fifty to seventy-five percent mobility from the joint, which meant I'd basically be down an arm."

His eyes stayed big, face serious, not sullen as he stared at the scars. "What did you do?"

"What the doctors told me to do, physical therapy, and hit the gym like it was my new church. I'd never lifted weights or worked out so hard in my life, because I was saving my arm. Screw skinny jeans, or looking good in a bikini. I wanted this." I made a fist for him and flexed the muscles of my forearm, even the ones underneath the scars.

"You have more muscles than any girl I know." He was sincere, eyes still wide as he stared at all the scars on my arm. Then he grinned suddenly. "I bet you look great in a bikini, too." His eyes swept up to my face briefly and then down to my breasts, which was a little disconcerting coming from someone I'd known since he was six years old.

"Eyes up here," I said, motioning with my other hand.

He had the decency to blush.

Mercedes said, "Anita!" like I'd done something bad.

"If he's old enough to look, he's old enough to get called on it, and he's old enough to start learning how to do it without being pervy about it."

"Anita's right," Micah said.

Nathaniel nodded, and added, "You can look without being creepy, it just takes practice."

Tomas raised his hands in front of his face to hide the blush, or because he didn't know what else to do. It was like a holdover gesture from when he was a much younger kid. He brought his hands down and his eyes were angry again, as he tried to rebuild the sullen too-cool-for-school attitude.

"I'm sorry I stared."

I liked that he didn't ignore it all, and even more that he apologized. "I appreciate the apology, Tomas."

He shrugged, the potentially pretty face not pretty at all as he let the attitude take over. Maybe I'd embarrassed him and maybe that wouldn't make him want to listen to me, but screw it, he'd had it coming.

"If you apologize for something, you don't get to keep giving someone attitude about it after the apology," Micah said.

&nbs

p; Tomas looked at him. I think it was supposed to be a hard look, but he was a suburban teenager who'd had his first violent experience less than a month ago; his hard look wasn't that hard.

Micah gave him calm eyes. "An apology means you're sorry you did something; continuing to be a shit after the apology means you aren't sorry."

"So which is it?" I said. "Are you sorry you stared, or was the apology just something to say because you thought you should?"

Tomas looked from one to the other of us, then said, "You guys are weird."

"We're preternaturals," Micah said.

"That's not what I mean." He still looked sullen, but there was something in his face beside it. He was looking at us as if we'd done something interesting, or at least something unexpected. He looked at me finally. "I'm sorry I stared and that it was creepy. I didn't mean to be creepy."

"Apology accepted."

"Were you able to lift as much after your arm got better as you did before?"

"More," I said.

He gave me those suspicious eyes again.

"I could lift more because I worked harder in the gym than I ever had before, so I got better and stronger than ever before."

He nodded then, eyes thoughtful. "I get that."

"If I'd just given up, then my arm wouldn't be working, and I wouldn't have all these muscles, and I would have stopped hunting vampires about eight years ago."

"Anita would never have met either of us," Nathaniel said.

Tomas looked at him then. "What do you mean?"

"Anita met us through her connections with Jean-Claude. She had just met him when she got attacked, and if she'd given up hunting vampires, she might never have seen him again. If she'd never dated him, she'd have never met us."

"Are you saying that if I do all the stuff my doctors want me to do, I'll find true love?" He rolled his eyes and was suddenly very much a thirteen-year-old boy in his reaction, as if "true love" meant girl cooties.

"Are you saying you don't want to be as happy as Mama and Papa?" Mercedes asked, one hand on her hip and her face matching the serious attitude.

He rolled eyes at her, too. "Everyone wants to be as happy as they are."

"Everyone, but not you?" Micah asked.

"It's embarrassing the way they're all over each other like they're my sisters' age."