Wounded (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 24.5)

"Everyone should be blessed with parents who behave like teenagers on a prom date," I said.

He scowled at me. "You try it sometime and see how you like it."

"I'd love to, but my mother died when I was eight."

"Jesus, Anita, you have a worse story for everything."

"Tomas," Mercedes said, as if warning him to be nice.

"It's okay," I said. "I do have a bad story for almost any occasion."

"I didn't mean it that way," he said.

"What way did you mean?" I asked.

He sighed, frowned, and slumped in the wheelchair even more than he had been, as if he was suddenly tired. "I'll do my PT."

"And hit the gym," I said.

He scowled at me. "You are pushy, do you know that?"

"I do know that," I said, smiling.

"Tomas," his sister said again, in that tone that older siblings and parents seem to have.

"This isn't Anita being pushy," Micah said.

"Not even close," Nathaniel added.

I glanced up at them. "Thanks a lot, loves of my life."

They smiled at me from the couch. "Argue with us if you can," Micah said.

I tried to frown at them but ended up smiling, too. "I can't, so point taken, or made."

Tomas was watching us, like he was filing it away for later use. "So if I do PT and hit the gym, then what?"

"Then you stop having to use a wheelchair ever and you get off crutches. You relearn how to walk, and then run."

"Doctors won't promise me I'll run as fast as I could before."

"I've told you, Tomas, the doctors can't promise that, there are too many variables," Mercedes said.

"If you work hard you'll be able to run and you won't be on crutches, which is a pretty good thing, right?" I said.

"Yeah," he said, the sullen tone seeping back into his voice.

"So that's worth working for all on its own, right?"

He frowned at me. "I guess so."

"But for all you know, if you hit the gym harder than ever, you may get faster, and I know you'll get stronger."

"You think I could run faster than before."

"I don't know, but I do know if you don't do the work, you might end up on crutches for the rest of your life or in a chair like this forever."

He looked up at his sister. "Is that true, could I end up like this forever?"

"If you don't do the PT and gym, I don't know, Tomas, and that's the truth, but it could be as bad as Anita is saying. That is one possibility if you don't work to help us help you."

"None of this help us to help you crap," I said. "You're thirteen, that's old enough to help yourself, if you're ever going to."

"What does that mean, 'if I'm ever going to'?"

"This is your moment of choice, Tomas. You can be a stand-up guy, and do your best to help yourself, or you can feel sorry for yourself, do nothing, and by the time Mercedes marries you can wheel yourself down the aisle. Maybe Manny can get you one of those sport wheelchairs."

"You're going to scare him," Mercedes said.

"Good, he should be scared." I leaned in so I could give him very direct eye contact. "You have a choice, Tomas; it's your life. You can cripple yourself for the rest of your life, or you can fight to run again, but don't blame it on the guy who shot you if you don't do the PT and the gym workout, because if you don't work to get better, then it's all on you."

"He shot me!" He sounded outraged.

"Yeah, but you get to decide if you're his victim or not."

"What do you mean? I am his victim. He shot me."

"He shot you, but he didn't kill you. He didn't take your life, which means you still have a chance to have everything you had before, and more. But if you don't put the effort into helping yourself out of this, then the bad guy wins forever, Tomas. He will win if you give up, but if you fight back, then you win, because you take back everything he tried to take from you. He loses if you try, but if you don't even try, then you are his victim, forever and ever."

"I'm not a victim," he said, back to angry again.

"Prove it: Go to PT, go to the gym when your doctors say you can, or should. Work hard at getting better, because that's how you take back your life; that's how you go from victim to survivor."

"I prefer the word thriver, because I'm not just surviving, I'm thriving," Micah said.

"What do you mean? You're like the king of shapeshifters almost, and you've got Anita."

I wasn't sure how I liked being listed as just one more accomplishment, or how Nathaniel liked not being listed at all.

"Now, but when I was eighteen I was attacked by a lycanthrope, a wereleopard. He killed my uncle and cousin and left me for dead. If two doctors hadn't been out hunting on the same mountain and found me almost immediately, I wouldn't be with Anita and Nathaniel, or head of the Coalition for Better Understanding Between Human and Lycanthrope Communities--I wouldn't be anything, just one more victim of the bastard who killed my uncle and cousin."

Nathaniel leaned into Micah, putting his arm around the other man's waist. Micah put his arm across Nathaniel's shoulders and let himself be held, but he kept his green-gold gaze on the boy in the chair.

Tomas looked shocked, the sullen cool that he'd tried to rebuild falling apart as he fought to deal with what Micah had said. His eyes flicked to the men holding each other, and it bothered him, but he tried to regain his cool, or his anger, something to use against the truth. He looked at Nathaniel and managed to sound disdainful as he asked, "And what's your sad story?"

"Tomas, you are being rude," Mercedes said.

"No, it's okay, I remember being thirteen," Nathaniel said.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Tomas said, trying for angry.

Nathaniel hugged Micah a little tighter but kept calm, lavender eyes on the boy. "When I was seven my stepfather beat my older brother, Nicholas, to death in front of me with a baseball bat. Nicholas told me to run, and I did, all the way to the streets. By ten I was selling myself for food, shelter, survival; by your age I was a junkie, selling myself to whoever would pay. Gabriel, who was head of the local wereleopards then, saw me on the street. I was seventeen. He was running a high-class male escort service that specialized in shapeshifters to very special clientele. They wouldn't sleep with a street whore and junkie, so he cleaned me up, forced me into rehab, got me sober, and waited to see if I'd stay that way. I'd turned eighteen before he finally made me a wereleopard, because he wouldn't do it until he knew I'd stay clean. It was the same year he took me to Jean-Claude for lessons in how to dress, what fork to use at fancy dinners, so that I could escort anyone to anywhere and not embarrass them. Jean-Claude taught me how to dance on stage at Guilty Pleasures, not just shake my junk, but dance, seduce, and promise things I didn't have to deliver. He wouldn't let any of his dancers find johns, or janes, at work. We were just strippers, not whores. I still went to certain very special clients through Gabriel, but never at the club. That was separate."

Tomas stared at Nathaniel as if he'd sprouted a second, ugly head. He had nothing to offer to such a list of disaster and pain. Who did?

Mercedes found a chair and sat down heavily in it. I glanced at her and she looked shaken, too, but the main show was Nathaniel and Tomas, with Micah sitting solid and holding him. I would have gone to them, but there was a weight to the three of them, the men and the boy. This was between them, until they needed or asked for me.

"I was still just nineteen when one of the clients tried to kill me. I don't know if he thought I'd heal, or if he just didn't care. Gabriel was dead by then, so I didn't have anyone to protect me. I went to the hospital and met Anita. She made me give up the escort business, but that was okay. I was making good money at Guilty Pleasures, I didn't need to do the other anymore, and I'd stopped enjoying it, so it was easy to give up."

I kept quiet, but I didn't remember the story quite that way. I hadn't actually demanded he give up being an escort, I'd just shut down the business as a whole, so n

one of the wereleopards could do it anymore. It also hadn't been love at first sight for me with Nathaniel, and the story seemed to imply that, but . . . I kept my mouth shut, because it wasn't my story. The story is never about the prince who rescues the princess, it's always the princess's story, and in this version that was Nathaniel. I was okay with that; princess was never really my style.

"I'd say you're kidding, but . . ." Tomas just stopped, staring at the floor as if trying to figure out what to say.

Nathaniel figured it out for him. "But if I were going to make up a story, that wouldn't be it."

Tomas looked up and nodded. "Yeah, that."

"We've all been hurt, Tomas," Micah said, "but what made the difference is that we all three fought to have a life and not let the bad things that happened to us define who we are, and what our life would be."

Tomas licked his lips. He wasn't trying to be cool anymore, or angry. He had nothing to put up as a shield against all that truth and pain. "What do you want me to do?" he asked, finally.

"Do your PT," Nathaniel said.

"Hit the gym when the doctors say you can," Micah said.

"Work hard at both," I said.

Tomas looked at me, and then back to the men. He licked his lips again, nodding more to himself than to us. "I will."

"Promise," I said.