Page 191 of Silver Elite

“No,” I warn when Ellis starts to place his hands on me. I shrug them off.

His eyebrows arch in surprise. “It must be painful.”

“It’s not.”

I’m not even lying. Yes, my thigh aches on rainy days, which I’ll never understand. Sure, there’s discomfort when the skin is stretched taut, and fine, sometimes the nerves in there forget they were incinerated and I’ll feel a phantom shock of pain if I move my leg wrong. But I can live with it. The pain has never been bad enough that I can’t ignore it.

I grab at my clothes. My hands are shaking. I feel the weight of Ellis’s gaze and it makes my skin prickle.

“If you don’t want me touching you so close to an intimate place, we could bring Soldier Struck over here. She can make sure nothing untoward happens.”

“That’s not the reason I don’t want it. I don’t mind the scars, okay? Go treat somebody else.”

“What’s going on here?” Cross strides over.

“He wants to heal my burns,” I snap.

“Okay…Is there a reason you’re resisting?”

“Yes. I don’t want them removed.”

Cross searches my face. “Darlington. Not sure I see the issue here.”

Panic claws at the edges of my consciousness as I scramble for an excuse, any excuse, to justify my refusal.

“With all due respect, I’d prefer not to,” I finally say, my voice wavering despite my best efforts to control it. My throat is so tight I can barely swallow around it. “I’m not going to pretend I didn’t have an accident as a kid.”

“This isn’t about pretending. It’s about healing you,” Ellis says.

“No, it’s about erasing a part of myself.”

My brain finally sees it. The way out. And my voice stops shaking. Growing steady.

“I know they’re ugly, but they’re part of me now. They remind me of where I’ve been, what I’ve endured. All these scars, and not just the burns, are memories.” I point out the faint white scar on the left side of my collarbone. “Like this one. I got it when this horrible kid, Oden, pushed me into a thornbush. A thorn ripped right through my shirt and tore a chunk of flesh when I was trying to crawl out. Later, when I was in upper school, Oden asked to take me on a date, and for a moment I forgot about how nasty he was in lower school. And then I noticed this scar in the mirror one day and it reminded me I couldn’t trust that asshole.”

The thornbush story is true. Everything else is horseshit. I didn’t need an old fading scar to tell me to reject Oden. But the story sounds good.

I stare down at my thigh, where the burn tissue crisscrosses the skin like a map of my past.

“These are part of me,” I repeat. “I would feel weird without them. So please, keep your hands off me.”

I hold my breath, willing them to see my sincerity, to take it for conviction rather than desperation.

Ellis nods. “As you wish, soldier,” he says, and relief floods my body when he moves on to treat the next soldier.

—

Later that night, Cross knocks on my door. Tonight is a pit night, but after fighting to save the scars Uncle Jim had inflicted on me, I felt oddly emotional, so I decided to stay in. I spent most of the night lost in memories. Those three years we spent in the darkness. The twelve years on the ranch. I miss him. So damn much.

Cross walks into my quarters, dark hair rumpled, a bottle of vodka cider in his hand. He’s a little unsteady on his feet.

“Are you drunk?” I ask in amusement.

“No, but I feel good.”

“So that’s a yes.”

He laughs. I enjoy that sound far too much.

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