Page 27 of Marked

Nine

Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?” Jack asks, looking up at me from his kneeling position on the asphalt. I’m sitting sideways in the passenger seat of my truck, legs hanging out the open door.

“I’m sure,” I reply, gripping the headrest as he gently cradles my foot in one hand. There isn’t any pain yet, but his tender touch is sending flames up my calves. “I don’t like doctors.”

“Why?” He lifts the tweezers from the First-Aid kit I keep in my backseat and tightens his grip in warning before plucking out a brown shard.

My foot jerks at the pain, but Jack’s grip keeps me from moving it too much. “Bad experience,” I answer through clenched teeth as he yanks out another one.

He remains oddly silent as he removes two more before moving to the next foot. “Is that where you died?” he finally asks in a quiet, soft tone.

I flinch at his words and then again at the feeling of the glass being pulled from my skin. “Mhm,” I mumble. “So, I don’t go if I don’t have to.”

“How did you die?” His tone is comforting, but the tweezers are relentless as they dig into a deep cut to find the intruder.

I swallow and tighten my hold on the headrest. “I was beaten to death,” I finally answer, not quite knowing why I’m telling him this. Strangely, I feel a knot that has been sitting in my chest loosen just the tiniest bit.

He snaps his head up to look at me, eyes dark with rage. “What?”

Avoiding his gaze, I try to make light of it. “Well, I was beaten and then flatlined in the emergency room.”

“Who? And how old were you?”

“I was fourteen,” I admit, still not looking at him. “I…it was karma. I did it to myself, really.”

“I don’t believe that,” Jack says as he fishes out the last shard of glass before setting the tweezers back in the kit. He grabs some hydrogen peroxide and pours it over each arch. I hiss in a breath at the initial burn and clench my hands into tight fists when he wipes them clean with a gauze pad.

“You don’t know me, Khoury,” I murmur as he delicately adds some ointment to each cut.

He scoffs at me and puts the ointment away. He then grabs long sterile bandages and begins to wrap my left foot. “There is little a young teenage girl can do that would cause that kind of karma, Valkyrie. Why do you think you fall into that category?”

Folding my hands in my lap, I tell him the truth. “When I was ten, there was a girl named Paige who used to bully me. Well, her and her friends. My family wasn’t wealthy, and I was overweight. If those two weren’t enough to inflict the wrath of the ‘cool girls’, then me being into anime and books was just the cherry on top. I was the weird outcast.” I flex my calf when his fingers trail up it, his long fingers tying the bandage in place at my ankle before moving on to the next foot.

“But this girl, the ringleader, was just cruel. One day she snatched my book from my hands and threw it to the ground while calling me fat. She told me she was sorry and that she realized how mean that was. That she didn’t mean it. So, to make it up to me, she invited me to play hide-and-go-seek with her and her friends. I wanted to be liked by the cool kids, I wanted to have friends. So, I agreed.

“We were all neighbors so anything in the cul-de-sac was fair game. I thought I found the perfect hiding spot, and I was ready to be the winner. It was so good they didn’t find me for half an hour. But then nearly an hour went by, and I got anxious. When I came out, no one was there. I went looking for them, and they were all hanging out in her garage playing a game. They literally burst out laughing when I showed up. They couldn’t believe I really went an hour before figuring it out. They then proceeded to laugh about how stupid I was.” I let out a bitter laugh. “I played right into their hands, and I think that’s when my trust in people broke. I was ten years old and already had to learn that hard life lesson.

“After that I was more on guard, refusing to fall into another trap. That just spurred them on for the next couple years. I was called names at every opportunity, whispered and laughed about, and had various vicious lies spread about me. At one point, one of them used to sit in class next to me and just flick me with a rubber band. I came home with welts on my skin because the teacher refused to do anything. My mom tried to get involved, but it just made everything worse.

“My self-image was completely shattered. Emotional and mental abuse that young will fuck you up. It’ll distort how you see yourself for years to come.” I feel his hands slide up my legs to rest on my knees, but I still can’t look at him. “And I think that’s why I didn’t help her. Even though it had been a year of no torment, I didn’t help her when she needed it.”

I suck in a shaky breath. Gods, I need a smoke. “I was walking home from school after a late swim match and saw Paige get grabbed by a man. She was fighting and thrashing and doing everything she could to get free. At one point she saw me looking and screamed at me to help her, but I didn’t move. I could have flipped open my phone and called 9-1-1, but I didn’t. I just blankly watched her get abducted. It was only when the kidnapper’s accomplice saw me watching that I ran. That’s the only reason I actually opened my phone and called the police.”

I finally muster enough courage to look at him. A breath lodges in my throat at the intense looks he’s giving me. It’s not pity, more like a mix of concern and sympathy. “Right when I pushed the call button, he was on me. He beat the shit out of me. Punches, kicks, even slammed my head into the curb. I was already unconscious when the police and paramedics came. I woke up in the hospital three days later.”

Jack stands and steps between my legs. His hands cup my cheeks as he forces me to hold his gaze. “That was not karma,” he says, voice deep. “That was a little girl who made a mistake. Everyone makes mistakes, Valkyrie. You owed that girl nothing. And quite frankly, I believe you were stuck in your trauma. Once you got away from the scene, I’m fairly certain you would have called the police or at least told your parents.”

I blink up at him, trying to keep the moisture from my eyes. “How can you say that so surely?”

“Because you are good.” He states it so firmly that I almost believe him myself.

Almost.

Pulling my face out of his hold, I turn from him. “Again, you don’t know me. You don’t know what I’ve done.” He doesn’t know the hundreds of people I’ve marked.

He sighs and runs his hands through his hair. “You’re right, I don’t, but I feel that you are good.” He gives me one of his sly smirks. “I have a good beacon for this kind of thing, so just trust me on this.”

I roll my eyes at him but wish I could believe him. “Alright, partner, enough sappy shit. Let’s get back to the office and get this guy’s statement.” I turn and rifle through my backseat to find a pair of black flats. Finding the flimsy shoes, I drop them onto the floor in front of me and slide them on. Oh, yeah, I look so sexy with my bandaged feet and forearm.

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