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I paused, wincing at that.
But Frankie didn’t pause in her cleaning of my wound.
She didn’t lean forward and inspect my wounds more closely.
She just cleaned, bandaged, and then moved on to my forearms.
When she was finished, she clapped her hands and then removed her gloves.
“All done,” she chirped.
But she wouldn’t look me in the eyes.
Mother. Fucker.
“I’m going to go get the nurse to get your discharge paperwork…” And without another word, she was out of the room and disappearing into the nurses’ station.
I felt like someone took a sledgehammer to my gut.
“Don’t go there, boy.”
I looked over to see Morgan staring at me.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lied.
“Yeah, you do,” he confirmed. “And she’s mourning. You’re a living, breathing reminder of what she no longer has.”
I had nothing to say to that.
Not a damn thing.
So, I shut my trap, waited for my discharge paperwork, then took my leave.
Luckily, Morgan had allowed me to drive myself over here, meaning I didn’t have to wait to be taken back to the station.
Giving him a chin tilt as I left, I made my way to my bike, then further to my empty house.
The ride was short.
The destination was shit.
But I went inside anyway.
I unlocked the door, walked into my apartment filled with shit that meant nothing to me, and walked straight to the bathroom.
There, I took a shower, being careful not to get my bandages wet, avoided looking at myself in the mirror, then went to my room to slip into a pair of boxers.
Boxers that I fucking hated.
I wasn’t sure why I owned so many goddamn pairs, but I honestly needed to go to the store and find something else more comfortable.
Especially now that they were expecting me to wear spandex pants from hell.
I got on my phone and pulled up my new Netflix account, found my favorite show, and pressed play.
I sat there for all of three seconds before I jackknifed out of my seat and stomped into the bathroom.
Once there, I walked straight to the vanity, then looked up at the goddamn mirror.
Just like I did every fucking night.
I stared at myself, long and hard, trying to figure out who I was.
What everybody said made sense.
Malachi Stokes. Six foot three. Black hair, olive skin tone. Type O+ blood.
But the eyes? Those didn’t make sense.
On my medical files, I was labeled as having hazel eyes.
My eyes now were not hazel.
They were a colorless gray that had specks of color throughout. Blue, if I had to guess. But the colors were so few and far between, that there really wasn’t a way to verify if it was, in fact, blue.
My eyes were the only thing on my face that wasn’t damaged.
Though, when I was first brought in, I did have a corneal abrasion that had nearly cost me my eyesight.
Luckily my eye healed.
The rest of me, though?
Not so much.
I was a living, breathing dead person.
That’s literally what I felt when I looked at myself in the mirror.
Dead.
At least, I should’ve been dead.
When I saw all the scars, all the things that had once been done to me… I just felt… lost.
Lost, and alone, and curious why I was even left alive.
Why was I the lucky one that made it out?
Why was I here, and Luca wasn’t?
Luca with the fiancée.
Luca with the family that actually cared.
Luca with the life that he never should’ve left.
I was still curious as fuck as to why he’d up and left such a perfect life.
Then again, I really didn’t know my reasons for joining either.
But if my parents now were anything like my parents when I’d enlisted? Yeah, there was a high possibility that there was a damn good reason for me leaving, and it had a lot to do with the people that had raised me.
Or not raised me, according to what Morgan had to say today.
I blew out a breath and studied my face. Drawing the line of scars with my gaze.
I strained to remember something. Anything.
But it was just… nonexistent.
Gone.
Never fucking coming back ever.
I cursed and slammed my hand down on the vanity, causing my cup and toothbrush to be knocked over with the move.
I hated not knowing.
I hated seeing the results, but not knowing what made them happen.
Even more, seeing the woman that had obviously played a role in my life, and feeling something other than friendship spark inside of me, pissed me off.
What kind of asshole was I that I had desires for my best friend’s woman? My best friend’s fiancée?
That made me a piece of shit, is what it made me.
I curled my lip as much as I could in disgust, righted the toothbrush holder, then yanked the drawer open to get to my toothpaste.
After putting way too much on it—something I apparently couldn’t stop myself from doing—I viciously yanked the brush across my teeth.
