Page 68 of The Vixen

“Riveting. I imagine the other boys bullied you tearless.”

“Other boys?” he asks. I open my mouth, but the confusion in his voice makes me pause.

Confusion is not useful for deceit.

“In the classroom. I assume Mrs. Carver was your teacher?” I ask, my head tilting slightly toward him.

“Mrs. Carter,” he corrects. Successfully.

Nothing follows.

I wait, thumbs drumming my gut—slow, fast, slow. My gaze stays fixed on the ceiling as I focus on my breath.

I could’ve told him about the time I broke my arm falling from a tree.

Sitting up, I let my hair veil my chest, chin dipped low while I inspect a bruise on my knee. I’m just about to leave when Sawyer’s voice startles me.

“She was my foster mother.”

I pause my prodding on the bruise and turn my head halfway. Not quite looking at him.

A question hangs in the room. It tightens the air between us until every movement is met with a tug. It shouldn’t have to be asked, but when a minute passes, it’s clear that Sawyer has no intention of supplying the answer.

“Why?” I ask. Another beat passes. I consider extending the question, but not a word was necessary.

Finally, I turn to Sawyer. Bruised and tied and pitiful, yet somehow looking as though he could lead a room. Like a fool, I lean in and practically announce that I’m hanging onto every word. Powerful are those who hold the secrets.

He sighs. Closes his eyes. Carefully considers something.

When he looks at me, I hold my breath. Blue eyes shine with earnestness that’s so rare, I barely recognize it.

Instead of answering, he rolls his head and looks pointedly at the crook of his arm. Through a squint, I make out a faint white line, the scar tissue hardly raised.

The mattress shifts beneath my weight as I crawl forward and slip the tip of my finger down the scar. Too small to be a break, too precise to be an accident.

Sawyer watches while I think, my finger gliding back and forth.

An intentional cut in the crook of the arm…

Why?

Too bizarre to be abuse.

Too…

The line is thin andstraight. Cut with a blade for certain, but anexactblade.

A scalpel.

“Was it surgical?” I ask, though it makes little sense. Until I stop assuming it was done by the father.

Oh.

A faint recollection of a story comes into my mind. A mother slicing open her baby’s belly, convinced she’d swallowed a scorpion. Post Partum psychosis, the article referred to it.

“Was she removing something?” I ask with a voice so soft, it doesn’t sound like mine.

A microchip. An insect.