Page 85 of Just Wait

There are scars in varying levels of thickness and depth.

Those are familiar.

It’s the deep, thick wounds horizontal and vertical across both wrists that rock me to my foundations. I don’t know how he could even physically manage those kinds of injuries and still be here. I don’t want to make assumptions, because I know how it felt when someone did it to me. I just don’t know how the cross-shaped scars could be anything but a suicide attempt.

I guess he could have taken cutting too far, but that doesn’t seem right.

I tease my fingertip over the marred reddish-purple skin, and my chest seizes. It’s so easy to imagine how badly he must have been hurting to take such a drastic step.

“Ahh, fuck.” Riser weaves his free hand into my hair and tilts my face toward his. “I would have given you a warning, but I forgot.”

It’s like I can sense his pain echoing into me, and I wish I could make it stop.

“I hate that you were ever hurting⁠—”

“It was a long time ago,” he says, cradling my head in his hand. “After my ex…” He shrugs. “It fucked me up for a while. My roommate found me, called 911, and I didn’t die, which I’m really grateful for now, but at the time, I was ready to be done. I know they’re ugly⁠—”

I let his arm drop to his side as I try to pull myself out of my dress.

Riser releases my hair, helps me get free of the material, and tosses it aside.

“Trust me when I say I get it.” I turn, pushing down the band of my panties. “Sometimes it’s easier to focus on physical pain than it is to have to experience emotional misery.”

“Jesus, Lumen.” Riser reaches over, running his fingers over the ugly raised red lines. “Those aren’t from a blade.”

“Knives scare me,” I admit. “The bottom of a grill match was what I settled on after quite a bit of trial and error. The friction burned, but not as sharply, and it also felt good. They also didn’t bleed as much, which made them easier to hide.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” he murmurs, brushing the backs of his fingers along the ones on my lower stomach and pelvis.

“I have a few on my arms and near my knees, but they’re hardly visible anymore. After my mom left, I struggled a lot. I spent years battling depression and anxiety. I couldn’t understand why she didn’t love me enough to take me with her.”

“That had nothing to do with you, and everything to do with her,” he says.

My eyes fall shut, and I nod.

I know that now, but I was just a teenager, and I couldn’t figure out what I’d done wrong.

If I’d been better behaved maybe she would have loved me more…

I open my eyes and stare at the wall. “Wearing jeans and long sleeves all the time was apparently a red flag, especially in summer. My dad was suspicious and asked my doctor to check me over. She found them.” I shrug. “I didn’t stop. I just got sneakier. I moved to places it would be inappropriate to ask to see.” A shaky sigh slips from my lips. “My dad thought I wanted attention. I didn’t. I wanted to choose which pain I experienced on my terms.”

“I get it,” he says seriously.

My eyes fly to his, my head tilting.

He does get it.

I can feel it in my bones, and that’s a connection I’ve never made before. I’ve always been self-conscious of my scars. I didn’t want anyone to see them. Any time they did, they made judgments and assumptions.

I was never suicidal.

I was just trying to find a lifeboat to carry me through long enough that life didn’t suck quite so badly, and I got there eventually.

Riser’s hands land on my hips, giving a squeeze. “I noticed you don’t have any tattoos. If you ever need an outlet, might I suggest trying it? I did a bunch of piercings at first, and they helped, but tattoo pain is two-fold. You get the rush during the tattoo itself, then the healing pain.”

“Is that how you ended up covered in tattoos?”

Okay, that was probably a stupid question. Seeing Riser without his shirt, I can verify that he is nearly as covered as Mal or Kincaid. The only area he doesn’t have tattoos is the underside of his forearms.