Where It Ends

| 8 | Cut to the Quick

We start putting our clothes back on, facing opposite directions. I'm buckling my belt in a bit of a daze when something cool brushes my side just below my ribcage.

Taryn was closer than I expected. I wasn't ready for it. I'm not used to it. And, well, there's some deep-rooted stuff I'd rather not get into. Needless to say, I don't respond like a normal human being.

"Jumpy," she notes, retracting her hand, almost as startled.

"You keep sneaking up on me," I say over my shoulder.

I'm about to grab my shirt when she touches me again in the same spot. I lift my arm and freeze for her. To fight the urge to jerk away, it takes all my concentration.

"I'm not trying to." She's just as gentle but more thorough this time, tracing each prong of the scar there. "This one's bad. What's it from?"

I close my eyes and waver. "Quinn didn't tell you?" I take a small step forward to correct my balance.

Taryn takes it as her cue to step away. "Not that I can recall. She wasn't usually a gossip." With a quiet little hop and twist, she's sitting on top of the boulder. She's barefoot, brings her knees up, and then leans her elbows on those long, bent legs. "Quinn didn't disrespect the people she cared about at any rate. She had plenty to say without it. Consider it a good thing that she never mentioned it." While staring at the pond, apparently lost in that thought, she starts chewing on the nail of her pinkie finger, and it scratches at an old memory. This isn't a habit she's picked up recently.

"I liked that about her." Shifting to face another direction, I wrangle my T-shirt over my wet torso. "Aside from her and your parents, who figured it out for themselves, no one really knew I wasn't good enough for her."

This remark hangs there. Dressed enough for now, I stroll toward the boulder. I can't be sure she even heard me until she lowers her hand from her mouth and looks up, all wide-eyed and sad for me.

She offers me a hand. "You don't really think that. Do you, Grady?"

I accept her tug and plop beside her. "Well, she did say no. Twice," I lean toward her to say. "And that last one..."

"Was a doozy," she fills in for me, smiling knowingly. "If it makes you feel any better, I thought she should have married you. Seemed like a given to me."

"Yeah, well. . ." I locate a pebble beside me and throw it into the pond. "Kind of proves the point, doesn't it? No one knew what was going on with her but her."

"Sounds about right." It isn't quite a grumble, but it's close.

"In any event, remind me why we went down this rabbit hole? Oh, right. The scars," I answer my own question. "I suppose you could say it's all related. I was hit with a broken beer bottle. The slugger was my meth-head half-brother who was left in charge of me most of the time."

"Sheesh," she responds. "I'm sorry, Grady. I shouldn't have asked."

I shrug a shoulder, indifferent. This part of my past doesn't hurt that much anymore. "If you want the context..."

"I wouldn't say no."

While she starts on another nail, I throw another pebble. "It was a yours, mine, ours situation. I was the youngest of the five and related by blood to everyone, unfortunately. I was supposed to bring everyone together, but it didn't work out that way. My mother already had two boys and resented me for not being a girl. Then there was never enough space or food for us all. The fighting was constant. My father didn't want me at all and died in an ATV accident while he was under the influence. I was old enough to feel guilty about being grateful but only just. Everyone seemed to take this 'tragedy' out on me, though. The child no one seemed to want. As bad as my brothers were, my half-sister, the beloved only girl, hated me with a passion that no one could match. She was sneaky, subtle, and dedicated, and obsessed with razor blades."