Page 10 of The Sharpest Edges

She edges a little closer, giving him a soft nod, her eyes flitting up to his and back down again while she wipes away the remnants of unshed tears. “It’s not true that you haven’t earned any trust. You did. Just now.”

Hearing her say that makes his chest tighten and his lips curve into a half smile. He’s about to reply, but the guard shows up again before he can, fussing with his tool belt and fidgeting with the keys to his cuffs. He’s barely old enough to drink if Dean is estimating correctly.

When he gets back to the Pod, he figures now is as good a time as any to make sure this asshole doesn’t make the same stupid mistake again. The usual gravel in his tone turns to a growl and he barks out a scolding hard enough to make the guard take a step back. “Next time you take someone outta here you lock these cuffs up real good and tight. Had to fix them myself, you left ‘em too loose. The next guy might take advantage. You know what that means? Means that woman back there gets hurt, or you do, or someone else that doesn’t deserve it. If something happens to her because you were picking your nose in the break room instead of doing your job, I’ll bust it wide open, you understand?”

The guard gulps, his reply stuttering and the keys in his grip clanking together. “Yes…yeah…I mean, I will. I’ll double check. Won’t do that again.”

“Good. ‘Cause if she trips, she sneezes, she gets a hangnail, anything at all bothers her and I’m blaming you.”

For a moment, Dean feels like he’s the boss and this kid is his employee. A complete role reversal in zero point three seconds. He’s struck the fear of God into him enough for one day and turns to head back to his cell, hoping that a lesson has been learned.

Dean thinks of Ava the rest of the day and well into the night. Can’t get over the way she looked at him right before he left. Like she saw him. Trusted him. Saw past the uniform and the cuffs and everything else that makes him different from someone on the outside. It’s a step forward he hadn’t expected or hoped for.

He doesn’t need the music to keep him awake tonight. The image of the day’s events playing behind his closed lids does a good job all by itself.

5

Chapter 5

Ava’s never been one to enjoy an early morning. The warm, heavy steam from the shower she exited tries to lull her back into a post-sleep doze. The room is cloaked in a thick haze while she ponders the three cups of coffee she’ll need to wake up and wipes a hand across the mirror to reveal her own reflection. Wet hair, flushed skin, and the ragged edges of her most prominent scar stare back at her.

It’s not the only mark on her body, not by a long shot, but this one sits deeper than anything John left behind. Most of his scars reside on the inside. The ones he put on her skin are easy to hide, if not so easy to forget.

The small cigarette burns on her stomach clustered in a group.

The lashes across her lower back from the one night he’d gotten drunk enough to attempt that.

The burn on her upper arm from the stove.

None of it holds a candle to the horrific reminder she’s looking at now. At least six inches long, from the top of one breast down to the underside of the opposite one in agruesome arc. She can still feel the bite of glass on her skin. The panic left behind still simmers under the surface, ready to spring forward again at a moment’s notice, never having healed completely like the wound on her body did.

Usually, she tries not to think about it. Even succeeded in blocking that day from her nightmares with the help of sleeping pills that knock her out cold every night, leaving nothing in her mind except a drug-induced fog. No room for dreams to fester.

Only now, since the incident with Dean in the infirmary, it’s all she can think about.

She wanted to explain herself, make him understand why she lost it so completely that she almost needed someone to scoop her up off the floor. He has no idea how easily he could have been someone else at that moment. Someone who didn’t put his own cuffs back on when they were loose. Someone who took advantage of the situation and nearly killed her in the process.

He can’t know that’s exactly what gave her this faded, brutal scar.

She is still alive, though. She made it through that day. The relief that flooded her when Dean secured himself back to the rail rivaled a similar feeling that had rushed up like a tidal wave so long ago. When she was bleeding out on the infirmary floor and realized she was still breathing.

She hadn’t had a chance to explain anything to him. Not that she even could because talking about it never comes easy, especially to someone she barely knows and only newly trusts. She couldn’t even tell Lori the details. Had to shove it all inside to move forward, which is a thing she’s gotten good at. Every awful memory has its place in the back of her mind. John,the car accident, that day in the infirmary. She is skilled at padlocking those compartments and tossing away the keys, at least until something new wrenches them open.

No matter how much he deserves an explanation for her behavior, and she does think he’s earned one, she can’t give that just yet. Maybe not ever.

Dean is easy to talk to, though. Gruff and quiet, but there is something about him that makes her want to share and that’s only gotten worse now that a small thread of trust has bloomed between them.

Her fingertips trace the lines of that long-healed wound from one end to the opposite, her mind drifting. It’s all too easy to let her hand shift enough to cup the weight of one small, soft breast. Her thumb flicks over the pink nipple, her expression impassive as she watches herself in the mirror. Would he touch her softly like this? Would his calloused hands be rough or gentle on her skin? Would he be disgusted by the marks littering her body?

As quickly as those questions form, she shakes them off, her hand falling away and a scowl forming as she grabs her clothes. She’s not doing herself any damn favors daydreaming about this man.

He’s unavailable in the most obvious sense of the word. Probably not interested. How could he be? And he is in prison.

Doesn’t matter anyway since she has no intention of letting anyone touch her like that ever again.

She scolds herself for being ridiculous and makes a mental date with her vibrator for later that night to work off some of this excess arousal that’s cropped up out of nowhere. It’s unwelcome and obnoxious, but she would rather be horny than ruminate on her past.

She absolutely won’t be thinking about Dean while she’s using it. Not even for a second. She’ll pull up a mental image of some faceless, nameless person. An attractive celebrity perhaps, one of the Chris’. Hemsworth or Pratt or who the hell even knows, they all look the same, but fantasizing about someone like that would be mundane and safe, and doing the same thing with Dean’s face behind her eyelids is the opposite of safe.

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