“If anyone asks, that’s exactly what it is,” I said, forcing a smile that felt like baring my teeth. “It’ll give me some street cred. Truth is, I sliced it open climbing a barbed-wire fence.”

“Huh.”

“Stupid kid tricks, huh?”

I pried my grip from the bottom sheet, twisted to sit up more and found myself caught in the covers. I looked down to see them tangled around my bare legs, my oversized T-shirt bunched up around my stomach, underwear on full display.

I yanked my shirt down. “I think I need more roommate-friendly sleepwear.”

He didn’t answer. Just sat there, studying me, then after a moment, his gaze dipped away and he shrugged, gesturing at his bare chest. “I’m not any better.”

“Well, between the two of us, we’re fully dressed.”

“Yeah.”

He stayed there, gaze fixed on something across the room. I tried not to stare…but, well, he was sitting right there, in front of me, so he was all I could see, his head tilted slightly, face in shadow, strong jaw set, dark beard stubble somehow emphasizing the planes of his face, making it rougher, sexier. Yes, sexier, as much as I hated to admit it, even to myself. He looked damned good half naked, with the muscled chest and arms of someone who stays in shape because he has to, not necessarily because he wants to. Nothing showy, just lean and hard and sexy as hell.

And here I’d been lying in bed beside him, my shirt riding up around my stomach, more than half naked, and he hadn’t so much as snuck a second look…if he’d even noticed at all. That stung.

As I pulled back and tugged the covers over my legs, he looked over sharply, as if startled.

“You tired?” he said.

“No, and it wouldn’t matter if I was. Once I start having the nightmares, they don’t end until I stop sleeping.”

He nodded. I adjusted the sheet some more, but he still didn’t get up. His hand moved to the space between us, bracing himself, and his bicep flexed. The skin there was rough, unnatural, and when I looked closer, I could make out the ghost of a surgically erased tattoo, a symbol of some kind, invisible from more than a few inches away.

My gaze slid off his arm to another patch of disfigured skin over his breast. A star-shaped pattern of quarter-inch circular burns. I’d seen marks like that before, and knew immediately what they were. Cigarette burns—the lit end held against the skin, applying enough pressure to scorch but not to put out the flame. A crude torture tactic. These marks were old, the burns faded to skin color.

Jack followed my gaze before I could look away.

“War wounds.” His mouth opened again, as if considering saying more. It shut, then reopened, but he only said, “Old.”

“So I see.”