The pale expanse of his chest is cut through with awful scars. He’s not as muscular as I thought he would be, but there’s power in the way his arms move. He turns his shirt over, inspects it. There’s a scar on his shoulder and a few on his collarbone. One on his soft stomach, shiny and white. He pats his pockets, then digs in them.

What—what are we? Am I still mad at him? He apologized, and I guess I accept it. I need to apologize to him too. I want to get past this, I don’t want to worry about this anymore; I want to sit down, talk about it, and move on. I’m sick of worrying about where I stand with the boys in my life.

I have the apology in my pocket. And right now, Nick is with me.

Nick, seeming to accept that whatever he’s looking for isn’t in his pocket, turns to shake it out of his jacket. With the faint moonlight coming in through the narrow window, I can make out the mass of scars on his back. There are so many, it makes my stomach turn. They’re dark, all the way from his shoulders to his waist, a pattern—

A pattern I know.

Those aren’t scars at all.

They’re tattooed wings.

What the FUCK.

That doesn’t make sense. That can’t be right. No, I’m seeing it wrong, that has to be it. The shadows are playing tricks on me. I’m seeing feathers where they aren’t supposed to be. I saw them before I fell asleep, it’s Seraph messing with me. That must be it.

But he shifts in the light, and they’re still there. They’re carved into his back, scoring all the way down like acid poured across his skin, like a monster tore him apart with its claws.

Nick was a death-squad soldier. Nick was an Angel.

A knife falls out of his jacket and hits the carpeted floor with a muffled thump. His shoulders go with it, sagging like he’s suddenly carrying an unbearable weight. He sinks to the floor, absolutely unreadable behind his mask, and he starts to cut his shirt into strips. His arm strains when he yanks at the fabric. I stare at the muscles there, at the edges of feathers creeping onto his sides. There are so many little scars in lines down his sides, right where they would be if he’d tried to claw them off with his fingernails.

Breathe.