I woke the next morning to Nessa shuffling about the room getting dressed. I sat up in bed and stretched, reaching my hands high above my head. I hadn’t been able to sleep well, my thoughts unsilenced as they thought about Jack’s strange behavior; and not only that from the infirmary today but from overall. He had always shown moments of great kindness and sweetness but closed off soon after and shut down that part of him. I couldn’t make sense of it and neither could my dreams as they portrayed two Jacks before me, one smiling sweetly and one scowling aggressively, as they strolled in front of me, headed down opposite forks in the road as I stood, confused, where they split.
So now I woke, still unbelievably tired, to start my first day of training. I could already guess it wouldn’t go well.
“Morning,” Nessa said, not looking at me. She had been cold since our argument in the kitchens, not even speaking to me last night as we settled in for bed. At least she had warmed up a bit more now, not that I really cared; I was still upset with her.
“Good morning,” I told her dryly as I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood. A tremor ran down my spine; today was the day I would start training and I was beyond excited.
“Go back to bed you two,” Sicily groaned, one eye popping open to look at me as I opened the window curtains. “Why are you up so early anyways?”
“Sicily, we have to be in the kitchens in half an hour,” Nessa explained, exasperated with our roommate.
“Ugh,” Sicily groaned, rolling over and burying her face into the pillow ensnared in her tired arms.
I sat down in the chair, lacing my boots slowly as I thought about today; it could either go terribly or wonderfully. What if I was horrible and the guys didn’t even want me to go into the city with them to raid? What if I was so bad I was a liability?
As I laced my second shoe and set my foot back on the floor, gentle snores drifted to my ears; Sicily had fallen back asleep.
“Damn it,” Nessa swore under her breathe as she noticed Sicily sleeping too. She strode to the bed and swiftly yanked back the blanket, pulling it from the bed and to the floor.
As I reached the door and turned the knob, I heard Nessa aggressively demanding, “Get up!” and stifled a giggle; it was funny because Sicily could never seem to wake up in the morning but I knew Nessa’s extra frustration at her this morning stemmed from our abrasiveness after the argument.
As I wandered down the hall, I realized I had no reason to get up so early; there would be no one in the weaponry at this time before breakfast and I didn’t need to be on the cooking shift like the other girls. I stopped in the middle of hall, wondering where I was even headed.
Coincidentally, I must have stopped in front of room 202. I was looking ahead out the window at the end of the hall, it’s curtains barely parted to reveal the brick building next door, when I heard my name.
“Morning Essie,” Bower greeted cheerfully as he left the room to my left, fresh clothes in his arms and a towel over his shoulder. He must be headed down to shower.
“Good morning,” I replied. I liked Bower, his laid back attitude and easy going ways were something anyone could get along with well.
He left the door cracked as he walked away down the hall before disappearing into the stairwell.
Then the door swung open beside me, the rapid movement catching my attention. I turned to see Jack standing in the doorway, wrinkled black clothes adorning his body. He looked like he had woken up just a few moments ago.
“Hey,” he said. His tone was not exactly inviting but it held a certain amount of warmth for me. “I thought I heard Bower talking to you.”
I didn’t know how to handle Jack anymore, he had been cold again after our experiences in the foyer. I had no idea what kind of basis we were going on anymore. I decided to assume a friendly one was safe.
“Hello Jackson.” There was a moment of awkward silence in which I wondered why exactly he had come out into the hall. If it was because he had heard Bower address me then why wasn’t he talking to me at all? But I could start conversation too. I said the first thing that came into my head. “Eden approved me for exercise. I’m going to be in the weaponry today.”
Jack seemed taken aback by this, his mouth opening and then closing as he thought what to say back. Why did conversation between us seem forced? It was all very strange. He floundered for another moment before saying, “That’s good. Are you sure that’s a good idea though?”
I began to fume, annoyed with everyone being sexist about my decision. “Just because I’m a girl-” I began.
“No it’s not that,” Jack rushed, clearing up the apparent miscommunication between us. “I don’t doubt you can be helpful with raids and protection, I just want to make sure you understand the danger that’s involved with it.”
I thought for a moment. Of course I knew it was dangerous, we were stealing from the most powerful man England had ever seen, but it wasn’t deadly danger, right? No one had come back from a raid with any injuries since I had been amongst The Recovery. On the contrary, they seemed to come back fine and dandy each time, itching to go back out within a day each time. “It doesn’t seem that dangerous, you guys always come back intact.”
“Recently, yes. We’ve hit a spell of easy raids; half the guard is completely idiotic. But others aren’t, others don’t fall for the easy tricks that get us the wagons.” He was talking very seriously, warning me.
“What’s happened before?” I asked, my voice weaker as I imagined the worst possible situation; maybe someone had lost a limb before, maybe someone had died before.
Sighing, Jack reached up and grabbed his shirt behind his head, pulling it over his hair. I was startled for a moment, wondering what being shirtless had to do with any of this. But as he discarded his shirt to the floor and my eyes landed on his torso, I understood.
A long, white scar ran from his left clavicle all the way to his left hip, passing over his pectoral muscle. The scar was older, healed and just a shiny remnant, but my mine conjured for me what it must have looked like at one time, ragged flesh on either side of a deep, bloody cut.
“When did this happen?” I asked. I hadn’t noticed I had approached him until he flinched back from the feel of my cold fingers on the skin beside the scar.
“Two years ago. I had been doing raids for about a year with the guys and we had almost never ran into any trouble and began to raid more often. Strazier must have decided to take action because the next wagons coming into town were more heavily guarded, and with experienced fighters. It could have been a lot worse, we managed to get out with all our lives, but I got sliced,” I flinched at his choice of wording, “Brody had his arm broken from a heavy blow, and James had a deep cut to his leg.” I shuddered, imagining the condition of the group as they stumbled back through the doors, their then boyish faces showing expressions of shock at what had been waiting for them. I saw a panicked Eden rushing to help them, settling the hurt boys down in beds and sprinting about the infirmary as she grabbed supplies to tend to them.
“I’m sorry,” I said, still looking at his torso and the scar, not his face.
“We all healed fine, the advantage of being young, but it just reminded us of the danger of what we are doing here,” Jack said. “Now we can never be too careful. We always take time to assess the strength of the men with a wagon and their numbers before trying to take it. We are overly cautious now and sometimes we come home empty handed. Gavin made us promise to leave the wagons alone that we aren’t sure we can take. He blamed himself for our injuries; he thought it was his fault for sending boys between sixteen and eighteen out to fight.”
My fingers ran down his skin beside the scar as he talked, noticing the way his stomach tightened underneath them. I wasn’t sure if it was still him reacting to their cold or something more.
It was silent for a moment as I did this and I finally looked at his face, curious as to why he hadn’t pulled away, expecting him to of stepped back from my touch now that the story was over. A shockwave ran through me per usual when I met his gaze, my body reacting of its own accord to his alluring eyes.
That same emotion I’d seen before was in his gaze, the one that I couldn’t decipher when I’d it had appeared before. But now I knew. Jack hadn’t straight up said it, I doubted he ever would with the closed off way he conducted himself, but I knew because of the story he had shared, because of his speechlessness when I had told him of my intentions for today; it was worry. Jack worried for me. Somewhere deep in himself, he cared enough to worry. And that was something I took surprising comfort in, knowing he didn’t really feel as coldly toward me as he pretended to most of the time.
His lips lowered to my ear, his breathe tickling my skin, as he whispered, “Just promise me you’ll be careful.”
He hesitated a moment, his lips still beside my ear, and then placed the smallest of kisses to my temple, his hands cradling my hips for a short moment, before pulling away, grabbing his shirt from the ground, and returning to his room, the door quietly clicking shut behind him.