His_Scar_by_Erin_E_Keller

Prologue I never thought I was handsome. Not even before the car accident. But now I can’t look at my reflection in the mirror. My friends say it isn’t a big deal, it’s just a scar. True, it is, but it changed me permanently. There is this large, long, indented, dark pink, gross line across my cheekbone. It ends above my upper lip and looks like a damn highway to me. The skin around it is wrinkled and stained. I’m twenty-five and my skin looks old. I let my hair grow long so my face is partially covered, but the scar is still too obvious. My face is still too obvious. Every time someone looks at me, I just hope my eyes are distracting enough, so they won’t notice the rest. I’ve been told my eyes are so blue they look painted. Patrick said that. Or at least he used to say that when everything was fine between us. Since the accident, he’s no longer focused on my eyes, or on anything else about me, for that matter. I get the feeling sometimes he’s afraid to look at my scar, but I don’t dare ask. I assume our story is winding down, but I don’t ask for confirmation. He’s always far away, traveling for business, and the phone calls come fewer and fewer with each passing day. Not that we were engaged, so it’s kind of okay for me. At least I think so. I’m not really in the right mood to process it. I’ve talked to my doctors, but they said it’s still too early for facial surgery. The fractures of the facial bones were severe and healed after the surgery, but I’ll have to live with this nightmare on my face until they tell me I’m ready. I don’t know if I’m angry or just tired. One thing I do know, though: it’s really hard to smile again. I don’t remember the accident very well. I just know a car hit mine and drove off. Then it’s all a blank. The car that caused the accident disappeared soon after and the police never found the driver. The next thing I remember is lying in a hospital bed with my parents staring at me. I remember they tried to look happy, happy that I was alive, but I immediately suspected something was wrong. My face was a disaster. A few months have passed since then, and I know my parents are worried about me—because of my lack of enthusiasm in everything, because I avoid any hint of a social life, and, in general, because of my grumpy moods. Not that I was much of a talker even before the accident, but my moods have gradually been getting worse. I even stopped hanging out with my best friends, and then I quit my job at the bookshop. But I needed some time to recover. I needed to find some balance before coming out of my shell again. Now, after months of doing nothing but reading—luckily my sight wasn’t damaged or I would have killed myself—I’m here, looking at the sign above the library. I’ve finally decided it was the right time for a fresh start, so I answered an employment ad for a reception position here. I will keep reading my books, no one will bother me, I won’t be forced to chat. And I can be as grumpy as I please. And this is, more or less, when the rest of my life starts.