Sasha's POV
Pain bloomed like violets along my ribs, purple and tender, painting stories I didn’t want to tell.
The dorm bathroom mirror was cracked, just a hairline fracture at the corner, but sometimes I stared at it like it was a wound, too. A wound in the wall, like the ones buried in my skin. Maybe in another life, it had been whole. Like me.
The ointment stung as I dabbed it onto the dark smudges along my ribs. My shirt lay crumpled in the sink, and steam from the shower clung to my skin. The mirror was fogged, sparing me the full view of myself, but I knew the sight by memory. The swells of my breasts, the softness in places I fought to hide beneath layers of bandage, cloth, and illusion.
The hiss of steam, the sterile scent of antiseptic, the rhythmic thrum of my heartbeat in m
