Chapter Eleven

John rinsed the shampoo out of his hair, feeling the soap and water run down his body. He knew he was thinner than he should be, his muscles had lost some of their tone since he'd had the meth forced into his blood, and his scars seemed more noticeable than they had been a few months before. He knew that he must've been a sight for Claire, his skinny, drug ravaged, scarred body wasn't much to look at, and to tell the truth, he was half expecting Claire to dump him as soon as one of them moved out of the house. He knew that if he was a girl, the last thing that he would want to be stuck with for the rest of his life would be a drug addicted, beat up, scrawny thing like him.

He poured some body wash onto his hand, rubbing it over his chest and stomach, feeling every line of scar tissue branded into his skin. He hated that he looked the way he did, hated the fact that he'd been forced to live a life with the marks of anger written on his flesh like a book for the world to see. He hated that he'd never know what it was like to live with a clean slate, to be able to wipe the past away like chalk on a blackboard. The only way he would ever be able to mask the scars, would be with scars of color on top. He'd thought about tattoos before, but he wasn't sure if he could take the pain of the millions of needle pokes it would take to cover all of his scars.

He closed his eyes for a moment, letting the water run over his skin. "They can't hurt you." He mumbled, steadying his breath as he felt his heart start to beat faster. "You're safe."

He pressed a hand over his mouth as a bout of nausea hit him, rushing out of the shower to empty his stomach into the toilet. It was a common reoccurrence since he'd been drugged, his stomach would flip at random times, usually leaving him vomiting until there was nothing left for his body to reject. He hadn't told anyone about the vomiting or the emotional numbness that he was stuck with. He didn't know how. He'd found himself forcing smiles and jokes over the last few months, he didn't know when it had happened, all he knew was that he'd woken up one day and felt completely numb. He'd had no emotions to feel. It was as if he'd been thrown into a room with nothing except plain white walls.

His only release from that hell, was when Claire kissed him. When her lips would brush over his skin it was like the world had stopped, and all that existed was him and her.

John's stomach started to settle, letting him rest for a moment. He laid on the floor, relishing in the feeling of the cold tile on his wet flesh. "Ugh…" He groaned, slowly pushing himself up and grabbing a towel. He rubbed the fabric over himself, drying the water from his body, before pulling on some clothes and starting for the breakfast room.

"Hey, El Jefe!" Dominic smiled, waving his cousin over. "Únete a nosotros!" He pulled the slightly smaller boy into a chair beside him, pushing a plate heaped with scrambled eggs and bacon toward his cousin. "Comer." He handed John a fork, switching over to English so the others could get an idea of what he was saying. "Grandma Diaz would say you're too skinny for a pretty girl like Claire."

"Vete a la mierda!" John cursed, his message clear by his tone. He glared at his cousin, sending an unspoken message between them. "Andrea always thought we were too skinny."

"Well you were." Claire piped up, taking a bite of the blueberry muffin she'd grabbed for breakfast.

All of the burners turned to look at her, not believing that she'd said something like that. Kaylie looked between the six other burners, remembering their days of fighting for food. "We still are." She remembered how small she'd felt when the man who'd tried to rape her took her down, how it'd taken John's entire weight to take the monster down and how John had to use every tool in his toolbox to mess him up as bad as he did. "We still need to put on more weight if we're going to survive on our own after school." She shifted in her seat. "We're a pack now, but after school we're going to have to find our own paths. We're going to have to become lone wolves."

John looked down at his plate, noticing that Kaylie's was almost empty. "Here." He scrapped a few eggs onto her plate, an old habit from when the burners could actually get their hands on some food. "Eat."

She smiled sweetly at him, taking a few bites of the food to show her gratitude. "Thank you."

He nodded, taking a bite of his own food. "She's right. We'll always be a pack, but eventually we're going to have to start lone wolfing. We need to learn to fight entirely on our own." He looked around the group. "That means, only call backup if it's one-hundred-percent needed."

Claire watched as the burners nodded, amazed that they were already talking about life like a battle. "How can you talk like that?" She asked, shock clear on her face.

Jim glanced up at her, honesty shining in his blue eyes. "That's how we are… we've fought for everything our entire lives."

John swallowed his food, setting his fork on the table. "Claire, Sweets, I hate to tell you this, but you've lived a sheltered life." He motioned to Andy, Brian, and Allison. "You all have. You've never had to fight for food, never had to run from a bullet, never had to worry about some creep try to take you in an ally; but we have. The only reason that any of us survived as long as we have, is because we're always three steps ahead, playing every angle before it can be played. It took all of us, working as a team to stay alive." He looked to Kaylie covering her hand with his. "And when one doesn't do his part, things always go south."

The burners all gave an odd motion with their eyebrows, raising one while blinking the opposite eye.

Andy furrowed his brow, glancing between the seven burners around the table. "What the hell was that?"

Dominic smirked, showing off the dimple in his left cheek. "Burner forgiveness." He patted his cousin on the back. "It means forgive, but never forget."

John nodded. "You never forget what went wrong, but you forgive who made the fault." He took another bite of his breakfast. "In this case, we never forget Sid, but I am the one who's forgiven." He gave a hard swallow, biting the inside of his cheek. "I'm the one that left his part. I left Sid in charge. I left my group with one Jefe, when we were always supposed to have two. We were supposed to look out for each other, that was my job when it came to Sid." He took a breath, forcing himself to remember his friend's face. "Sid kept an eye on me, I kept an eye on him, and we all looked out for each other."

"Burner code." The burners murmured, raising their cups of orange juice.

Claire dropped her gaze, looking at the half-eaten muffin on her plate. Every time she thought she knew how they'd survived, they'd show her another side, another angle they'd had to play, another risk they'd taken. All done to stay alive. "And I thought soldiers were tough." She whispered, returning to her muffin. "You guys take the cake."

"Sweets, you've put up with us for three months." John chuckled, his eyes shining with mischief. "I think you're tougher than all of us thugs combined."