"Once when I was twelve," he said, tapping his left shoulder. "Three times when I was seventeen." He tapped higher on his left shoulder, then on his side, then his thigh. "It never hurts less the next time around."

To a skilled reader, his body was a map of trauma. Of fire and pain and misery. It was the life he'd lived. "I haven't lived an easy life, but you knew that." Nor had Marius, not really. Again, that advantage he shouldn't have had.

Again, he watched Marius. Pretty men who went to my head, he silently recited. Lonely, tired, he came up behind Marius and wrapped his arms around his waist, head dropping to Marius' shoulder.