“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “I’d never. I need you to know that first.”
“You lied to me,” I said, and my voice cracked. “This whole time. The wheelchair. The… the scars. All of it?”
“Not all of it,” he said. “The scars are real. But not like this.”
He lifted the silicone suit slightly.
“This was made by a team of special effects artists in Los Angeles. It took six months to build. It weighs eighty-two pounds. It adds three hundred pounds of apparent mass and conceals a real body that is much, much smaller than it seems. The face is a custom prosthetic, based on photographs of my actual injuries, exaggerated.”
I stared at him.
“Why?” I breathed.
He drew a long, shaky breath.
“Do you remember what I told you about the fire?”
“You said there was an accident.”
“Yes.” He set the suit on the desk, carefully, as though it was something precious. “Seven years ago, I was in my car on the coast road when a truck lost control. My vehicle burned for eleven minutes before they pulled me out.”
My hand flew to my mouth.
“I was nineteen percent alive, if you can say it that way,” he said with a small, crooked smile. “Third-degree burns across my face, chest, arms. My legs were crushed. The doctors told my family I wouldn’t survive the week. Then, when I did, they told me I’d never walk again.”
He unbuttoned his left cuff and rolled up his sleeve.
