“You need to eat, Lucas,” Tyler signs, his hands moving slowly, cautiously, as if my silence might shatter him.
I’m not wearing my hearing aids. I haven’t since the hospital. The silence presses against me from every direction, thick and suffocating, but it’s also the only place where nothing can reach me, the only place I find a weird comfort. No voices. No sound. No demands. Just the static of my own thoughts, constant and heavy. Even though my head is chaos, even though I feel like a ghost inside my own body, I’d rather stay here in this muted void.
I close my eyes, hoping he’ll give up.
But his hand is in my hair again, fingers curling gently, tugging just enough to make me look at him. His eyes search mine, and I know he sees it, the emptiness sitting there, hollow and endless. His shoulders sink, and I see it in his eyes—the flicker of distress, the deepening sadness that pulls his features down, his face twists into something more pained. I hate seeing him like this.
It’s the same look he had years ago. The night I came home from the hospital after the surgery, my world already fallingapart. I remember him hugging me so tightly it almost hurt, his silent tears soaking into my shirt. Later, he told me that while I was gone, he felt like a piece of him had gone missing.
“It’s been two days, Lucas,” he signs now, his movements sharper, more desperate. “You haven’t eaten in two days.”
I watch him, but the words don’t land. My brain is fogged, my body heavy. I can’t make my mouth form anything. My hands feel like they’re made of stone; even the thought of signing a reply feels impossible.
Instead, I drag the blanket over my face, shutting him out, shutting everything out. Darkness swallows me, pressing against my eyelids, and I let it. Because here, in this dark, airless cocoon, I can disappear quietly. And maybe that’s where I belong.
***
I miss him.
I love him.
I want him here with me.
I want to feel him again.
I love him.
I miss you, Alex.
***
My reflection stares back at me like a ghost trapped on the wrong side of the glass—pale, hollow-eyed, barely human. But my gaze isn’t on my face. It’s on the faint hickey just below my chest, almost gone now. Another one lingers, fading into my collarbone. My hand moves to it without thought, my fingers brushing the tender spot. My throat tightens.
I close my eyes, and for a moment, I’m back in that morning—before everything shattered. Before the world split into before and after. We were in the shower, steam curling around us. I’d teased his nipples, my fingers grazing over them, and I watched his jaw tighten. He’d shot me that warning look, the one that says stop but never really means it. I didn’t. I pushed, and hesnapped. In the next breath, he had me against the wall, his hands lifting me off my feet, gripping my thighs so hard and tight I had no choice but to cling to him, my arms wrapping around his shoulders, holding on for dear life while he drove into me with a brutal patience, fucking me into oblivion and leaving hickeys like marks of vengeance.
How did a day that started as heaven rot into a nightmare so quickly?
I drop my hand from the hickey, my chest clamping in on itself until breathing feels like swallowing glass. A choked sob claws at my throat, but my brain strangles it before it can escape. My throat burns with unshed tears I’ve been keeping locked inside for days now, but they won’t fall. They just… sit there, Stuck, heavy, and aching. And under all the noise in my head, the trauma, the static, the storms clawing at me with long, cold fingers—I still miss him. I still ache for him.
Even though I was the one who pushed him away.
I remember signing to Tyler in the hospital, telling him to get me out, telling him I didn’t want to see Alex. Couldn’t see him. Not because of what he did. God, no. I know he killed Josh and Caleb. I’ve known it in my bones since the moment I saw the news. And yet… I don’t feel pity for them. I don’t feel grief. Not even relief. Just nothing. Just like the way I felt when my mom had told me Tim had died.
And I’m not mad at him for it. I’m not even angry.
What I feel is worse.
I feel ashamed of myself.
A shame that feels thick, corrosive—and confusion that tastes almost like disbelief. He knows. He saw what happened to me. He’s carried it inside him, in silence, for God knows how long. And still… still he touched me the same way he’s always touched me, still called me beautiful. Still looked at me with thatsoftness that belongs only to me, that he’s never given to anyone else.
How? How is he not disgusted whenever he touches me? How does he not hate me? How does he not see me for what I am?
Because when I look in the mirror… I see filth. I see something broken. Something rotting from the inside out.
And I don’t understand how he doesn’t.
The thought claws up my throat, bitter and hot, and before I know it, I’m on the cold tile, ripping the toilet lid open. My stomach clenches, wringing out what little is left in me. Water. Acid. Nothing substantial—because I haven’t eaten in days. I’ve ignored everything Tyler brought, just staring at the plates until they’re gone, as if my silence could erase them.
