A simple question.
A normal question. The kind of question adults asked each other every day, the kind of question I'd answered a thousand times without thinking. Fine. Tired. Okay. Any of the socially acceptable responses that served as conversational filler, placeholders for the more complicated truths underneath.
I opened my mouth to answer.
Nothing came out.
The words were there. I could feel them, somewhere in the back of my brain—concepts and meanings and the particular combination of sounds that would form a response. But the path between my brain and my mouth had collapsed. Caved in like a bridge that couldn't hold the weight anymore.
Too much.
That was the only thought I could hold. Too much. Too much input, too many feelings, too many things that had happened in the last forty-eight hours that my brain hadn't finished processing yet. The violence and the photograph and his hands and the sound of something being broken and "Good girl" and his thumb on my cheekbone and—
The light was too bright.
I hadn't noticed it before, but now it was all I could notice. The grey morning light bleeding through those expensive windows, hitting the white countertops and reflecting back at me like an assault. My eyes wanted to close. My body wanted to fold in on itself, wanted to retreat to somewhere dark and quiet and safe.
My skin felt too thin.
Every nerve ending was firing at once, registering things I didn't want to register. The texture of the hardwood beneath my feet. The brush of his sweater against my wrists. The smell of coffee and eggs and him, layered over each other in ways my brain couldn't separate.
I couldn't be a person right now.
Maks looked at me—right at me. Then, he set down the spatula.
The movement was slow, deliberate. No sudden sounds. No unexpected stimuli. Just the soft clink of metal against the stove rest, and then he was turning fully toward me, giving me his whole attention without moving any closer.
He knew. Somehow, he knew.
"It’s okay." His voice had gone soft. Lower than before, pitched to soothe rather than stimulate. "You don't have to talk."
He wasn't going to force me. Wasn't going to ask questions I couldn't answer, or push me to explain what was happening in my head, or look at me with that particular blend of confusion and disappointment that I'd learned to expect from people who didn't understand.
He just accepted it. Accepted me.
The paralysis didn't lift. The words didn't come back. But something in my chest loosened, just a fraction, and I found myself able to take a breath for the first time since I'd walked into the kitchen.
"Let me help you," he said quietly. "Can you nod for yes?"
I nodded.
He didn't ask open questions, just binaries. Simple questions.
"Bath or shower?"
He held up two hands, like he was offering physical objects instead of words. Bath on the left. Shower on the right. Simple. Contained. A decision I could make with a gesture instead of language.
I pointed at the first.
"Good. This way."
He moved slowly through the apartment, checking that I was following, never getting more than a few feet ahead. The bathroom was at the end of another hallway—all white tile and glass and more of those high windows that seemed to be everywhere, but with frosted panes that softened the light into something bearable.
"The hoodie—" He held up something dark and oversized. "—or the soft grey shirt?" A pale, worn thing that looked like it had been washed a hundred times.
I touched the shirt.
"That's my favorite too." A small smile. "It's older than you are, probably. My grandmother gave it to me."
