My jaw flexed. “Might as well be.”
He looked down again, bored. “She’s not. Stutters, though. Maybe a little speech problem.”
I froze.Excuse me? How—
“Quiet too, normally whispers.” He shrugged, like it were nothing. Like hearing her voice was nothing.
Nothing.
Her voice,her goddamn voice,was there for someone else. I’d spent a year dying to hear it, to break through her silence, and there it was, floating freely, clear, light for everyone else but me.
“Her voice,” I started. Alex looked up. “What was it like?”
He dragged out a hum. “She sounds the way she looks.”
“Like what?” I asked, voice low.
How the fuck does someone sound the way they look? Beautiful? Angelic? What does that sound like?
“Like… even if she was mad at you, you’d feel like absolute shit. It’s too soft and gentle.”
I clenched my fists.Soft and gentle?
Heat licked at the back of my neck, sharp and unwelcome. The silence I’d been suffocating under wasn’t her limit; it was her choice. She gave him something that should’ve belonged tome.
My grip tightened on the steering wheel until the leather groaned under my hand. I forced a scoff, pretending the knot in my throat didn’t exist. “So she whispers. Big deal.”
I pressed my tongue to the inside of my cheek, staring straight ahead, willing myself not to glance back at her across the lot.
Alex just nodded, lazy as ever. “Yeah. No big deal.”
No big deal.
The words lodged in my chest like a blade. He said it as if her voice weren’t the rarest thing in the world. Like it wasn’t something worth breaking yourself over just to hear once.
I gripped the steering wheel tighter. If it had been me, if I’d heard it, I wouldn’t have let it slip away so carelessly. I’d have burned it into memory, every note, every breath. But Alex? He tossed it aside as if it were nothing.
Ungrateful. Fucking ungrateful.
—
Soft and gentle. Too soft to be taken seriously.
I paced back and forth, socks sliding against the cold marble floor. My phone was tapping against my chin as Alex’s words echoed in my mind.
I tried to convince myself I didn’t care.
I don’t care. She whispers, so what?
But it’s just not fair. He got it; he got what I wanted. What I waited for, and she let it free to someone who doesn’t give a shit about her.
Fuck, how soft? Does she have a thick British accent? A London accent like Alex? What is an Oxford accent even like? Posh? Maybe not even that, maybe it’s… something uniquely hers?
I brushed my fingers through my hair, tugging at the strands in frustration. I can imagine anything, anythingbutthe thing I would risk everything for.
What do I have to do?
I’ve been everywhere she is, memorising every step, every tilt of her head, every flicker of her eyelashes, but never got a word. Just her breathing. Just herpresence. And Alex got it.
