I’m not used to being called by my name. My hands rise in front of me—instinctive apology, the one I always used. Palms open. Shoulders hunched.
Don’t hurt me. I’ll do better.
He sits up slowly. “You don’t have to be afraid of me.”
He doesn’t reach for me, hands staying visible, resting on his thighs. His gaze moves over my face, watching for the places I fracture.
“I’m not angry,” he soothes. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
A whimper tears from my throat. The noise is small and raw, but it still makes me flinch. I press both palms over my lips. No sound. No sound. No sound.
He shakes his head. “You don’t have to hide your voice from me.”
He doesn’t understand. My voice is punished. My voice is forbidden. My voice is the thing that brought pain more times than I can count. And when I finally lost it for good, it didn’t even matter anymore.
I scramble off the bed and drop to my knees on the floorboards, bowing my head. The posture speaks for me:Use me. I’m sorry. I’ll make it right. Just don’t hurt me.
“No.” His voice cracks. “Sweetheart… no.”
He’s off the bed in a heartbeat and kneels a distance from me—not touching or crowding.
“You don’t owe me your body,” he says, every word slow and deliberate. “Not last night. Not now. Not ever.”
My fingers fumble toward the pencil and scrap of paper by the hearth, frantic to explain, to show I wasn’t refusing him or inviting punishment. I tap my chest twice with shaking fingers. Then point at him. Then place my palm over my heart again.
He watches me, eyes softening.
“Safe?” he asks quietly.
I nod hard, tears blurring the edges of everything.
I write on the paper with a trembling hand:YOU STOP HURT. I PAY YOU.
My fingers tremble so badly the letters wobble and smear. I hold my fist to my chest, trying to power through the tightness.
He moves closer, slowly, his voice dropping to something low and golden.
“You’re safe with me. Not because you give me anything. Because you deserve to be.”
My throat works around a sob. I can’t make sound, so I crawl forward and press my cheek to the place where his heartbeat lives. I just need warmth. I need him—and I don’t understand why. Some kind of human connection that isn’t trying to destroy me. God, it’s been so long. I forgot what that felt like. But I’m learning again.
Rafe stays kneeling in front of me, his hands open, waiting, anchoring me without chains. Even like this, I feel him—solid, steady, too close and not close enough.
I draw back slowly, wiping my face with shaking fingers. I need him to understand. Need to show him why I know what safety feels like only in moments of surrender. Why I came to himthe way I did. Why silence wraps itself around my neck and squeezes.
I tremble as I reach for the pencil again, but my fingers keep slipping. I grip too tight. The pencil snaps. A cry rises in my throat, but I crush it down. My eyes burn.
Rafe takes a fresh one from the floor and places it in my palm, folding my fingers around it gently. “Take your time, sweetheart. I’m right here.”
I lower myself onto the rug, sitting cross-legged, and sketch shakily. My hand doesn’t remember grace. My lines come out jagged, uneven. I force myself to keep going.
A tall figure. A smaller one curled low. Hands closed around wrists. I tap each drawing. Tap my scars. Tap my throat.
Rafe’s jaw flexes, but he doesn’t look away. He doesn’t make a sound.
I draw again—circles around ankles, two lines to show tightness. I rub my skin at the place where rope once sat so long it stopped belonging to the outside world.
Rafe’s eyes lower to my wrists. He reaches, slow enough that I could flee for the door, but I stay. He turns my arm gently, studying the permanent ridges pressed into my body.
