Page 55 of Ruthless Silence
After he leaves, I sit at the piano. Evening light slants through the windows, painting the keys gold. My fingers find the melody I wrote for her, the one that captured her contradictions in notes. The composition that made her listen, made her lean against the doorway that first time.
The music fills the house, deliberately louder than usual. Following Luca's disturbing wisdom. Making my presence known through sound since she won't accept it through proximity.
I play her song, the violent passages and tender phrases, the complexity of who she was and who she's becoming. Each note is a reminder: I'm here. I see you. You exist even without your revenge.
Mine. Even drowning in truth, even hating herself, she's mine. The music wraps around her like chains she doesn't realize she's already wearing.
Footsteps on the stairs.
I don't stop playing, don't acknowledge her approach, but every nerve comes alive. She appears in the doorway wearing my shirt over her nightgown, hair tangled, eyes swollen from crying. But she's here. She came to the music.
We stare at each other across the room, the melody continuing under my fingers. She looks fragile but also searching. Like she's trying to remember why she's here, who she is, what we are to each other without hatred as our foundation.
Her hands rise slowly, trembling as she signs: "Don't stop."
So I don't. I play through the piece, watching her watch me, seeing something shift in her expression. When the final note fades, she moves slightly forward. Not entering the room but notleaving either. She sinks down in the doorway itself, back against the frame, knees drawn up.
The nightgown rides up her thighs, and I see the fading bruise where I gripped too hard. My cock throbs remembering how she begged for harder, deeper, more.
Claiming the space between. Neither in nor out.
"Again," she signs, and there's something desperate in the movement. "Play it again."
I repeat the entire composition, start to finish, while she sits in that liminal space. When it ends, she signs once more: "Again. Please."
Three times. Four. My fingers never tire because each repetition draws her back from wherever she's been disappearing to. With every playthrough, she settles more firmly into that doorway, like the music is rebuilding her from sound and memory.
Somewhere during the seventh repetition, her breathing changes.
I glance over to find her asleep in the doorway, head tilted against the frame, my shirt pooling around her like armor. Even in sleep, she looks exhausted. The kind of bone-deep tired that comes from wrestling with everything you thought you knew.
I finish the piece before standing, moving carefully to avoid waking her. The blanket from the couch settles over her gently. I pull it up to her chin, tuck it around her shoulders, cover her completely in softness she won't ask for while awake. I could carry her to bed, but that would be choosing for her. She chose to come to the music. Chose to stay in this in-between space. That has to be enough.
I sink to the floor across from her, back against the opposite side of the doorframe. Guardian and watched, as usual. She shifts slightly, burrowing deeper into the blanket I've covered her with, but doesn't wake.
Tomorrow marks four days since she gleaned the truth and I told her the rest. Four days since her old self died. The number feels significant. Death and resurrection, ending and beginning. Will she wake as someone new? Or will she wake and walk away, leaving nothing but the ghost of jasmine and rage?
She chose to come to the music. Chose to ask for more. Chose to fall asleep trusting I'd watch over her even now, even after everything.
Her hand slips from beneath the blanket, fingers signing something in sleep. I lean closer, trying to read the movement, and catch fragments that stop my heart: "Dante" and "sorry" and something that might be "stay."
26 - Ana
Iwake with a crick in my neck, collapsed in a doorway, and it takes me a moment to figure out where I am. The music room. Him.
A folded paper waited beside me, placed carefully where I'd find it.
He is across from me, slumped on the ground, and at my movements, he rouses.
I give him a questioning look, and he answers with one of his own that says everything.
I'm still here. Always here. Take whatever time you need.
After everything, after I tried to kill him, called him monster, made him suffer for crimes he didn't commit, he's still here. Patient as death and twice as certain.
Papa wouldn't want this hollow ghost I've become. He'd want me to choose life, even if that life looks nothing like what we planned.
My fingers tighten on the blanket he laid over me. Dante sits up and leans his back against the other side of the doorway. The silence stretches, waiting. Not demanding, never demanding. Just waiting.
