Page 12 of Broken By Silence
Chapter 4
Crew
Idon’t think I’m breathing.
She says the word no with her hands, and it’s not the shape of it, not the movement. It’s the way her shoulders collapse like the truth is finally too much for her to carry. Like it’s pressing her into the ground, and no one’s reaching out to lift her.
I want to reach for her. I want to pull her into my arms, but I’m rooted here, useless. A ghost with bones.
I failed her.Wefailed her, and worse than that, we made her life worse. Drove her to fake her death when we could have been protecting her.
All I can hear is that word looping like a curse.
No.
She didn’t even say it, like she didn’t have the strength to speak the word aloud and could barely muster the strength to say it with her hands.
She’s not okay—not even close. Not since that night, and she never told me… not like I ever gave her the chance.
I want to say I would’ve burned it all down if she told us. That I would have burned him for daring to ever touch her, but I stoodbeside them. I wore his name like a badge as if it were some sort of legacy. Something other than being a drug addict’s kid.
I watched her flinch, and I liked it. I called her dramatic and loved the way her eyes would shift to blazing anger, even though I knew she would never say anything. I said horrible things, pushing her to the edge when, really, she was dying inside, and no one cared enough to see it.
I didn’t see it. I didn’t want to see it because that would have meant caring about something other than myself.
Maybe Lottie’s right to never forgive me.
Elijah speaks again, his voice cracking, something sharp and raw, like this is all cutting him apart from the inside, but I can barely hear the words he’s saying to her.
He steps toward her, and she backs up.
I should be relieved she won’t let him touch her, that she’s finally protecting herself, but all I can feel is guilt pressing into my lungs like smoke.
“We were always that.”Roman’s words bounce around in my head.
Raised by monsters.
The truth sits heavy in my stomach like lead.
We were bred in rot… in death and hatred, and maybe we didn’t see it, or maybe we refused to. It was easier to look the other way, to believe their power was earned and not stolen. Not built on broken girls, secrets buried deep in money and blood.
The door creaks again, and Archer walks in.
Tall. Silent. Controlled like a loaded gun.
He takes one look at Lottie, then at Roman—pale, torn apart, the IV a leash to keep him tethered here—and something shifts behind Archer’s eyes.
He doesn’t speak. He walks past us all, straight to her.
He stops in front of her, and when she doesn’t look up, his mouth pulls into a frown. Oscar’s watching him too, standing close enoughto Lottie that I feel the silent protective message in his stance. That he’ll tear us all apart if we hurt her again.
Archer crouches, brushing his fingers across her cheek like he’s afraid she’ll vanish.
Lottie finally looks at him, her brown eyes fill with tears, and her faceshatters.
Just like that—there’s no armor. No forced strength. No wall. Just the girl we once destroyed. The girl I loved too late and ruined, and I can’t take any of it back.
Not the jokes. Not the apathy. Not the part where she begged for help in the silence, and we all pretended not to hear her.
