Page 30 of Broken By Silence
She’s right. She’s always right.
And if she’s right about this…
I sit in the kitchen long after Claire leaves me with her words still lodged in my chest.
You’ll stay. You’ll go back to college. You’ll protect her.
Her hands had moved so deliberately, every sign slicing through my armor. Now I can’t stop seeing them in my head, can’t stop replaying the certainty in her eyes. Claire doesn’t deal in maybes. She doesn’t deal in hopes. She deals in absolutes.
I want to believe it. God, I want to believe it so badly it hurts.
I remember my stomach dropping, rage like fire in my veins. I wanted to storm the club, tear it apart brick by brick, drag her out whether she wanted to leave or not, but then she told me she needed to take back her power. That shut me up. Because if anyone knew the difference between survival and choice, it was Lottie.
And when I saw her on stage for the first time, I understood.
She didn’t dance like a victim. She didn’t move like someone broken. She owned every inch of her skin, every pair of eyes glued to her. She looked untouchable. Free. But I also saw the flickers between songs. The exhaustion in her shoulders. The moments her mask slipped when she thought no one was looking. That’s when I swore I’d never let her do it alone again. If she wanted this path, fine. But she’d have me watching the door, watching the crowd, watchingher.
Even if it killed me to see her that way.
My thoughts feel too loud.
College.
I’d dropped out when things got bad at home, when survival tookpriority over lectures and papers. I worked. I fought. I learned to read a room, read a threat, faster than I ever learned to read a textbook.
But now?
Could I really sit in a classroom again? Pretend I belonged, while at night I was standing guard in a strip club? Could I be both things… The boy who once dreamed of a degree, and the man who learned to live with his fists?
I don’t know, but Claire made it sound like I don’t have to choose.
It’s late when I finally leave the kitchen. Most of the house is asleep. The hall is dim, a single lamp casting shadows across the floor. I pause outside Lottie’s door, my chest tight, silent steps carrying me into her room. Archer has moved to his own room. Maybe he knows I need her, maybe he knows what his mom was convincing me to do, and knows I need to feel her next to me to calm the raging thoughts inside of my head.
She’s curled on her side, hair spilling over her pillow, sweatshirt tugged up enough that I see a hint of the bruise along her ribs. My hands clench. I want to wake her, demand she stop hiding the pain, beg her to let me take it from her.
But I don’t.
I just slip into bed behind her, careful, slow. The mattress dips, and she stirs, turning slightly until her back presses into my chest.
Her hand reaches back, brushing my hip. She doesn’t open her eyes, doesn’t speak. My throat burns. I answer in the only way I can. My hands move against her skin, where she can feel me.
“Couldn’t sleep.”I sign, trying to explain my disappearance.
She shifts until my arm fits around her waist. She guides my hand under her sweatshirt, pressing it against warm skin, just above the bruise.
I freeze. But she holds me there, grounding me.
“I want you here,”she signs.
Those words undo me.
I bury my face in her hair, breathing her in. My heart pounds so hard I’m sure she feels it.
Slowly, she rolls to face me. Her eyes are half-lidded, soft, but there’s a glint there. She lifts her hand, brushing my jaw, then signs against my chest, slow and deliberate.“Stay. With me.”
I almost break.
I kiss her instead. Gentle at first, reverent. Then, deeper, hungrier, the kind of kiss that steals the air from my lungs but gives me life at the same time.
