Page 4 of Broken By Silence
It feels… warm. Soft. Like wading through the low tide in the sea as it dances around your ankles. Like falling asleep in the middle of winter, the cold lulls you into a lullaby only Jack Frost knows, and you know you’re not going to wake up, but that doesn’t feel like the worst thing in the world.
But even in the dark, I feel her hand.
I’m not sure if it’s real. It could be a memory, a dream, or something deeper. Something luring me to the other side.
But it’s there—fingers wrapped tight around mine. Not letting go.
Her voice slips through next. Distant. Warped. Like she’s underwater, or I am.
“Don’t you dare leave me, Roman.”
I want to answer her. I want to say her name, but my mouth doesn’t work here.
There’s only pain, and weight, and silence that hums like a static-filled radio station stuck between signals.
Words and sounds drift in and out.
“Pulse is weak.”
“BP dropping again. Get another unit ready.”
I think I’m supposed to die.
Not because I deserve to… Maybe I do. But because this… feels final somehow.
My body is wrecked.
My blood is mostly on the floor of her house. Another way I’ve ruined her… tainted the only place she’s ever felt safe.
My heart’s been a broken machine for years, but this might be the moment it finally gives up.
But then I see her.
Scarlett.
Not in front of me—inside me, like she lives in the marrow of my bones. In the memories I never let go of. In the corners of my mind, I thought I burned out years ago to survive.
She’s laughing… real… free. A day by the ocean. Her hair wet, feet in the water.
I stole her first kiss. A kiss she wanted to save for Crew, but I always was a selfish man when it came to her.
I wanted all of her firsts, but the only one I ever got was stolen. Robbed like I had any right to it.
I remember it all as clear as the sky that day.
I remember her.
And then it shifts.
Lottie.
I see her crying. Her mouth silenced by every cruel thing we done to her. I hear her screams like I was there in that room, as my father monologues about loyalty, love, and what it means to own something so completely it stops breathing on its own.
I see me standing by the door, too afraid to move. Too full of shame. Fear. Of rot. Trained just like he said… No longer human.
I see her face when I told her she was nothing.
I see her face when I locked her in a room, covered in chili, as hermouth opened as if she was going to speak for the first time in months.
