Page 5 of Broken By Silence
I see her face when she opened that door tonight and saw me bleeding in front of her.
And somehow, after everything, she still held me.
Still whispered my name like it was worth something.
Still cried over me as if I deserved it after everything I’ve done to her.
After I told her, her dad was gone…
Maybe that’s why I fight.
Not because I’m strong. I’m not. I’m a coward with blood on his hands and sins stitched into every part of his past. But in that ambulance, I think I remembered what it felt like to be loved by her.
For just a second, and the sick part of me wants that again, even after everything I’ve done to her.
Even if I only get five more minutes.
Even if I die for it.
I claw my way through the dark. Through the sound of machines, and voices yelling over one another. Through the IVs and the unbearable pressure in my chest. I feel the needle in my neck. The tube in my throat. The hum of machines keeping time with a heart that doesn’t know if it wants to survive.
But I do.
I want to tell her everything.
I want to kill the man who made her afraid of love.
I want to see her again. To brush away the tears from her face as I hear her sniffles next to my unconscious body that’s barely hanging on.
I hear muffled voices.
A choked sob.
“We don’t know if he’ll make it. I’m sorry.”
Footsteps retreat.
I stay still.
Eyes closed.
Breathing slow.
Alive.
Barely.
The next time I hear a voice, it’s hers. Soft. Choked. The sound of someone trying not to cry, but failing anyway.
“I’m mad at you,” Lottie whispers. “I am. But I need you to wake up now, okay? I need you to open your eyes because you’re not dying here. Not without telling me everything. Not without an apology.”
A pause. A sniffle, and my barely beating heart thumps painfully inside of me.
“You don’t get to make me look at you like you’re human just to die. I get it, okay. You’re not the monster you made yourself out to be, but this isn’t the way to prove your humanity. You need to come back.”
I want to tell her I’m trying.
I want to reach out, take her hand, and promise her I won’t die—not until I’ve burned my father’s empire to the ground.
