Page 8 of Broken By Silence
I don’t try to hold the tears back. There’s no strength for pretending I’m not shattered.
“You can go in now,” the nurse appears from his room, dressed in scrubs. “He’s not awake yet, but he’s close.”
I timidly walk past her. Fear running through my chest. What if this is all a dream?
I sit in the creaky chair, pull it closer to his bedside, and clasp his hand in mine. My eyes feel gritty. The last twenty-four hours have felt like hell, and I can feel how tired I am, but the idea of leaving this bedside? Impossible.
He risked everything.
Ruined two years of safety and a life I’ve built for myself, but he was finally human. Finally something other than the monster who tormented me.
Then I hear it.
“Lottie.”
It’s raw. Hoarse. Barely more than a breath, but it’s him.
Alive.
I shoot to my feet so fast I nearly knock over the chair. My hands are shaking, my pulse pounding in my ears like a warning.
“Roman?”
His eyes flutter open, unfocused, bloodshot… but they find me.
He’s not dead. It plays on repeat in my head as I see him crumpled in my arms, blood soaking us both.
A broken sob chokes out of me. “Don’t you dare do that again,” I whisper, voice breaking into too many pieces. “Don’t you ever…”
The nurse is back, hand gently pulling me back. “He needs oxygen. Let him wake up a bit before you read him the riot act.”
I nod, barely hearing her, but she smiles gently at me… like she knows how broken I am under all of the layers of armor I have. My knees fold under me, and I sit back in the chair, gripping his hand like it’s the last rope keeping both of us above water.
“I’ll leave you be, but four other gentlemen are waiting in the hallway.”
“Can you ask them for five more minutes?”
She nods, looking between us both. “Of course.”
The nurse leaves, and I look at Roman. Really look. It’s all there.
The damage. The bruises. The bandages wrapped around his chest.
He looks like death, but his fingers twitch under mine, and that’s enough for now.
“You’re an idiot,” I murmur, laughing through another tear. “You absoluteidiot. Why didn’t you just stay away?”
His eyelids flutter again. He wants to speak, I can see it.
“Because now you’re here and Archer’s family… My family is doing everything in their power to protect you. You ruined my carpet. You died in my arms,” I continue, my voice getting harder, angrier. “And now here you are, lying in this hospital bed half dead, like you have one foot in the afterlife if I don’t say I forgive you, and I hate you for it. I hate you all for coming back when I was finally okay.”
The sterile room hums with machines and grief and truths I should’ve said years ago.
I wipe my eyes.
“But I’m not okay now, Roman. I’m really not. I’m tired of being strong for people who break me. I’m tired of being locked in rooms you put me in—metaphorically or otherwise. And I’m tired of wondering if the boy who stole my first kiss, who said he loved me, even knows what that word means.”
I pause, swallowing down the lump that refuses to budge, and I look up.
