Saving You (Words We Never Said #6)

2. Oz

CHAPTER TWO

OZ

“Put your ears on.”

Oz’s eye twitched, a sort of automatic reaction to that phrase now. It was something he could read off any lips, in any accent, in damn near any language. He could even recognize it through the thick beard and mustache on his father.

Put your ears on.

Since he could remember, it had been a command given to him at all hours of the day or night, regardless of how he was feeling. He’d once foolishly thought his parents would allow him to dictate his own method of navigating the world once he was old enough to decide for himself. But his mom had always treated him like an extension of her person, even long after he turned eighteen.

And it was sometime around high school that he’d started to realize the way she treated his deafness—with a level of shame and rushed explanations to total strangers who inquired about the devices he carried around so prominently on the sides of his head—was due to the fact that she blamed herself for it.

There had been no real medical reason for why he was deaf.

He’d failed his newborn screening but passed it a few hours later, still in the hospital. But when he was a year old and barely even babbling, his doctor suggested a visit to the audiologist, which confirmed his parents’ worst fears: he had profound bilateral sensorineural hearing loss in both ears.

It prompted a flurry of visits to specialists who eventually set him up with testing, which led to the path of cochlear implants—his left side when he was eighteen months old, his right side six days after his second birthday.

His hearing issue was resolved. At least, according to his parents. The longer the months stretched on after his activation, the more he began to respond to sounds around him. He was fine, they told themselves. They just had to live with the glaring, rather obvious evidence that he was different attached to both sides of his head.

That was, of course, before his new, sleek CIs that blended in with his hair. The ones he could bejewel and bedazzle if he felt like it. Neither of his parents understood why he wanted to do that either. They’d gotten him special permission to wear hats in school to hide them, but he’d never absorbed his parents’ social shame surrounding his deafness.

They wanted to run from it. He’d always wanted to embrace it.

And he remembered the acute look of horror on their faces when he came home his sophomore year for Christmas break and announced his degree change: he was going into Deaf education and would spend the majority of his day with his processors off.

It had been a fight since then because that was also the year he started ASL 101 and began to set foot into a culture that had been denied him from birth. They dug their heels into the sand. He reminded them both of long stretches of months with total lack of communication and profound silence whenever his processors needed updating or broke down.

He reminded them of long afternoons when his batteries would die and he was left not only in total silence but without access to language. He had too many memories of being dragged about by his wrist and watching his parents’ loud body language as they attempted to pantomime to him.

Sign language would have made sense then, but they insisted they were too old to learn and not good with languages.

Never mind his mother spoke English, Spanish, and German fluently, with conversational French and Italian. Never mind his father mastered coding and DOS and three other tech languages that made Oz’s eyes cross when he attempted to read all the lines on his dad’s computers.

The only one who learned the basics was his sister, and only because she liked the idea of having a secret language their parents couldn’t understand. Signing had never been for him.

So now, at the very ripe age of twenty-eight, watching his mother’s lips tell him to put his fucking ears on sent him into a rage that was difficult to control.

He reached up and tugged at his lobes. ‘I feel them,’ he signed to her. ‘I think they’re on.’

She didn’t understand, but she got the gist and rolled her eyes. She tapped the side of her head—close enough to the proper sign for his CIs, but deliberately wrong also. It was like she was pointing out she got it, but she’d never put in the effort to learn the right way.

“My head hurts,” he told her aloud. He actually didn’t mind speaking without his processors on like some people. He didn’t give two flying fucks whether or not he had an accent.

She said something else, something he didn’t bother to follow. He was actually pretty damn good at lipreading, but he hated relying on it, so he refused to watch her mouth once it was clear she was going to push the issue. He caught something about his niece and party.

He’d been called over for a family emergency, which turned out to be a party planning event. Sarah was turning seven, and the first double digits were always the most important in their family. And it wasn’t like he was uninterested in Sarah’s birthday. He loved his nieces to death. But not only was he not the party planning kind of guy, but he was also busy.

His parents didn’t seem to understand that teaching went beyond standing in front of a classroom and giving a lecture—which was absurd, considering his mother had been a college professor before she became a historical archivist.

But maybe it was that they didn’t respect him as a high school teacher.

Or that he was teaching Deaf kids.

Or both.

Whatever the case, he was in their living room now, not bothering to follow along and pretending like he couldn’t understand what his mom was demanding. He didn’t wear his processors at school, so they were in their case in his glove box.

‘Repeat?’ he signed to his mom.

“Don’t,” she said back. “Osric, please….” He also recognized his full name on her lips, but he missed the last few words of her sentence, and he was absolutely not going to ask her to repeat herself again.

He looked over at his sister, who was typing on her phone, and he could see the pinched, annoyed look on her face. ‘Oz,’ she signed, using his sign name.

He shrugged and glanced over at her husband, Grady, who was leaning back in his chair, looking vaguely amused. ‘Don’t ask me to interpret,’ he signed. He used Signed English instead of ASL, so it always took Oz’s brain a second to catch up. ‘I’m not good.’

That wasn’t a lie. Alora was better at it, but not by much. Neither of them was fluent, and Alora made it loudly obvious she preferred when he used his processors. He could hear with them—quite well, in fact. After several years of adjustments and updates, they’d been declared a resounding success. According to his medical team, anyway.

He had a Deaf accent, but not as strong as his parents feared he would, and he could hear most things so long as the room was quiet and the sounds weren’t too high or too low.

He could take calls, understand the lyrics of his favorite songs, he could have conversations in public so long as it wasn’t too crowded and the background noise wasn’t overwhelming. Hell, he could even sometimes make out what someone was shouting across the room.

But it didn’t change the fact that he was Deaf. He’d embraced it like a second skin, and he didn’t want to let go. He liked his language. He liked his people. Silence for him was a comfort. He wasn’t afraid of what was lurking around the corner where he couldn’t hear it.

He was content.

No, more than that. He was happy. And he was tired of giving in to their demands.

‘If this doesn’t involve me,’ he signed, knowing they wouldn’t follow more than a word or two, ‘I’m leaving. I have a kid to see for my mentor program and a bunch of essays to grade. Have fun with the party. See you later.’

‘Wait!’ Alora signed, then made a grab for him.

He spun and quirked a brow at her. ‘What?’

‘Promise me you’ll be at the party. No matter what.” She actually signed a little when she spoke, which made him realize she was actually worried he was going to neglect his niece on her birthday.

He sighed and dropped to a knee beside her chair. “I will be there,” he said slowly, hoping he was moderating his voice audible but not loud enough to startle the newborn. “But stop inviting me to these things. None of you will learn sign, and I’m Deaf. Learn or leave me out of it.”

“Oz,” he saw her say aloud.

He shook his head and rose, heading for the door. He was a thousand percent sure his mom and sister were calling after him, but he could easily ignore what he couldn’t hear, and he had a smile on his face as he made it to his car.

It didn’t last. The ache in his chest grew to the size of a goddamn meteor as he headed down the street. He’d grown up knowing he was both different and part of the very average statistic of Deaf kids born to hearing parents. He’d learned the statistics in his first Deaf studies class in college.

His family was amongst the over seventy percent who never learned sign for their Deaf child. He was one of too fucking many, and it was exhausting.

He was comforted by knowing more than a dozen hearing parents who had made signing in the home a priority, but it didn’t help with the stinging jealousy in his chest when he was around them. He hated the white-hot resentment that tended to bubble up whenever he saw how happy those kids were.

It was worse when the kids had CIs because looking through the window at the life he felt like he’d deserved was harder than he wanted to admit. And acknowledging that no matter what he said or what he did, his parents and sister would never change was damn near impossible. He wanted to believe in miracles.

Or he wanted to create a little family of his own—a child he could spoil in ways he was never spoiled. But that hadn’t panned out either.

His longest relationship had been with Darcy—his sister’s former college roommate and best friend. She was nice enough at the start, but moving in together had been the worst mistake of his life. She didn’t want him to take his processors off, ever. She didn’t want him to sign in public, ever. She knew the very basics—her alphabet and about a dozen phrases—but she never used them.

At home, she’d respond verbally. If he signed in public, she’d turn bright red and demand he stop embarrassing her. And her demands worked for a while. He went from his newfound Deaf pride to feeling shy and humiliated every time people stared at him, and it took him far too long to realize it was her hang-up, not his own.

The first time they split up, she told him she would do better, and he was too afraid of being lonely to turn her down, so they got back together. The second time they split up, his family staged an intervention and guilted him into walking back his decision to end it.

The third time had resulted in a knock-down, drag-out fight that lasted three days, ending with him throwing his processors into his gym bag and refusing to put them on. Darcy snapped. She trashed the house, broke his flashing doorbell sensor, stole his three favorite coffee mugs, and dumped his imported, authentic Kona coffee bag into the toilet before she took her things and stormed out.

She’d apologized later, but he hadn’t forgiven her for not only the things she’d done but the things she’d said.

The words that had crossed her lips before he turned his hearing off had dug under his skin. Some of them were his biggest insecurities: he was never going to find someone willing to love him the way she loved him. He was broken. He didn’t fit in anywhere, and it showed.

Some of it was worse. Hateful, angry things he hadn’t seen or heard since the middle school courtyard. She mocked his signing, his accent, his body language. She mocked his inability to follow along, even when he could hear her. She used words he refused to repeat, even in his own head.

So when her apology came through in a three-paragraph text, he deleted it and blocked her number.

That would have been that, except his family had decided she was the one for him, and for months, every time he turned up to a family event, she was there. It took almost a year of icing them out for them to get the message, and it was only after his sister vowed she would never invite Darcy to a family gathering again that he finally relented and showed up to his dad’s sixtieth birthday.

And they were true to their word.

The only problem was he didn’t trust them. He knew part of his hesitation and frustration with Sarah’s party was that he was—and always would be—worried about an ambush.

Still, he wasn’t going to punish his niece for her mom and grandparents. And Alora’s husband was nice enough. Grady was a decent guy with a friendly smile who actually had a couple of semesters of ASL under his belt. He’d worked as an EMT for years but had recently transferred to the fire department after finishing up at the academy.

He wasn’t around often, but he was usually the communication ballast Oz sought out whenever they were at a gathering. The only thing that bothered Oz was that Grady didn’t seem to understand or even notice the way Oz’s family treated him.

Oz wondered what it was like for him to be able to live in a bubble of ignorance the way Grady did. Part of him wanted to pop it and force him to see that his wife and in-laws were not always the people they pretended to be. But another part of him wanted the sappy bastard to be happy.

Whatever, it wasn’t like Oz was ever going to make waves.

He just wanted to get through life, maybe find a partner who wanted to settle down. Nothing more, nothing less. He wanted a little happiness, a lot of contentment, maybe a decent rate on a mortgage, and enough money to fix his car if it ever broke down.

He didn’t think it was asking too much, but as he walked into these situations every single time his parents called him over, he thought maybe it actually was.

Fidgeting on the porch, Oz held his breath after pushing the doorbell. He waited for the all-too-familiar vibrations under his feet letting him know that Ridge was walking over to let him in. He wasn’t a big guy, but he was deceptively dense.

He had the look of a guy who belonged in a boy band with his neatly clipped and styled, dark brown hair and baby face he had to keep shaved because he had to wear a mask on the job. He was a couple of inches taller than Oz, and under the skintight Henleys he always wore, he was muscular and fit.

Oz had gotten a few glimpses of his abs over the years, and he could safely say that Ridge was one of the men in town that had Oz taking a harder look at his sexuality. He always thought of himself as an open, fluid kind of guy.

Straight-leaning, but knowing that he’d been attracted to men in the past.

One afternoon, he’d gone for a run, passing the station when he caught a glimpse of the guys washing the truck. He recognized Ridge immediately from a few of the get-togethers he’d gone to at Frey and Renato’s place, and his eyes immediately zeroed in on his abs. They were behind a white T-shirt that was almost completely see-through. The fabric clung to his muscles, and to his absolute horror, Oz popped a chub right there on the side of the road.

Then Ridge waved at him, and Oz damn near brained himself when he tripped over his feet.

Ridge had been the first one at his side. He hit the ground on his knees and eased Oz into a sitting position. His thin fingers with knobby knuckles lifted and asked, ‘You okay?’

He’d almost forgotten Ridge had a Deaf daughter. That he was one of the good ones who had created a sign space for her even though she had CIs the same as him. He swallowed down bitterness as he nodded. ‘Fine. Sorry. Just embarrassed.’

He wanted to run, but Ridge had insisted on taking him inside and giving him a once-over. Luckily, Oz was wearing jogging Lycra that allowed him to tuck, so his boner wasn’t obvious, and Ridge didn’t seem to be glancing down that way.

He grimaced as Ridge dressed the scrape on his elbow, thanked him, and hurried the fuck out of there.

It was in the shower when he was rubbing one out with the image of Ridge behind his eyelids that he realized he was more than attracted to him. And maybe he had a type. A hot, fit, adorably awkward firefighter type.

He kept that crush to himself, of course. He had no idea what Ridge’s orientation was like, and he wasn’t about to find out. He planned to keep his distance from Ridge and let it fade. And his plan had worked until Frey approached a little hesitantly and asked how he’d feel about taking on another kid now that Rex was getting older and too busy to hang with Oz.

He almost told him no. He almost told him his schedule was too packed because he knew deep down who Frey was trying to hire him for. Fuck, he wanted to turn and run like hell. Instead he smiled and nodded and told him to pass along his number.

And now—almost a year later—he was here. The crush wasn’t better, but he’d managed to keep his distance from Ridge’s personal life. The man was as tragically single as him, but he was starting to wonder if maybe Ridge preferred it that way. There was no other reason why a man as good-looking and kind as him would still be single.

The door flung open, and Ridge appeared, wearing his most adorable smirk. ‘Hi! Come on. Ina’s getting out of the shower now. She had a mud puddle accident.’

Oz wasn’t entirely sure if “accident” was the word Ridge meant to use, but if it involved a mud puddle, it was probably close enough. He offered a smile as he stepped in, kicking his shoes off at the door, and halfway through his first step toward the living room, he nearly squashed Ridge’s massive cat.

He knew three things about Cheese: he’d been rescued from a tree right around the same time Ridge had adopted Ina, he was part Maine Coon based off how massive he was, and he was very particular about who she let around him.

Ridge told him it usually took months, if not years, for Cheese to warm up to strangers, but the moment Oz stepped foot in the house, the cat had settled on his lap like he belonged there. Today was no different.

He got settled in his usual spot—the left side of the squashy couch—and Cheese immediately hopped onto his thighs and began to make aggressive biscuits into his jeans.

“Ow!” he yelped, unable to stop the noise from escaping his throat.

Ridge appeared with a bottle of water and grimaced. ‘Sorry,’ he signed with full hands. He set the bottles down on the coffee table. ‘His love is very spicy today.’

Oz repeated the sign, then spelled it. ‘SPICY?’

Ridge nodded his fist, then made claw hands. ‘His love hurts.’

Oz couldn’t help a laugh, and he realized it was the first moment of actual, genuine joy, even if he was in pain. He scratched Cheese between his ears, and he could feel his body rumbling with a purr. ‘I don’t mind. It’s nice after what happened today.’

Ridge’s brows dipped into a concerned frown, and he leaned over his knees. ‘What’s wrong?’

Oz’s hands all but ached to spill his guts, but he didn’t want to dump his bullshit trauma all over Ridge. He had enough going on raising a kid by himself.

‘Family,’ he signed with a shrug.

Ridge smiled. ‘I understand. I don’t talk to my family a lot, but I’ve been there. You okay?’

He was. And he wasn’t. The answer was too complicated to explain in any of the languages he knew. ‘Fine,’ he answered. He glanced away, but a beat later, he saw Ridge waving in his periphery, and he looked back over at him.

‘I have a question. A favor,’ he clarified, then waved his hands uncertainly. ‘I don’t know what to call it.’

‘Ask,’ Oz urged him.

‘Your brother-IN LAW,’ he spelled the last bit, ‘invited me over to your parents’ house.’

Oz was startled for a second before he remembered that Ridge and Grady worked together. Hell, they were probably friends. ‘Birthday party?’

Ridge nodded. ‘He said there will be kids and adults. I thought it could be fun for Ina since she doesn’t have a lot of friends in the neighborhood. His sign isn’t terrible, so I assume his kids can use it?’

Oz felt his stomach cramp with tension. Hadn’t Grady told him? Oz was typically tight-lipped about his family when it came to Ridge. He’d become close with Frey and had told him most of the gory details of what growing up in a non-signing family was like, but he couldn’t bring himself to sully what little time he had in Ridge’s company with being such a fucking downer.

Plus, getting to know him on a deeper level would only make his crush worse, and he was suffering enough, damn it. But if Ridge was going to bring Ina to the party, it would be very obvious very fast the kind of family Oz had grown up in.

‘I won’t go if it’s weird,’ Ridge started quickly, but Oz made a soft noise of protest and shook his head to stop him.

‘My family.’ His hands hesitated. God, he hated telling this part. ‘They don’t sign.’

Ridge blinked at him. ‘Nothing?’

‘My sister knows a little. Not much. My parents—none. My nieces know a few words. Their dad uses it with me. He learned before he married my sister.’

Ridge sat back, looking a little stunned. He formed a Y with his hand and waved it gently in front of his face, thumb almost touching his nose. ‘Wow.’ He dropped his arm for a second and met Oz’s gaze. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’

‘I don’t like talking about it,’ Oz told him. ‘It’s…difficult. I usually wear my processors when I visit them just so I don’t have to deal with missing out on everything.’

Ridge bit his lip. ‘I could ask Ina to wear hers…’

‘No,’ Oz signed quickly. ‘No. She doesn’t need to accommodate them. If you want to bring her, let her go as she wants. I’ll be there. I can help.’

Ridge looked torn. ‘I don’t know if I want her to see that.’

Oz frowned. ‘See what?’

‘A family who won’t sign for their Deaf son,’ Ridge admitted. The signs were hard—blunt on his hands. Then he looked immediately apologetic. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean to insult your family.’

Oz shook his head. ‘It’s okay. But she will learn soon that most families aren’t like yours. She’ll meet kids at school who eventually tell her that they go home and their parents won’t communicate to them in their language.’

Ridge swallowed heavily. ‘I know. I wanted to preserve the fantasy a little longer. But I can tell her.’

Oz hesitated, then said, ‘Have one of the guys babysit, and you go. You deserve an afternoon out, and Grady is an amazing cook. There will be drinks and music. It’ll be fun.’

Ridge looked unsure. ‘Will you be there?’

‘I love my niece. I’ll be there. And of course, Ina is welcome,’ Oz signed quickly, not wanting Ridge to think he didn’t want Ina around. ‘She’s my favorite.’

Ridge smiled at him, his face lighting up, and Oz’s heart beat a little faster. God, he’d never felt this way about a man before. Well, maybe Pedro Pascal, but he was pretty sure most human beings felt that way about him. This was different.

Ridge was there. Tangible. Reachable.

Maybe not attainable because why would a man that good-looking with his life so put together want someone as lost as Oz was, but there was a greater-than-zero chance. Even the idea of one percent sent his breath racing from his chest.

‘I didn’t think you wanted to get rid of her. But I don’t want her around people who will make her feel…’

‘Like they made me feel,’ Oz said, then regretted it immediately. He folded his hands into his lap and glanced away.

After a moment, Ridge reached over and tapped him. ‘Sorry.’

‘Can we not talk about them?’ Oz asked. ‘I just left there, and I’d rather not think about it.’

Ridge put his hands up in surrender. ‘What are you and Ina doing today?’

‘Visiting a Deaf café,’ Ridge told him. ‘Don’t worry, no coffee for her. They have frozen hot chocolate, and the whole menu has ASL on it, so she can order by herself.’

Ridge’s smile brightened. ‘Awesome. Take me sometime?’

Oz’s swallow caught in his throat, and he almost choked. But Ridge was not asking him on a date. It was not a fucking date. Not a chance. He was only trying to be friendly and involved. ‘Maybe. I took my ex there a few times. She wasn’t big on signing, but she liked the London Fog they made.’

For a split second, he swore Ridge’s face fell, but between one blink and the next, he was grinning again. ‘I can’t wait.’ He turned his head sharply and looked down the hall. ‘Ina needs help. Be right back.’ He headed for the hallway, then stopped and turned. ‘Stay for dinner tonight?’

Yes, Oz wanted to say. Absolutely. Please. Instead, he shook his head. ‘Sorry, I have to get home and grade papers.’ Luckily, it wasn’t a lie.

Ridge made a face of sympathy. ‘Next week, maybe?’

Maybe. Probably not. Oz wasn’t going to torment himself. It was bad enough Ridge would be over at his parents’ house to see the nightmare he lived with, though Oz planned to wear his processors and blend in as best he could to avoid the conflict. And he supposed it would feel nice to have some kind of ally there.

But it was a lot. Too much, at times. He wanted to carve out a little space for himself somewhere that allowed him to feel like he belonged as he was, without compromising pieces of himself. He hadn’t found it yet, and he’d been searching for a long time.

But he was still young, damn it.

There was absolutely time.