Chapter 6 #2
The room tilts. Dingy walls, threadbare carpet, the half-empty beer can on the counter. The smell of stale cigarettes clings to the air. Déjà vu swallows me whole. Fifteen years old again, bruised and broken, trapped in this same goddamn room.
“I didn’t know what else to do,” she whispers.
My hands shake, but the words come anyway. “You’re a coward.”
It slices through the air, colder than a blade. She stares at me, stunned, like she doesn’t recognize me. Maybe she shouldn’t, maybe I don’t even recognize myself. Then her face hardens, lips curling with bitter defiance.
“I know you hate me. But I’m still your mother. I was there for you.”
“No, you weren’t.” My signs are sharp, vicious. My voice would fail me if I tried to scream, but my hands scream for me.
“I was,” she snaps. “I gave everything for you. Your surgery—every penny I had, I spent it to save you. I brought you back to life.”
A laugh bursts from me, silent and jagged, ripping through my chest.
“Why was I in surgery in the first place?” My signs are knives now, precise and merciless. “Because of you. Because of your choices. I will blame you for as long as I breathe.”
Her mouth trembles, but I don’t wait for excuses.
“You stopped being my mother a long time ago.”
I turn before I can see her break. The door slams behind me. The wind chimes tinkle faintly in the night air, soft and mocking, like laughter at my back.
And I walk away, heart pounding, hollow and furious—carrying the weight she chained to me.
* * *
The train comes to a screeching halt, and I sit there waiting for the crowd of people to thin out, and when they do, I force myself to stand, wrapping my varsity jacket around me like a shield. The doors hiss open, and the cold night air slaps me in the face. I welcome it—anything to stop thinking.
I step onto the platform, head down, legs moving on autopilot. The streets outside the station are alive with the usual chaos—horns blaring, people arguing. I barely register any of it.
“Twenty thousand.” That’s all she’d paid. Out of nearly eighty.
The five thousand I’d been saving, skipping meals, and working extra shifts for would’ve cleared the debt. I’d been counting down the days, crossing them off in my notebook like a prisoner waiting for release.
And she hadn’t been paying it off at all.
The lie had slipped out of her mouth like it was nothing. “I was investing it.” Bullshit. I’d seen the empty bottles under the couch and the scratch-off tickets on the table.
I swallow hard, the taste of betrayal bitter on my tongue.
Rain drizzles against the pavement in uneven rhythms, sharp and cold against my skin. I glance up, catching the dark clouds thickening overhead, and know I won’t make it home dry.
Fitting.
I tuck my hand deeper into my jacket pocket, finger brushing my phone that’s been vibrating for hours now, I ignore it.
I am almost at the bus stop just as the first fat drop of rain falls and turns unexpectedly heavy within seconds.
The street turns into a mess of slick pavement and rushing bodies.
People scatter like startled pigeons, pulling jackets over their heads or darting into nearby shops.
I stop under the edge of a flickering streetlamp, yanking out my left hearing aid before the rain ruins it—
—and someone slams into my shoulder.
The hearing aid flies from my fingers. entering a drain hole
No. No, no, no.
I drop to my knees, ignoring the splash of dirty water as I crawl across the slick pavement.
“Shit,” I mutter, breath catching. The sound of the right ear hearing aid already warbling, like hearing underwater.
My hands sweep across the hole cover, looking inside, but I can’t even see anything. The sky opens up completely, the rain coming down in a furious sheet. My hair sticks to my forehead, cold water dripping into my collar, but I don’t move. I can’t.
“Oh fuck me,” I whisper, throat tightening.
Frustration burns through me, sharp and hot, my day couldn’t get any fucking worse.
I squeeze my eyes shut and rip the other hearing aid from my ear without thinking and shove it inside my pocket.
The world around me collapses into muffled chaos, honking cars smear into dull blares, voices become shapeless murmurs like the world’s been stuffed with cotton.
Too quiet. Too loud. All wrong.
I sit back on my heels, chest heaving.
The hearing aid is gone. The money’s gone. My trust is gone.
I stare down at my trembling hands, water sliding off my skin in thin rivulets. My vision blurs, not from the rain this time.
I’m so tired.
I get up My legs barely hold me as I stumble toward the bus stop, blinking away tears. There’s no shelter, just a rusted bench slick with water. I stand there anyway, arms wrapped around myself, rain falling hard enough to sting.
My head drops, eyes fixed on the puddles bleeding into the concrete around my shoes. The laces are frayed, the tips soaked dark with rainwater. I can’t bring myself to move. My breath stutters out of me, uneven, and then it happens, one tear slips free. It burns hot against the cold.
I wish death could take me.
I’m so tired.
The words circle inside me like a curse, looping and looping until they’re all I know. Tired of fighting. Tired of carrying everything alone. Tired of hoping for something better only to end up back here again in the same storm, in the same silence.
The rain thickens, turning the city into a blur of smeared lights—gold, red, white, all bleeding together like the whole world is melting. And I let it. Let it pour into my clothes, into my skin. Let it soak through me until maybe there’s nothing left. Let it wash me away.
Then, suddenly, it stops.
Not the rain. Just… on me.
I blink, slow and disoriented. It takes a moment to understand.
An umbrella.
Held steady over my head.
My heart jerks. My eyes follow the line of the handle—long fingers, pale and elegant around it. My chest tightens. Against my will, my gaze drifts upward.
He looks too real for a hallucination, but I almost want to believe my mind is playing tricks on me. Because why him? Why summon him now, out of all people? Why would I want him here, of all the ghosts I could’ve imagined?
But he’s no ghost. The rain slicks his dark hair back in damp waves, beads of water running down the sharp lines of his face. His coat clings to his broad frame, heavy and dark, speckled with droplets, but his expression is untouched. Composed. Steady in a way that cuts through the chaos around us.
And then—those eyes.
Cold, crystalline blue. Ocean deep. Icy and merciless and yet, somehow, not cruel. They lock onto me like they can see too much, like they could pry open my ribs and pull out every secret I’ve ever tried to bury.
My chest tightens until I can’t breathe.
I haven’t seen him since the exhibition.
Since the night he said my name, since the night I used my voice with him, sharp words I didn’t even mean.
I haven’t spoken to anyone in years, not with my voice.
The only exception is Tyler, and even then, it’s rare, strained, broken.
I had almost convinced myself Alexander was nothing more than a strange, fleeting moment in a night I should’ve forgotten.
But now… standing in front of me in the rain, looking at me like this… I know it wasn’t fleeting. The world hums with rain. But between us, there’s silence—loud, unbearable silence. And then, finally, he speaks.
“Come with me.”
I can’t hear him, but I don’t need to. The shape of his lips is clear enough. I should say no. I know I should. Step back, shake my head, turn away. Protect myself before I get pulled into something I can’t escape. But I don’t.
Maybe it’s exhaustion. Maybe it’s the quiet resignation that’s been weighing on me all night, the same whisper that told me to just let the rain take me, to stop fighting.
Maybe he’s the death that is here to carry me, or maybe it’s something, something I can’t name: that strange pull I feel toward him, the one that’s been clawing at the edges of my thoughts since the first night I saw him.
I’ve tried to bury it. Tried to tell myself he isn’t real, that he’s dangerous, that whatever this is—it’s something I should never let myself fall into.
I do not understand it. I do not understand this.
So I nod tiredly, feeling numb.
He doesn’t even look surprised. Not even a flicker of hesitation. Like he knows I’d give in. Like he knew all along that whatever this gravity is between us, I wouldn’t resist it.
He reaches out, his fingers brushing mine before he takes my hand entirely.
Warm. Solid. Real.
I let him.
And for the first time all day, for the first time in longer than I can remember—I don’t feel like I’m drowning.