Chapter 25
It shouldn’t be the quiet that does it. Not after everything else. Not after the fight, the van, the cage, the blood, the way I put men down without thinking twice about it. None of that touched me the way this does. Silence shouldn’t be the thing that cracks something open.
But it is.
The room is still. Too still. The kind of still that lets sound carry farther than it should. The kind that makes every small noise sharper, more defined, harder to ignore.
She’s in the bathroom, the soft rush of water running, then shutting off. Fabric shifting. Movement that doesn’t belong to me, doesn’t belong to the club, doesn’t belong to anything I’ve built my life around. It belongs to her.
That matters more than it should.
I sit on the edge of the bed, elbows braced on my knees, hands clasped loosely together. My head is down, but I’m not thinking. Not really. I don’t do that. I process. I track. I stay ahead. But right now there’s nothing to track. No immediate threat. No next move.
Just… space.
And that’s where it starts to go wrong.
The door opens behind me.
I don’t turn. I don’t need to. I feel her.
The shift in the room when she steps back into it, the quiet way she moves like she’s still figuring out where she fits, even though I already know the answer.
She stops a few feet away. Doesn’t speak.
Doesn’t rush to fill the silence. That’s different.
Most people do. Most people can’t stand it.
She just… lets it sit.
I hear the soft exhale she doesn’t try to hide. Then a sound. Small. Barely there. Metal. The faintest clink against something solid. It hits before I can stop it. Before I can shut it down. Before I can redirect.
A chain. Not here. Not real. But close enough.
My hands tighten. Not visibly. Not enough for anyone else to clock. But enough.
Wrong.
The room shifts. Not actually. But in my head. The air gets heavier. The walls feel closer. And for half a second, I’m not here. I’m not in my room. I’m not sitting on a bed with a door I can open whenever I want.
I’m—
No.
I cut it off. Hard. Force my head up. Force my body to stay where it is.
Controlled. Contained. But something already slipped.
“Wasn’t always like this.” The words come out rough.
Flat. Like they don’t belong to me. Like they just…
exist in the air between us and I’m the one who said them without deciding to.
Silence. I expect it to break. To fill. To shift into something else. It doesn’t.
She doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak.
That’s what keeps it going. Because now there’s nothing to stop it.
No interruption. No distraction. No way to redirect it back into something safer.
So it continues. “I didn’t talk,” I say, my voice still even, still stripped of anything that could be mistaken for emotion.
“Not for a while. Still don’t unless it’s something that maters.
” I don’t look at her. I don’t need to. If I look, I’ll see something. And I don’t want to see it.
Not yet.
“I didn’t need to talk back then,” I add.
“No one listened anyway.” That part isn’t said with bitterness.
Not anger. Just fact. That’s all it is. Everything I’m saying is just…
fact. “Didn’t live here,” I go on. “Didn’t live anywhere like this.
” A beat passes. Then another. The memory doesn’t come back in full.
It never does. It comes in pieces. Fragments.
Enough to know what it was without needing to relive every second of it.
“Small space,” I say. “Couldn’t stand up straight.
” My jaw tightens slightly. I don’t stop.
“Chains.” The word lands heavier than the others.
Still flat. Still controlled. But heavier.
“Didn’t matter if it was day or night.” I shift slightly, leaning back just enough to brace myself against the edge of the bed instead of folding forward into it.
“Didn’t eat unless they remembered.” No emphasis.
No pause. Just information. “Didn’t talk,” I repeat. “Didn’t make noise.”
Because noise…
I stop that thought before it finishes. Not needed. Not here. “Didn’t move unless I had to.”
The room is quiet again. Not the heavy kind. Not the suffocating kind. Just still.
I finally turn my head. Look at her. This is the part where it changes.
This is the part where it always changes.
Where people shift. Pull back. Look at me like I’m something else.
Something worse. Something broken. I brace for it.
Not physically. Internally. Ready for distance.
Ready for that flicker of fear that says I crossed a line I shouldn’t have.
She doesn’t move. Not even a little. Her posture stays exactly the same.
Her expression doesn’t twist into something soft or pitying or horrified.
She’s just there. Watching me. Listening.
No judgment. No questions. No reaction that tries to fix it or soften it or make it something easier to take in.
She just stays. That throws me harder than anything I said.
My gaze narrows slightly. Waiting. For something. Anything.
She takes a slow step forward. Not cautious. Not hesitant. Measured. Like she’s making a choice. Then she stops. Close enough that I could reach out if I wanted to.
I don’t.
She doesn’t speak right away. Doesn’t rush it. Then, quietly, “okay.” That’s it. No follow-up. No “I’m sorry.” No “that’s awful.” No attempt to pull something emotional out of it.
Just… okay.
Like she heard me. Like she understood enough. Like she’s accepting it without needing to dissect it.
My chest tightens. Not pain. Not pressure. Something else. Something unfamiliar. But it doesn’t feel wrong. That’s the problem. I look at her a second longer. Waiting for it to change. It doesn’t. She doesn’t move closer. Doesn’t move away. She just stays exactly where she is.
And for the first time…
I don’t feel like I need to pull back. Don’t feel like I need to shut it down.
Don’t feel like I need to put distance between me and whatever the fuck that just was.
Because she didn’t take anything from it.
She didn’t push. She didn’t turn it into something bigger.
She let it be what it was. And somehow that makes it easier to carry.
I look away first. Because I need to reset something. Put the pieces back where they belong. But it doesn’t snap back the way it usually does. It shifts. Slightly. Enough to notice. Enough to matter.
Behind me, she moves again. Closer this time. Not touching. Not reaching. Just there. And she stays. No questions. No pressure. No pity. Just there. And I realize that might be worse than anything else.
Because now…
I don’t ever want her to leave.