Chapter 16 - Don’t Speak
Lily's POV
Four weeks in, I stopped speaking.
It started as a choice, then became the only thing that made sense. The walls didn’t answer anyway, and the guards only talked to hear themselves. Silence turned into armor. I realized quickly that it made people nervous. When you stop performing, they start wondering what you’re planning.
Sean Macon, the beautiful guard I’d been undressing in my head for weeks. The one with the voice that could cut glass and the face that made obedience sound like foreplay. He noticed before anyone else that I’d gone quiet. That I’d stopped smiling. That I was done putting on a show.
He had been the one who ignored me from the start, treating me like static in the air. When I greeted him, he never looked up. When I smiled, he kept walking. That silence used to feel cruel, but now I understood it. It was discipline. The kind that made a person dangerous.
He was steady and unreadable, the type of man who didn’t flinch when someone screamed. But lately, he lingered longer when he passed my cell. He didn’t say anything, but I could feel his eyes pause on me, studying the shape of what I had become.
He saw me wasting away.
The food here barely counted as edible, and I stopped pretending it was. Beans that bounced. Carrots that squeaked. Meat that might have been cardboard. I ate what I could force down, but the rest stayed on the tray, untouched. The guards joked about it. Sean didn’t.
He started signing me out for yard time again, quiet at first, just a flick of his hand toward the gate. Then library hours. I sat in that narrow room with the books no one wanted anymore and stared at the same paragraph for hours. Not reading. Just breathing in the faint smell of dust and escape.
I didn’t talk to anyone. Not the guards. Not the inmates. Not him. I let my silence do the work.
By the end of the third week, it was working. The officers were talking about me when they thought I couldn’t hear. The pretty one’s losing it. Maybe she’ll break. Sean didn’t join in. He told them to shut up. He said I wasn’t broken.
At night, I cried. Quietly. Not because I was sad, but because I wanted the sound to reach him when he passed. It did. His boots slowed outside my cell, just for a second, and that was enough.
It was Tuesday when it happened. The library was colder than usual, the light overhead flickering in that nervous way it does before it dies completely.
I hadn’t eaten breakfast. I was dizzy, and I tried to mask it by pretending to read.
My hands trembled when I tried to turn the page.
The words blurred, doubled, and then the table tilted beneath me.
When I opened my eyes again, the ceiling was different. White. Flat. Humming with electricity. My mouth was dry enough to hurt. A plastic bracelet circled my wrist.
The hospital.
I turned my head, and there he was. Sitting in the metal chair beside my bed, like he had been there for hours. His shirt sleeves were rolled to his elbows, arms folded loosely, his face still and alert.
He looked at me like he wasn’t sure if he should scold me or apologize.
“You’re awake,” he said.
I nodded weakly. “Lucky me.”
He handed me a water bottle. “Drink.”
I took it, my hand brushing his for half a second. His skin was warm, solid. I swallowed, the cold water scraping its way down my throat like it had to earn its place.
“You’re dehydrated,” he said. “You haven’t been eating.”
“The food here is disgusting.”
“I’ll be sure to let the chef know.”
I smirked faintly.
He didn’t smile. He reached into a paper bag sitting on the floor and pulled out a sandwich wrapped in paper. “Eat this.”
I stared at it suspiciously. “That’s not jail food.”
“Hospital cafeteria. I paid for it myself.”
I sat up slowly, the room still tilting around me.
My hair stuck to my forehead, my palms slick against the thin blanket.
I took the sandwich and peeled back the paper.
It was warm. Real. When I bit into it, the taste hit so hard it almost broke me.
Real bread. Melted cheese. Something that might have been turkey.
I took another bite, slower this time. “You could have poisoned it.”
His brow arched. “You’re welcome.”
The silence that followed wasn’t awkward. It was watchful. He didn’t move, didn’t look away, just watched me eat. I hated that it made my pulse jump.
Halfway through the sandwich, I stopped. “You’re not supposed to do this, are you?”
He leaned back slightly. “Do what?”
“Feed the inmates. Bring them food. Care.”
“That depends on the inmate.”
I held his gaze. “And which kind am I?”
His jaw flexed. “The kind who’s going to start eating again. Every meal. No exceptions.”
“I’m not eating that jail food. You’ll just have to have my death on your conscience.”
Sean gave me a look that was all restraint and no patience. “You will eat if I have to feed you myself.”
I coughed, half choking on my sandwich and half savoring the power shift. “There you go again, making your orders sound like foreplay.”
His eyes cut to mine, flat and steady. “You couldn’t handle my foreplay, Ms. Thompson.”
I leaned in just enough for him to feel it. “And you couldn’t handle my subspace, Mr. Macon.”
For a second, his attention on me became too much, too intense. I wanted him to look away, yet I wanted him to look closer.
He reached for the empty wrapper, brushed a crumb off my hand, and stood. “You’ll stay here tonight. Back to your cell tomorrow.”
“Why?” I asked, my voice quieter.
“Because I said so.”
He turned for the door, but I called after him. “Sean.”
He stopped. Didn’t turn.
“Thank you.”
He didn’t answer. Just paused long enough for me to see the line of tension at his shoulders, the smallest break in his composure. Then he walked out, leaving me with the faint smell of coffee and soap, and a pulse that wouldn’t settle.
That night, I sat in the window of my room and stared outside until I could no longer keep my eyes open.
I couldn't stay in jail anymore. I thought of sneaking out, but I needed to pull myself together and stop acting like an idiot over a man who didn't meet his dick until he was forty years old.
I lay in the sterile smell of the hospital, and let the quiet hold me.
It had been a long time since silence felt like company.
The next morning, I woke to a nurse checking my vitals.
Another followed with a covered plate. When she lifted the lid, I nearly drooled.
Scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, sausage links, jelly, and even a small blueberry muffin.
Then came the drinks: coffee, orange juice, and water. For a moment, I forgot where I was
If this was Sean’s way of making me eat without speaking to me, fine. I’d take the silence with a side of bacon.
When Sean finally showed up to take me back to jail, he looked impatient, like this was just another errand he needed to finish.
“We have to get you back for a meeting with your attorney,” he said, handing me a folded stack of clothes.
It took me a second to realize they weren’t just any clothes. They were mine. My jeans. My sweater. My bra and panties.
I stared at them longer than I should have. The thought of him touching my panties, even for a second, made my face heat. I could not believe I was blushing, but I was.
He noticed. Of course he did.
“Didn’t take you for the shy type,” he said quietly, almost amused.
I looked away before he could see just how wrong he was.
He leaned in and whispered, "Is this an example of your subspace?"
I lost it. I laughed so loud it made the nurse, who was fumbling around with my paperwork, jump and lose a few papers.
Then, Sean Macon laughed.
God help me, I wanted to frame it, bottle it, crawl inside and live there.